Chris_R

Oh, my preffered result by far is for Man City to slot 8 past them. But I feel I just have to mitigate against them somehow scraping a win.

Been having great fun scouring the free bets on oddschecker for this trying to mitigate their inevitable fluke win today. PaddyPower will give you a free £25 bet if you place £10, so I've stuick a tenner on the unwashed to win in ET@35-1 BetVictor will give you a free £25 bet if you place £25, so I've stuck £25 on the unwashed to win on pens at 28-1 Now just waiting for someone to top 19-2 for a 90 minute win. Unibet favourite at the moment but Sunderland are drifting and you can get 11-1 on Spreadex, but no free bet as such. Should be able to do enough with the free bets to recoup most if not all of my outlay if/when Man City steamroller them. Though I confess I'd be over the f***ing moon if Sunderland won on pens today.

Publicly fining him is a good move by Ashley, as it means that because the club have addressed the incident, the speculation about it being a sackable offence wll go away.

This.

He does seem to have a tremendous engine on him. Great stamina, pace, strength and determination. Coupled with being a decent footballer, they're great assets.

Sadly, there's no way he'll get sacked for this. No way at all. Which is a horrid shame. Just hope the FA give him a 6 year ban instead.

Not sure what he can say in the press conference considering he never admits that anything is his fault.

Zero enthusiasm for this or indeed any game of ours at the moment.

A actually now kind of hope Sunderland stay up. Otherwise it'll be another thing we get thrown at us as to why we can't try to win a cup - "Look at Sunderland, do you want that?" Even though the reality is that the mackems were rooted to the bottom of the league long before their first cup game and have actually done better since as they've used their cup success as a springboard to improving their league form and confidence.

Tremendous article. I just wish someone could tape Mike Ashley to a chair and read it to him again and again until he understands.

Ridiculous that he still harps on about Europe being so detrimental last season, but didn't we play reserve teams in virtually every round until the knockout stages? Complete fucknugget. That quote which everyone's talking about is so horrible, basically saying "I don't want to be in Europe or go on a cup run, it's too risky. The limit of my desires is to be safe in the PL". What an utter horrorshow.

That just sums up his whole mentality. Get to 75 minutes at 0-0 then see what happens. That's the absolute limit of his ambitions. It's so utterly dreadful. We never ever go out to try and put teams to the sword. It's graft, contain, graft, contain, graft and contain. With a bit of Welly-hoof-magic thrown in if we're lucky. I couldn't be more bored watching us plod our way through games. It's so interminably dull. I barely even celebrate our goals, mainly because each one means we have to look forward to a little bit longer of seeing week after week of turgid dross served up in front of us. Flair and guile mean nothing to this man. He'd have a peak-form Ginola shipped straight out. Laurent Robert would likewise last about 2 minutes as well. Indeed all the kinds of players that people would actually want to pay to see play have no place under Pardew. Those players that can excite you, get you on the edge of your seat. There'd be no Scott Sellars, no Asprilla. No Waddle and no Gascoigne. No Marveaux, no Ben Arfa. Just 10 try-hard grafters with perhaps one fairly talented grafter like Remy there to bail the rest out after 75 minutes of boredom. God I hate our team so much.

They're trying to turn us from fans into customers. With some, they've succeeded.

Actually a bit gutted about that. Enjoy no more Ben Arfa, ever again.

No. People are blaming Pardew for putting a striker who is completely off the boil in the starting XI. I blame Pardew for Cisse being off form in the first place. He's completely fucking ruined a very decent player.

Cisse on the right. FFS that is disgusting "tactics". He's a poacher, a finisher. This is about as sensible as putting Andy Cole or Darren Bent in their prime on the wing - They'd both look shit too and it would be painfully obvious why.

With this turgid line up, I really hope we get beat. Otherwise it justifies pardew's team selection and well see graft over guile until the end of the season and beyond.

Have they confirmed ben arfa isn't playing yet? Guess that'll be left until last minute so as many as possible are already committed to going.

This, sadly.

I don't get the finance argument. Not one bit. People thinking "Oh, but I can save so much money by getting a ticket". Guess what? You can save even more by NOT getting one, and simultaneously send a message to the ambitionless prats in charge of the club in the only way they understand. Plus, even if things DO change in a year or 2 (Hahaha!) or the club is sold to someone with ambitions beyond advertising his tatty charva clothes shops, just start going again. The money you'll save on not having a ticket for the next year or 2 will more than outweigh any possible increased costs in getting a leter season ticket. Plus you'll not even miss any games. Just watch them online. (Don't buy Sky, he gets money from that too.)

Ridiculous to suggest we had 3 or 4 days to replace Cabaye. We had 6 sodding months to replace him and failed. Abjectly.

OK. I agree with some of what Trollemache is saying [Tin hat on]. We can't buy the title. We can't do much better than probably 6th or 7th on a consistent basis. And we're currently 9th despite everyone bemoaning the paper thin squad, poor performances and shit manager, which is pretty contrary. Obviously something, somewhere is going right, at least to a degree. Despite that, I want Pardew out as much as the next man. Mainly because of this:

Pardew seems able to take mediocre "grafters" and make them look a bit better - The ones mentioned above are good examples: Williamson, Best, Perch, Raylor. Give him someone with talent though, and he's fucked. Hasn't got a clue what to do with them, how to play them, how to get the best out of them. They just don't fit his philosophy or style of play.

Bodes well!

I'm on the fence at the moment.