ikri

Turgid crap. Obertan is the only player who looks like he might be capable of doing anything but he's hardly had a touch. I don't give a shit how many injuries there are in the squad and how inexperienced the team is, they should still be capable of playing together as a team, harrying the opposition and creating chances. At the moment they look like 11 blokes who only just met on the bus on the way to watch the game & somehow got picked for the first team.

Both Ameobi's seem able to do a job when they come on as impact substitutes when fresh legs and invention are required but I can't remember when I last saw either of them do anything of note when they've started games.

Fucking joke of a referee

I'm now expecting him to come back from the ACON with ginger hair to complete the next step in his transformation into Nicky Butt

At which point we collapsed into an utter fucking shambles and played the most disgusting, humiliating, pathetic football that I have ever had the misfortune to experience. Someone wants sacking for that display. I don't know who and I don't particularly care who, but there needs to be some extraordinary response from the club to that collapse.

Absolute fucking shambles in the last 20 minutes. We'd have been better off abandoning the game.

Fucking disgusting

What a cross

Just fuck off

Why do we even bother taking corners any more? We'd be better off just kicking the ball out for a goal kick.

Simpson & Williamson are better than some of the players that West Brom, Norwich and Swansea have available yet they all play better football than us. Even if we'd had Debuchy and A.N.Other centre-half on the pitch last night in their place what difference would it have made? We'd have still launched hit and hope balls up to Ba and Cisse all night since that's all we've done all season. What's the excuse for the other 9 players on the pitch? You can't blame their inept performances on the mere existence of Simpson & Williamson. There is something fundamentally wrong with our approach to the game and replacing a couple of players won't do anything to improve the team if the overall approach to attacking is simply to launch it and hope for the best.

Back when Souness was in charge it was alleged that he didn't really believe in tactics other than selecting 11 "professionals" who would already know what to do. Whilst Pardew doesn't appear to be as unaware as Souness there do seem to be some similarities in how the team is set up to attack. What's the actual attacking philosophy? Carefully placed diagonal balls through the middle for Ba or Cisse to run on to? No. Classic wing play with wide players getting to the by-line before placing a carefully measured cross into the path of an oncoming forward? No. Our entire attacking strategy seems to consist of hitting the ball upfield in the hope that Ba or Cisse can make something out of nothing, or hope for a mistake from the opposition that will gift a chance to our front men. Failing that, give it to Ben Arfa and hope that he can conjure up something out of nothing. If that fails, bring on a couple of players who weren't considered good enough to start but otherwise just keep doing exactly the same shit that hasn't been working previously. What was the last goal we scored that wasn't due to individual brilliance or an opposition mistake? When was the last time a wide player realised that aerial balls into the box were being cleared with ease and switched to fire in a low ball across the face of goal? From the number of balls we win in the air, attacking and defending, it'd be hard to argue that we're anything other than crap in the air and yet 90% of our attacking play seems to consist of aerial balls aimed at the head of someone who is usually marked by someone taller and better in the air. When we do keep the ball on the ground there's a chronic lack of movement in the team. Forwards don't drop back to draw defenders out of position, midfielders don't move up to fill gaps when they do appear, passes are too often made behind players moving into space. Instead of passing into the space the player is going to be in, passes go to where the player was causing the attack to slow to a crawl and allowing defenders to get back into position. We give the ball to Jonas or Ben Arfa and half the time the rest of the team seem to stop, channelling the little kid from The Incredibles just watching and waiting for the hero to do something amazing. Unsurprisingly, the ball is usually lost leaving most of the team completely out of position allowing the opposition to counter-attack with ease. Whilst the players certainly aren't blameless in all of this, 9 out of the 11 who started tonight have full international caps. They haven't suddenly turned to shit, they just don't seem to have any idea how to play together as a team. There are too many teams in the Premiership who are doing a hell of a lot better than us this season by simply doing the basic stuff like passing and moving. That needs a lot of work on the training ground but I'm really not confident that our coaching team is even capable, especially since that's where our current "tactics" seem to have come from.

Ben Arfa aside, that was shit.

Get in there you beautiful man.

Well, this game's over. Any decent films on instead?

Much better. Some of the players actually looked confident in parts of the game.

Better for 80 minutes but the moment they scored all the confidence vanished from the team, as soon as they scored there was only going to be one winner. Did no one on our coaching team notice that we weren't winning any headers? Why were there no instructions to keep the ball on the deck and not piss away attacking moves by crossing in balls that were going to be cleared every fucking time?

Absolute shit.

This is embarrassing stuff from us. Just utter crap.

Garbage so far. Almost completely unable to get the ball in behind their back four & when we do it's a really poor cross that's a piece of piss to clear. I fully expect Pardew to switch to Plan B in the 2nd half, it'll be exactly the same as Plan A but with Sammy or Marveaux on for Ferguson.

Utter crap.

Apparently in their team for the game against Spennymoor tonight.

What the fucking hell was that? Complete and utter crap. We just handed the game to them.

One season is being really generous.

I'd have taken a draw at the start of the game, but to go so long without conceding and then having them equalise from an own goal is a bit of a kick in the teeth.