AyeDubbleYoo

His thinking is so fucking sharp as well. The video of him against the mackems includes some absolutely outstanding improvisation and some great first time passes as well. Sometimes he loses the ball trying to beat a man, but you could see he was working harder to hassle the opposition and get blocks in when he loses it. I basically just love the lad, hope he plays a massive part in these last games.

Yep, I just don't think anyone can nullify RvP, that's the main problem. Maybe we can with Tiote and Colo.

That day man

Sir John Hall saved this football club from oblivion, but he also made a ridiculous amount as well which went well over what I would call being fair. Yeah of course, he cared a lot about the club and did some good stuff, but the financial management was terrible, partly because of the greed of various individuals.

Anyone think Chelsea performances/results will get a boost from the sacking?

Criminal the amount of dividends Hall and Shepherd took out. I heard a brilliant interview with the Arsenal chairman/CEO where he explained that the purpose of a football club is to make profit only so that it can invest money back into the club. That's what we should be aiming for.

have a proper answer in the summer hopefully. Not sure, depends how Taylor comes back. He won't accept being third choice IMO. I was assuming all these links with big money signings like Vertonghen were if Coloccini was off. We need a good young player to push Williamson down the pecking order. We need to sell Williamson and buy two CBs. Disagree, Williamson is a capable and (probably) willing backup. We would struggle to sign a better player that we could keep happy. The focus should either be on a class CB to go straight in, or a promising young one that can gradually step in. Recovery of Saylor is also a factor.

What? That's exactly what I said lol. I think he means that we were allowing them to win the second ball and then trying to contest the next phase - i.e. when they attack us with the ball they just won.

Can't see them finding a buyer TBH, if the club is profitable maybe Ashley will remember that he bought the club as a project and decide to hang around even longer.

That's been the case for ages, he's been victim of double or triple-teaming for the majority of his time here. Phwoar! Oh yeah.

That's been the case for ages, he's been victim of double or triple-teaming for the majority of his time here.

Picking Perch as CB could be considered match fixing, better be careful.

There's something in this, position does make you greedy and objectively it would look ridiculous to almost all fans of other teams to see people in here saying they're not happy but that's what being a fan of your own club is about: Inspecting and analysing everything minutely and I think the scrutiny is worthy and has been for a while. You're right about us being greedy for good football but this team can play so much better than it has, confidence will help us but so will positive tactics and Pardew telling his players to go out there and really go hard at the opposition rather than waiting for counters, moving the ball slowly up the field and hoping that we can ping in an ok cross. We have the speed, skill and ball-players to move it around, get in behind people and really hurt defences. Fair point, I do think there is potential for us to be better, mostly in terms of attacking intent and style of football. I can just see why Pardew was reluctant to move away from an approach that had gained him so many points. Don't forget that he has gone most of the season with HBA injured and Ba his only decent striker. During that time he managed to collect a very encouraging number of points by making us hard to beat. Hopefully now he has a fit HBA and Cisse he will try to develop the style of the team. But I wouldn't be surprised if it takes a bit of time and we don't actually see the change until next season fully. I do believe that Pardew and the staff would ideally like to play better football - all our signings suggest that.

A well thought-out post HawK and you obviously have a lot of experience following the club, but I can't agree with your assessment really. We have a squad that has some very good, some good and some terrible players. Pardew has managed that squad to a very respectable league position that was beyond most people's expectations at the start of the season. He took over from a popular manager at a 'crisis club' and he's steered a course through it all. Whether or not the default position of our players is higher or lower than the current league position depends on so many factors that it's almost impossible to argue either way. Everyone who finishes in any league position does so because someone underperforms or overperforms, or their rivals collect slightly more or less points than expected. One of the factors of success or failure is the manager. If we were 16th he would be getting panned, now we're 6th he deserves credit. It's only because we've achieved such a brilliant league position that we've suddenly raised our expectations about the style of football we want to see.

I agree our football hasn't been great at times, but Allardyce was on a whole other level of institutional shiteness. He wasn't just conservative, he actively hated the sport of football.

"The best form of defence is attack" is basically a meaningless cliche that doesn't have any weight in this argument. Our biggest strength this season has been our compactness, work rate and willingness to battle for points. I would personally love to see a better style of football, but surely everyone can see why Pardew is reluctant to suddenly chuck what has worked for him so far.

Nothing Pardew has served up is remotely comparable to Allardyce, I wanted to kill myself when he was in charge.

I usually quite like Pleat as a general panel show member, not so sure about his live analysis.

Good question.

More likely than ever he's going to get a chance. That probably still only makes it 60% likely mind. The light at the end of the tunnel is that Pardew's comments were almost like he was preparing the way for a bigger role for HBA. Maybe he's realised his mistake so far.

I think that's all very true but other than Williamson a lot of it is self-inflicted by Pardew. Certainly Taylor in midfield and the full back situation could be tinkered with. I know people will say it's too risky but I would have involved Shane Ferguson a lot more this season at left back and switched Santon to the right. We might be a bit more vulnerable defensively but going forwards we'd be a different team. Fair point, I just don't think it's realistic to expect Pardew to drop an established specialist fullback to bring in a youngster. I would do it, for sure, but I don't think many professional managers would. They're all pretty conservative about stuff like this. Simpson is poor, but he isn't so bad that he demands replacement at any cost. There are lots of things you could try, but it's clear that most of them aren't realistically going to happen right now.

They forced a Geordie orphan to do it for them, that's what I heard anyway. Monsters.

I think we've got a bit over excited because we've got some genuinely good players for the first time in ages. It doesn't necessarily follow that we have a top 5 or 6 team yet though. Certainly not that we should expect that as our rightful place.

Brilliant. What does the subtitle mean? "I've never been like the others"? I will never be like the others. Tenses were never my strong point! Might buy that and try to read it.

Brilliant. What does the subtitle mean? "I've never been like the others"?