Andy

erm, aye. Fucking hell.

It means that whereas the others leave the training ground pitch, Ben arfa stays for doing more exercices. Extremely encouraging, that. Certainly sounds like he's determined to make a big impact on the league this year, from the soundbites. Seems like his injury might actually turn out to be a blessing in disguise long-term if it's ramped up his desire.

After the reaction to Barton/Nolan, would Pardew be daft enough to play up our chances of him signing a new deal if he wasn't confident? Pretty sure Colo will sign on the dotted line soon.

Best went missing on Sunday and Ben Arfa made an immediate impact. I would start Ben Arfa behind Ba & give him an hour to see how he fairs. He didn't make an immediate impact at all, in fact his contribution of running at players but losing it due to holding on to it too long was similar to how Obertan played over 90 minutes, only difference was he was slated for his performance. The reason the team picked up was because Spurs had just scored, so we had no other option but to take more chances going forward if we wanted to get anything from the game. He made an impact by simply being there - if you watch the footage of his time on the pitch, Spurs were marking him in numbers, creating space for other players to push on. Even if he brings nothing else to a game, he's a "fear" player simply due to the potential damage he can cause.

If he truly believes that, then surely he must realise that it doesn't bode well at all? They say good teams know how to win even when they're playing badly, but the inverse is also true; bad teams contrive to lose even when they're playing at what they perceive as a decent level.

Got a feeling he'll be sacked even if they draw.

Makes a change to read something from them that is both communicative and well written. Nothing we haven't heard before, but a pretty decent summary of their intentions nonetheless.

They can't fucking handle you - he was shouting (I think at Tiote) Was at Jonas, I think.

Rubbish. We matched Spurs pass for pass today in the midfield - possession and passing success statistics back this up.

His end product is a bit naff and sometimes he seems to lack confidence, but if nothing else he stretches teams in much the same way Gutierrez does. The threat of his pace tends to prevent the opposing full-back from pushing on too much, and that will be more evident against teams with slower players in the left back position. However, as Mick rightly points out, Marveaux would probably have the same effect.

Praises the cunt in his Sky interview too. Stu tonight = Love that, even when we're doing well, you still find time to put down other supporters what excuse is going to be trotted out this time? Ha ha - best line from you in ages. Put down other supporters? You're the fucking troll king - dragging up quotes from the heat of the moment match commentary etc. Get yourself back to searching for wum material Stu. You'll be running out soon. Take shit like this to PM man, nobody else wants to read it.

Harsh. He hit it off balance on the turn, tough ask. From the slide, not from the shot.

Daft misjudgement for the penalty, but he had a solid game again today.

Inspirational at times today. Should have scored like.

When I'm browsing on the iPhone on Safari, for some reason when I expand the page numbers in a thread using the "..." button (i.e. where it says: "pages: 1 ... 27 28 [29]") I can't click on any of the pages that appear other than those that were originally displayed (so in that particular example, pages 1, 27, 28, 29 would be clickable, whereas the other page numbers would do nothing). Does anyone else have this problem since the upgrade or is it just me? It's a bit frustrating if you want to navigate to a page mid-way through the thread.

The club tried on more than one occasion over the summer to offload Simpson. I think there's every chance that Santon will end up at right back with A. N. Other at left back eventually... Probably next summer.

We seem to have this problem with all players regardless of nationality. Argentinians excluded.

Must be a bug with the SMF software, I think.

Can you provide a screenshot of this?

Female perspective helps balance out the rash, testosterone-driven decision making the rest of us are prone to.

To be fair, I think we've always taken roughly the same policy on this kind of thing. Fair point, it wouldn't, it's just annoying.

Right, feel free to discuss today's news, but sensible discussion only please. No gossip, rumours, "PM me for more on the story", or any of that crap. Keep it all above board and don't post anything questionable that could have even the slightest potential to land us in trouble. Ta.

Great performance and result today, it's nice to see us dominating games against the other also-rans in the league - if we can keep our first team together I think we'll be competitive against the Top Six when we play them too; certainly can't see this midfield being overran as easily as most teams are against the likes of Man Utd, although you have to worry about the full back positions. Jizzing all over the place at the profit we're going to make off this group of lads like.