Andy

I don't think the ball was completely over the line tbh. Everyone seems to be going off the position of the bottom of the ball in relation to the line (which was over) and completely ignoring the fact that ball is - amazing as it may seem - actually ball-shaped. There's no way from the angles given that you can be certain that the entire circumference was over... Not that it mattered much like, it's not like we wouldn't have won anyway.

I don't think that's the right turn of phrase, cos, really, there's no cracks to be papered over at the moment - we're in tremendous form and playing well. However, Stoke's self-destruction did save us to some extent today. Though I never felt at any point that a defeat was a certainty. Brilliant result very much assisted by the opposition shooting themselves in the foot. Hmm. It papered over the cracks in the way we set up for this particular match, I mean - obviously our recent form can't be questioned. They fully deserved their goal when they got it and we weren't in the game at all up to that point, we were pegged back into our six yard box at times and looked toothless at the other end. I'm not at all convinced that we would've got back into it without their first sending off tbh.

The two penalties were clear as day like, and they were lucky not to concede at least two more of them. The first sending off was harsh but it's a fucking idiotic challenge for Whelan to make when he'd just been booked and it's obvious he knew fine well he'd be sent off by his lack of protestation. The second sending off was pretty justified considering Remy was almost certainly going to score, and it was another ridiculously daft piece of defending when they'd just gone down to ten Much as Atkinson was gash, Stoke's players didn't exactly make things easy for themselves... As for the result and performance, as delighted as I am with the second half, I thought it papered over the cracks. We were pathetic in the first 40 minutes and hopefully that won't be overlooked by Pardew - we could easily have been three down before the sending off and can't afford to play so badly on Sunday.

Awful, they could've easily been 3 up before the sending off.

All the best to everyone I'm not as active on here as I once was, but as a whole y'all still make it the only forum on the internet worth visiting; and as much as the football section has at times made me want to smash my head off a wall of spikes, I still love this place to bits. Merry christmas to the lot of ya x

For all his limitations, it's pretty obvious that most of the players who play under Pardew like him; his ability to keep players on his side is by far one of his biggest assets and is probably why we've turned things around lately as well. I'm not sure I can buy into the team talks thing though, I think he's competent at motivating his players against the big clubs (when they should be motivated anyway tbh) but it's pretty obvious that he has no idea how to talk his players out of complacency.

He was a good player who used the relatively limited toolset he had (compared to some of the players around him at Man Utd and Madrid) effectively. Don't really care about the media stuff, fair play to him for capitalising on that side of things as well really.

Hmm... Why do you have to make strong tackles to be a good defender? Some of the best in history rarely dived in at all so that's a harsh criticism for me. I don't see this awful positional sense either (on a consistent basis anyway) apart from when the defence are playing a needlessly high line - that's a deficiency with the system rather than the individual for me and IMO it also plagued Debuchy earlier in the season; it hasn't been apparent on either side of the pitch in recent weeks as the defensive line has generally been deeper and the formation has been more compact. I can't disagree with the criticism of him walking/jogging back like, but I do think he's improved in that sense in recent months compared to last season, so there's some progression there.

I certainly don't think we can come to the conclusion that Haidara's a better defender yet, but one terrible game doesn't mean much either way at this point. My own view on these two is that Haidara looks promising (does show some very good promise defensively) but is as yet still an unknown quantity overall. Santon on the other hand has played plenty and IMO he just isn't a good defender, he can still improve since he's only 22, but right now he's weak defensively. I'd love an explanation as to how he's poor defensively, as opposed to the oft-used argument of "he just isn't a good defender but I'm not really going to back that up with anything of substance". His positional sense, tackling and heading are usually fine to good. There's the occasional error in him but no more so than most other full-backs outside of the genuine top players - it's something that typically comes as a trade-off with the expectation that modern full-backs should play further up the pitch, and you see these errors every single week... I get the argument that he isn't left footed, but he's fine at leading into a tackle with his weaker foot and it's rare that he takes the wrong body shape as a result of being on the "wrong" side (something which often happens when full-backs play out of position); I also fully understand and agree with the argument that it affects his contribution in the attacking half of the pitch and that it makes us imbalanced slightly, but that would be massively aided if we actually had a left footed winger, and isn't reason enough to justify dropping him for our two left footed defenders who IMO aren't as good defensively at this moment in time. There are limitations to his game without question but I think they're massively over-inflated, especially in a defensive sense.

Depends how you define talent. Ben Arfa is better at controlling a football and dribbling than Bale is, and he's arguably a better passer of the ball. There's more to football than those aspects though, even though they're usually the ones that are considered criteria for having "talent". Bale is physically and mentally light-years ahead of Hatem and the footballing qualities he possesses are a lot more effective in the modern game than the qualities Ben Arfa possesses. As a modern footballer Bale is vastly more "talented" IMO and that's been reflected on the pitch consistently for several years now.

