Lotus

Would be a shame if we lose Marveaux just as he's starting to show something but end up keeping Obertan.

I couldn't agree less if i'm honest.

It does make sense squad wise. We don't do 'squad'.

Think we'll line up the same as against City.

Just can't see us going for this bloke unless Ba goes. Doesn't make economic sense otherwise.

Think the other thing is that Cisse likes the ball passed into dangerous positions where as Ba can just hunt for mistakes by the defenders. For the type of football we play, if we're honest, Cisse isn't really the striker you'd want.

Is he saying that when HBA's been on the pitch the oppo's LB has felt totally safe to wander up the line ?

Aren't they Pards quotes in relation to the HBA interview?

HBA cutting with Santon providing an option would be awesome. Santon plays RB for Italian U21s so it's hardly like he's unfamiliar. He makes good runs with the ball from LB but can't deliver. He needn't make good runs with the ball at RB, he could pass and move into a good crossing postion, you know, a bit of teamwork, would make us very potent from that side.

If Pardew feels he needs a Carroll type then i'd rather he tried for Llorente (whom i believe is out of contract in the summer).

Why not? Dude, every time a bit of reality seeps into your frontal optimist lobe it clearly releases a chemical that completely erases your memory so that your fineanddandy cortex can carry on expecting everything to turn out better than expected regardless of precedent. I'm massively envious tbh. I was on really heavy tranqs for a while (due to an RTA) and i'm not sure i reached your level of 'at one with everything' even then! Anyway, we won't play like that because Pards wasn't scared of losing to city, he half expected it. He'll be turtling at the thought of getting done by QPR though so he'll approach the game very differently. We clearly have enough to win this game but don't be under any doubt, we're bad enough to lose it too. Righto, I just wanted you to explain your point. f*** off with all the s**** in the first paragraph though. Well, at least now i know my tranqs were better.

Why not? Dude, every time a bit of reality seeps into your frontal optimist lobe it clearly releases a chemical that completely erases your memory so that your fineanddandy cortex can carry on expecting everything to turn out better than expected regardless of precedent. I'm massively envious tbh. I was on really heavy tranqs for a while (due to an RTA) and i'm not sure i reached your level of 'at one with everything' even then! Anyway, we won't play like that because Pards wasn't scared of losing to city, he half expected it. He'll be turtling at the thought of getting done by QPR though so he'll approach the game very differently. We clearly have enough to win this game but don't be under any doubt, we're bad enough to lose it too.

A player of that calibre will insist on a relegation release clause. Bit of a risk for the club.

We won't play the same way we did against city.

I agree. Let's not count Wigan though. Against 10 men who are a goal down for 80 mins isn't a good indicator. I do think we'll play more direct against Man City. Possibly with Shola on from the start.

Tbf Wullie, the body language of the players on Monday night after we drew level was that they thought they were going to go on and win the game. You could sense their hunger for that (imo). It's just that we actually don't really carry any attacking threat and we're easy to catch on the break, so we lost (not helped by crucial mistakes from Simpson, Tiote and Coloccini).

Many of them clearly aren't playing for him - that much is obvious. Is it? Which players? It's probably easy to confuse 'not playing for the manager' with 'under-performing'. Plenty are doing the latter. Other than that it's speculation. I'm not sure it's that easy to confuse. I don't think there's been too much evidence of a lack of application, but there are obviously a fair few underperforming. I think when you get 6 or 7 of your top players seriously underperforming at the same time it can make people wonder. Fwiw, i don't get the impression he's lost the dressing room. Still, when you have that many players well below par it gets easy to jump to conclusions.

Many of them clearly aren't playing for him - that much is obvious. Is it? Which players? It's probably easy to confuse 'not playing for the manager' with 'under-performing'. Plenty are doing the latter. Other than that it's speculation.

Pardew is a manger that likes 'characters' though so expect to see plenty more of him this season. Should have been subbed off for Marveaux after 45 mins.

He really tried, he deserves credit for that. Shame about his crossing but he never once hid, always offered himself as an outlet down the right. Made a mistake which lead to a goal which was a shame. My chief memory of him last night though was putting about 10 crosses in.

The truth though is that he's used to an early ball rather than someone dallying about wondering what to do before releasing it

Another thing that struck me last night was that Fulham had a couple of moves that they repeated nearly all game whereby they could get the ball from their own half upto and around our box in a couple of passes. Just a few key offensive strategies that they'd clearly worked on that they could use to turn us around and relieve the pressure and also see if they could create a problem or two for us (which they managed tbh). Now, you all know what i'm going to say next....... It was brutally apparent that when we moved forward it wasn't in a well rehearsed manner. I understand the ideaology of not over coaching good, natural attacking players because their instincts will probably get the results you need anyway and you may just stifle them (i truly think this is Pardew's thoughts on it, remember what he said about HBA 'i leave the attacking stuff up to him, it's when we don't have the ball i want him to do it my way'. However, it's clear Pardew's 'hands off' approach to attacking has been taken too far because we really do look disjointed and somewhat incoherent. We lack any real flow or rhythm to the way we go forward. When our players are under a bit of pressure they need to look around for a team mate instead of just knowing where one is. When we attack they all look like they'v only just met ALL THE TIME. He's got to address this or he's going to lose his job.

To be fair to Simpson, even the good ones he put in led to nothing due to our abysmal movement. It's a bit more than that imo. We never hit a cross at full sprint. We never cross the ball, either in the air or along the deck (between the goalie and the penalty spot) with our players moving forward at pace. If we did we'd have the oppo defenders facing their goal, trying to track our runs and we'd be creating some indecsion in their backline. That's exactly the situation in which players like Cisse will thrive. Instead we stop or slow down, our forwards have to check and their defenders get to turn and face us and then just pick our crosses off.

not even sure he does considering the way he's going on with Jonas/Marveaux situation. It's clear to everyone (except Pardew apparently) that he's been f***ing abysmal all season. Our defensive weakness is why Jonas is getting the nod, Marv is a talent but a light weight who looks scared he will shatter under a tackle. Jonas may be lacking in the attacking sense but work ethic and tracking back is still 100%. Last thing we need is to weaken our 3 man midfield with Marv, especially away from home. Think this is the only reason he starts. Pardew's first judgement on a player is what can that player do for the team when we don't have the ball. It is an important element, especially for us as we don't often have the lion's share of the possession. The crux of our problem is that Pardew still uses the same criteria when chasing a game. That habit will be his undoing imo.

We had the ball in midfield more, that was good, but we rarely penetrated and our crossing was poor. Conversely, they got through us quite a few times and were a little unlucky not to score more. If the game would've been a draw, Pardew would have been delighted and Jol would've been disappointed. Our substitutions actually had a touch of ther Souness about them. I understand Pardew a bit more now.