Andy

They looked better to me against City than Bayern did against Arsenal.... although that might have been more to do with City performing at a lower level than Arsenal but still. I have only seen them in the big games this season..... (City, Milan, Madrid and Atletico) but each time they have been good, i wonder if they have a problem with getting motivated for the "lesser teams?" ( was probably one of the major things Pep did great for them) Anyway i'm baffled by Neymar, not in general play because i think he was good and i know he was out of position but again i found his finishing to poor for Barca. Now i know he doesn't get as many opportunities as he does for Brazil due to Messi etc etc but when i see him for Brazil his finishing is fantastic but when i see him for Barca he looks timid in front of goal and i really don't get it. I reckon Neymar is one of those players who revels in being the main man, much like Ibrahimovic or someone but obviously with a different style of play. He doesn't look as confident or comfortable playing for Barca yet as he does for Brazil and it could be because he isn't the best player in their team.

That's the only appropriate gif in this thread like.

Really good footballer, hopefully he'll grab a goal sooner rather than later to get the monkey off his back.

This reads like a facebook post from Chris (Simpsons Artist)

Good goal but that was lazy as fuck from Santon.

Really? What sort of thing are they saying?

It's grim how much of my Facebook news feed is filled with sympathy for this cunt. He's as indefensible as the rest of them.

Personally I think if the moderating team can't deliver minutely thread title updates in every thread they shouldn't be here.

Meh. Moving to P-SG seems to be best-case scenario all round like, given that he so actively wants to leave. It's a good move for him, the club will get a decent wedge out of it, and I'm sure most fans would hate for him to move to another premier league club... Shame that we can't (or won't) match his ambitions but then even if we were at our most ambitious we'd still be a million miles away from being able to compete with the likes of P-SG anyway, regardless of which league they play in. £20m seems like a fair price as long as it's reinvested. Hopefully we'll get the likes of Cabella in this month so they can settle in for next season since this season is probably going to fizzle out now anyway.

He's not like, and I don't exactly rate Williamson. Taylor is a moderately better "footballer" but a horrible defender; aside from being full-blooded he's worse than Williamson in virtually every single aspect of defending. Completely disagree. Taylor's better physically, in the air and in the tackle. He's braver too. Apologies for the late response but I'm just not seeing the same things you are like. There's a difference between being brave and being gung-ho or even borderline-reckless defensively; Taylor is typically far more prone to possessing the latter two qualities than "bravery" - Williamson doesn't hammer into hollywood-challenges as often but by the same token doesn't make half as many errors as a result of doing so... I don't have statistics (and regardless, they'd be massively skewed depending on who they're lining up against anyway) but I'd wager that Williamson wins more of his aerial battles (defensively) than Taylor does as well... As for physicality, Taylor is stronger but that's pretty irrelevant when he doesn't apply his physicality effectively. All of that, of course, is pre-amble to the kicker which is that we never look remotely solid as a unit with Taylor at the back. Williamson is able to form effective partnerships with other defenders and that's something Taylor has rarely been able to do over the course of his career.

He's not like, and I don't exactly rate Williamson. Taylor is a moderately better "footballer" but a horrible defender; aside from being full-blooded he's worse than Williamson in virtually every single aspect of defending.

Taylor is exactly where he belongs in the pecking order at the minute, he's an awful defender.

Suarez has been brilliant this year (arguably better than RVP has ever been over a short period of time), but I can't help but think that this purple patch is tinting opinions somewhat; I rate Van Persie higher on the basis that he's been consistently mint for ages.

I normally back up Ben Arfa from the perspective of "at least he's trying something" but his decision making today was awful mind, those two shots were indefensibly poor choices considering the box was loaded with players on both occasions. Can't imagine how frustrating it must be for his teammates when he has those brainfarts.

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.