Ronaldo

Useless for us more often than not, though.

What's Pardew's net spend since taking over a recently promoted club sitting 12th in the league? His tactics may be dreadful, but they don't tell half the story.

Pardew is the manager, how can anybody else be to blame for Pardew (the manager) picking Ba in a formation that doesn't suit us as a team? I understand that we don't know what is said between the manager and player and don't really need to as we can judge the situation on what we actually see. I can understand why he wants to keep Ba happy but not at the expense of the team and that is what is actually happening. Either Ba doesn't want to play left of a front 3 or Pardew doesn't want him to. Only 1 person picks the team and only 1 person is to blame for it unless Pardew is being told what to do by somebody above him which we have no proof of so I'll stick to what we do know. We don't know a thing about what the managers are told and haven't since the club was bought by that dreadful b******. What we do know is what's happened in the past. Big players - our most important player, even - have been sold with Championship crap like Ameobi and Lovenkrands expected to fill the void like folded-up dirty napkins under a table leg. You can understand the manager wanting to try to do everything he possibly can to keep the likes of Ba happy on a personal level, especially when the striking options beyond the starting Xl are laughably even more limited after a 5th place finish than when we'd just been promoted. Let's say Ba is refusing to play out wide, Pardew puts him out there and he demands to be sold in Jan. January comes and he leaves the club, leaving us with an out of form Cisse as the only proven goalscorer in the entire sodding squad. We'd sink like a stone and you'd be there demanding Pardew gets sacked with every predictable, non-scoring defeat. Pardew's made mistakes this season and personally I'm not at all sure he's cable of rectifying them in the long-term, but one thing is for sure: he just can't win with people like you. Disguise it all you want, but you're comfortable pointing all the blame in his direction when it's blatantly obvious he's only a symptom of a bigger problem, struggling against his master to make something out of nothing, much like Hughton was.

You know fine well I agree with basically all apart from the last line. You simply can't apportion all blame to Pardew - especially when you don't know what's been communicated between the pair of them.

Duff can actually strike a football, to be fair to him.

His head's never been 'right'. My lasting memory of that lad will be his pretending to be injured after that WBA goal in Hughton's last game. Shame, really, because there are plenty of good memories of his wand-like right foot.

Exactly this. Amazing the number of people who don't seem to grasp this particular argument. Ba is not the person who picks the team, amazing the number of people who don't seem to grasp this particular argument. It's partially Pardew's fault, more than likely partially Ba's fauly but mostly the owner's fault. I want Ba on the left and want Pardew to do it, but I can't help but feel the man's between a rock and a hard place and can understand him trying to placate Demba: the last time we were this reliant on a striker he was sold in the January window without any replacement.

Massive agenda against the guy. He's a poacher. Poachers don't score without chances being created and we create the square root of fuck all.

I hope we play as negative as possible. Maybe we'll beat them 1-0.

He's awesome as a wide forward on the right. No need to piss about with it.

Folk still falling for it?

Yep. Very slight.

Should've been benched or moved on the moment we got promoted as with Williamson and Simpson. All benefiting hugely from the lack of ambition with that useless oaf Ameobi.

Ba's not a 10/10 player centrally in any universe. Wouldn't say he's a 7 out wide either. And a 2 for Cisse? He's wasted out wide but looks productive compared to some of the crap we've had out there. Lovenkrands etc.

Aye, ludicrous.

Not sure if sarcasm... What I'm trying to say is that he didn't hide. He clearly knew he made a hash of a couple of situations, but he put in the effort to try to rectify them. Which is the least I'd expect from such a brilliant footballer, and club captain no less. Not sarcasm at all. He was everywhere last night.

Or not.

Silly numbers them, like.

Yeah. He seemed to be involved in the game constantly for 90 minutes, so 2 or 3 below par moments doesn't seem too bad in that context.

With the current dreadful options they both need to be on the pitch.

Sky Sports seemed to be starting it last night. Long shot of him walking off the pitch at the end followed by the 27 years stat.

Cisse has a better engine, more pace, better balance and is more clinical with both feet. Ba's still overall the better player, but Cisse's has enough about him for me to consider him the better bet for a central role.

Yep. Play him through the middle in a front 3 and he'll score for fun.

Off the ball and on the ball he looked class tonight.