Minhosa

Aye - not good given he'll be blowing out of his arse after 70 minutes and Perch will be massively needing a hand.

Just you.

Yep - he's only lost possession once by my reckoning.

Villa's movement killing us without Tiote/Cabaye axis to break things up. Another goal needed here.

Ex Man Utd, it's inbuilt.

Yup.

That tackle was ridiculous.. Agree. Fucking diabolical challenge, no malice but totally uncontrolled.

Massive bollocks from Raylor there.

All from losing possession cheaply in the middle.

He's offside there.

Agree but can see the argument for the selections today when facing the villa midfield/formation.

Arguably the same with Raylor on the right. Offers nothing in open play going forward which restricts us massively.

can someone quantify why he's looking so good? pace and movement...? Sharp, not lost possession having shown for the ball plenty, full of energy.

Agree with this - they seem to have players with more guile in midfield with us missing Cabaye and Tiote. Edit - can see some logic in introducing HBA and Cisse with 30 mins left to take advantage of their attacking midfield.

Can anyone find a price on Cisse to score in a Newcastle win? I'm feeling a Tino-esque debut for him today.

No Kompany for City means I'm on both teams to score at evens.

Good to get a win without him. A good, if enforced, break for him, he needed it.

The Don.

His only plausible use. From the bench.

Happy. The Cisse signing shows some positive intent to invest cash in the 'right' player(s) which we've not seen on that level since Ashleys first season in charge. This could be a fundamental milestone imho. Delighted would've meant bringing some defensive cover and jizzing with joy would've been due to the arrival a decent replacement fullback for Simpson. Overall though happy. Cisse in and no big guns out is good enough for me and shows that when the player and the deal are right then we'll invest. Looking forward to the summer window with some optimism which is a first in many a long year.

The game passed Jonas by last weekend in the more central role. It's like he was getting in the way of everyone else and not really knowing what to do with himself. Get him to hug the touchline and it's a role he doesn't have to think about, stick him in the middle and he's all at sea.

He's an expensive sprinter imho. How can a player be surrounded by superb players for the last 5 years and not improve? If anything his game has gone backwards.

I'm a massive fan of Wenger but it's not like he didn't know Nasri and Fabregas were likely to be headed out of the door. Given his board have publically said that he has funds available to him if he wants them I find it pretty incredulous that he didn't have a Cabaye (or similar) lined up before one of those two departed, forcing him into the highly unusual panic mode for players where he wasted money on Arteta, Mertesacker, Santos and wasted wages on Benayoun. He needs to be planning for a mini overhaul this summer which should see the departures of Arshavin, half of his defenders and the likes of Chamakh, Walcott etc. These players are just not good enough for a team pushing top 4 year in, year out. Incidentally, can anyone recall a more spectacular 'turn to shitness' than that of Arshavins? He looked an absolute worldbeater when he first arrived and now he's terrible.

This. I reckon he's far better than the SPL. He'll move on I reckon. Yup - tis my feeling too.

They are usually pretty accurate too. He's the kind of signing I'd like to see us make - he'll be good enough for the bench straight away and will flesh out the squad if we do make the Europe next year. Big thumbs up.