mrmojorisin75

Not sure this is true, Ben Arfa makes decisions incredibly quickly and while running at an amazing speed. Yesterday's goal and 2 assists are enough justification that Hatem is actually more intelligent on the ball than Ayoze. Loved Hatem's work for Nice's 4th. Just waited and waited until that pass was on, then played it in an instant whilst everyone else was sleeping. The only time Hatem came close to playing in a functioning system that attacked well with movement and pace he was very good in it. Pardew burned it all down and the rest is history...

then you're not paying attention

why is he insisting on getting shit like this wrong all the fucking time?

We tried to keep it tight for the first 20 minutes of the second half and could easily have ended up regretting it yep - if he's any sense now he'll just try and outscore the poorer teams in the division and try to use sissoko and mitrovic to counter against the better teams

not sure i'd go that far, mcclaren has pulled a pardew under pressure and shat himself to play the 'safer' options who supposedly work harder....assuming he manages to relieve the pressure on himself a bit i think he'll try and bring the likes of thauvin, aarons and de jong into it more but that might not be soon unless people started getting injured or suspended he's got to start giving thauvin a chance against teams like norwich when it comes up mind

both him and wijnaldum's first touch invariably take them away from whoever is marking them and often leave them beat...an invaluable skill really anita is pretty good at that too tbf, he seems to know which way to take the ball so as not to get caught out - contrast that with the time tiote got caught on the ball

let me try again - i'm saying it doesn't appear to be a targetted tactic that we're employing with any degree of focus or repetition, to get people out wide coming from deep and whipping crosses in to be attacked - in direct contrast to how good norwich were at it during the first half for example it happened during the game, yes, but we're not very good at it is what i'm getting at

We did put balls in the box, just turns out someone else was on the end of them. that's not what i mean really, i'm bemoaning the fact that we didn't have anyone putting crosses in like olsen or redmond coming from deep, proper old fashioned crosses that are there to be attacked when we've got the perfect player to attack them just seems a really fucking weird way to go about things

pardew's sleeper agent of doom

this is a major issue, yesterday in some respects we were playing a 4-2-4 or 4-2-2-2 or whatever...the long and the short of it being that we had 4 players tasked with attacking and the two CM's responsible to cover along with the defence the CM's we have are incapable of doing this and our defence as a unit is pretty shit so it's just a hot mess all over looks like we're going to have to try and outscore weaker teams every time we meet them from now on

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/competitions/premier-league/11939006/Newcastle-United-6-2-Norwich-City-report-Georginio-Wijnaldum-bags-four-to-ease-pressure-on-Steve-McClaren.html "You will have probably have heard by now, but Sissoko wants to play for a club in the Champions League. The problem is, he has given more interviews informing people of that desire than performances to persuade anyone he is actually good enough to do so." sums it up for me really

lets be honest with ourselves here, since he signed how many times per season does sissoko put in a performance anywhere near as good as that? i'd say you'd be being generous if it was more than 3 games a season where he dominates and influences a game, the rest of the time he's making a lot of poor decisions on the ball and not creating a lot we play enough shite teams across a season that he should be putting in 10-15 very good performances but he simply doesn't/hasn't done it consistently enough i think it's worth pointing out in his favour he's been shunted around and played in fucking pardew/carver teams mind so if they've found him a defined role he likes with the right players in support then we might just see what he's actually capable of i really hope so

just realised the entire team didn't collapse of exhaustion after 60 minutes for a fucking change that helped

On occasion he looks like he could do with a good kick up the backside. But on performances even before today, Thauvin, Obertan or anyone else don't deserve to be in front of him. He's consistently our biggest attacking threat from midfield in terms of creativity. If anyone in midfield squad was going to get 3 assists today, it would be Sissoko. He got a grand total of 2 assists last season. It's not something he normally contributes. this is what i came in to say, probably repeat actually, that he needs to reproduce it next week, and then the week after for a few games in a row then everyone will ease up on the criticism of him couldn't give a fuck about him not tracking back either when he's in form as good as that going forward, same applied to HBA as it rightly should he needs to show some hunger for me and go and play a dominant performance against the mackems instead of what he usually does after a good game and disappear for a few months

Well Sissoko and Wijnaldum were playing pretty narrow and he looks capable of playing the same role as Perez to me.

Three goals up her should have come on for Perez. Cisse contributed nothing but shitness as usual. We might not get many opportunities to integrate players into games and integrating this lad is surely very important to us. Another poor McClaren choice if I'm honest

What are you on about? He left a foot in yesterday tbf

On the width thing it's worth pointing out that we have potentially one of the best strikers at heading the ball and attacking things in the division yet yesterday didn't put a cross in the box he could attack properly nor really ever looked like doing do. EDIT: suppose it contrasted sharply to the quality and consistency of the crosses Norwich were putting in first half. Mitrovic would have got about 6 from their crosses.

It's not like he plays like that every game. I think most people know he's got all of the attributes to dominate but has rarely done so. It's never been about him being 'shit' or whatever.

Sounds a bit like a right sided shuttler.

He definitely looked narrower than usual, but I'm not sure if it was an intentional thing or not. It might just have been because our midfield is non-existent. It brought him naturally more central when he drove with the ball and he seemed to thrive from being in those areas. As you say the CM situation is bleak so perhaps Sissoko and Wijnaldum have been told to exploit that space.

Was it me or was Sissoko positioned slightly differently today? Looked like he was taking up a role between CM and the wing but actually neither and he exploited the area very well with Wijnaldum doing the same on the other side. Wonder if it was intentional by McClaren to bring him narrower to influence the play a bit more?

He's got a quality attitude in terms of work rate etc. Really hoping he fucking terrorises the mackems next week.

Turned out to be a good result today and some good individual performances but we are an absolute mess, honestly can't remember a worse CM situation at the club, there's just nothing there. Half decent teams will wipe the floor with that fucking mess in the middle and at the back.