He isn't perfect but Santon's still our best left back like... Haidara doesn't look quite ready yet at this level, Yanga-M'Biwa has always looked uncomfortable at left back to me, and Dummett isn't as good as any of them at this moment in time IMO. We were spoiled by Enrique's quality, and on the right we're becoming spoiled by Debuchy. Santon's not as good as those two but he isn't a major issue; he'll be at fault for a few goals over the course of the season, but that's always going to be the case with most modern full-backs. He does need to sort his end product out when he gets forward like, that's by far his biggest deficiency, but at the same time his ability to carry the ball and push the opposition back is a decent attacking asset in its own right. He's really not as poor as some people make out.

"Possession" represents that percentage of time in possession of the ball. Passes are represented by the "passes" stat.

Haidara has potential but he isn't ready yet IMO. His defensive anticipation/positioning is a fair bit worse than Santon's at the moment - nearly lost us the match towards the end today by being 2 yards behind the defensive line and playing Rodriguez onside; Debuchy got him off the hook, but I've noticed similar in previous games as well... I think in time he'll be a better full-back than Santon, but he isn't there yet.

No

I think he's a decent full back. Gets caught out every now and then when he goes forward, but he isn't half as bad defensively as people make out

Laziness has nowt to do with it really - he chases down the ball, but that's about all. I could go on the pitch and do that for 90 minutes, no bother. The problem is how little he actually contributes from a footballing perspective. He doesn't hold the ball up, link the play, make effective runs, win headers, pass the ball well, have any capacity to beat a man, and so on... Worse still, he rarely even shoots these days... He's tremendously ineffective.

Playing areet, just lacking a bit confidence by the looks of it and could do with a goal to kick-start him again. Not worried.

It speaks volumes that Shola was shit but at this moment in time he's still light-years ahead of Cisse purely on the virtue that he can occasionally control a football or win a header. Bringing Cisse on is almost like accepting a voluntary red card, on this form he is genuinely one of the most ineffective, non-contributive footballers I've ever seen. He just runs around like a headless chicken; I'll never be able to get my head around the transformation he's made.

As I said in the match thread, there's a tendency to take extreme opinions with Ben Arfa because of his hype, and almost everything he does (good or bad) is over-analysed, but the truth is he lies somewhere in between on average. Even at his worst he's relatively tidy and he's effective purely due to his presence pushing back the opposition - he wasn't great today, for instance, but when he came on there was still a very visible swing in territory and he didn't lose possession too many times... Of course, you always have the chance of him doing something magic but you have to accept that he isn't Messi and it isn't going to happen every week, and sometimes he'll make poor decisions in trying to create that magic - he can often be infuriating but it's usually as a result of expectation... Rough with the smooth. If it was all smooth with him, he wouldn't be playing for us. As it is, at the moment, he's a very good option to have on the bench.

Some good, some bad today. We generally played quite well against a team who are around the same level as us... First half we were tactically well set-up, but again he seemingly failed to prepare the players for their response at the beginning of the second half - "more of the same" doesn't cut it at this level but it seems to be the message that he sends. Substitutions were a bit crap; Cisse is a complete waste of a change and Ben Arfa came on too late - I'd prefer him to be brought on to see out a lead like at Old Trafford, rather than when we're chasing a result - in the case of the latter he tries to do it all himself too often. Not too awful overall though, and at least it wasn't the complete no-show that some were expecting after such a good result last week.

Pretty obvious that Ben Arfa's introduction swung the game back around when they were on top. cp40 obsession with Ben Arfa, even when he plays 15-20 mins, is laughable obsession? hes totally over rated on here and dosent do enough of his best work for me. He is over-rated by some on here, you're right. On the contrary, he's rarely been "woeful" and wasn't today either. The truth lies somewhere in between both sets of opinions, you don't always need to take the extreme angle on things. On average, he's an effective player for worrying the opposition and pushing them back towards their own goal. At times he's a match winner, at other times he's limited by his decision making.

Pretty obvious that Ben Arfa's introduction swung the game back around when they were on top. ah aye, thats why we won...oh hang on. It's why we didn't lose Not sure what game you were watching if you couldn't see the pretty blatant swing in territory after the substitution.

Pretty obvious that Ben Arfa's introduction swung the game back around when they were on top.

Southampton have had more of the ball (in their own half) but 66% sounds inaccurate like. They barely touched it for large periods in the last 15 minutes of the half.

Would probably say Atletico or PSG. maybe Barca if you had to take one of them as they haven't been as dominant as previous years. Still a horror draw ahead for Arsenal The same Barcelona that is leading their league and will most probably have Messi back in february and also Neymar improving? Arsenal would be better suited to playing Barcelona than they would an incredibly compact and well-drilled Atlético team like. I'd fancy them to knick something off Barca, whereas Atlético would probably just pick them off.