mrmojorisin75

aye, this is something we're awful at like and would serve us well in a lot of games, make the other team chase the ball...as it stands a lot of the time the oppo can more or less stand still and it'll end up back with them

Will replace Santon. this won't go down well but i'd start looking at santon as a winger or attacking forward next season, use 'sadio and jonas as LB's assuming jonas wasn't just fluking a couple of decent performances would save us having to gamble on another winger imo, plus he's got defensive responsibility ingrained in him from his time at FB and can also cover if necessary

I've got no desire to feel less or more superior than anyone else, so I'm not sure how you've gleamed that from my guff; I'm surprised that someone like yourself would have an issue with people being different from each other. It'd make for a very grey board if we were all sheep. I'd love for us to play exciting, attacking, vibrant football that wins us trophies and plaudits. However, I don't think it's going to happen anytime soon. If we're going to have a period of cutting our cloth accordingly, I don't see why we need to make a song and dance about it every time we don't play cutting edge football. Stu, care to expand on the bits in bold, such as why you think we can't play attacking, passing football with the players we have in the squad (regardless of injuries)? clearly i'm in the "pardew doesn't know how to coach it" camp but if it's something you yearn for, yet still retain some hope for pardew, you must think something else is holding us back again genuine question, not looking for a bite or anything

fair enough, by the way not everything is a dig at pardew you know? i just wondered rather than assumed pardew chose not to start him

how the fuck can marveaux not be fit to start a game man? are we talking match fitness here or does he have a slight injury or something?

not me, totally the right tactic as i said but seemingly the balance wasn't right in the first half at all as from what i understand if they could finish the tie should have been over before 70 mins arrived

are you deliberately stirring the pot? "Sorry officer, I didn't see the crime but I know he's done previous so he's probably guilty" We fashioned opportunities to get the second, someone else mentioned the poor decision making in the final third...would probably agree with that although it seems a little harsh on the players. Despite going out to a very good side, it seems as though there are people who genuinely expected them to roll over at SJP and that we could go gung-ho from the off (and keep them from scoring one, or more, for 90minutes). The plan to shorten the game to 20-30minutes and go gung-ho was the smart option and sadly we fell short of the target. Pleased that we made it back to the quarter-finals at our first attempt; would have been pretty tough to have gone out before Xmas. Sorry have not seen anyone advocate that we go "gung-ho from the off". That's just a misrepresentation. Instead I see quite a few saying that we should have adopted a more balanced approach of keeping our shape yet showing some attacking intent to the extent that we used more than just the 20-30 minutes at the end to get the two goals we needed. I'm not sure why this is such a hard concept to grasp and why so many is buying into that if we attack we will surely concede. We only conceded when we went all out in injury time, not when we became more offensive from the 70 minute mark. In fact if anything, once we started attacking, they were pinned back and was less of a threat to us compared to the first half when we sat back and invited pressure. yeah this is what i meant, from everything i read and hear about the first half he got the balance wrong but as stated i didn't see it

in that period when everyone except him was shit he was playing much higher and his pace, movement and forward passing were key not lost hope for him personally but like a few others needs to be deployed right or he's fucked

We did some things better than usual, I was quite impressed with some of our passing and attacking. We actually looked as if we'd done some work on both. before the introduction of ben arfa/marveaux? I thought we played the ball around well until Shola came on and then after the two you've mentioned came on. The better attacking was with Ben Arfa and Marveaux. that's good to know like, how much of it is down to the opposition do you think? (and you Stu) seems to me some of the best football we've played this season has been against teams who are more open and like to play, we struggle horrendously against teams set up to restrict us /statingtheobvious

We did some things better than usual, I was quite impressed with some of our passing and attacking. We actually looked as if we'd done some work on both. before the introduction of ben arfa/marveaux?

didn't see the match but it seems to be me as usual pardew had the idea right (don't over-commit too early or we might get picked off and be out before we know it) but got the execution wrong again, as he so often does

even those black & white stripes out you've more or less got my perfect strip right there

surely be nice if he got a decent run with colo at some point

i'd have him at the front of a midfield 3 myself, but he'd never get there before cabaye if both were fit

toon fan i work with said he'd be happy to get relegated if we won the waffa...wasn't sure what to say to that his argument was that he's seen us relegated but never see us win a major trophy in his life

Did you watch the game? Fulham are s**** and rely on Berbatov or Ruiz to pull something out of their arse. Fulham are a solid side, there squad has no where near the talent that ours does. Only Berbatov would make our starting 11. They play good football and Jol has them playing a compact counter attacking style. i was laughing because that's a condensed version of the alan pardew tactics masterplan just with different players

Did you watch the game? Fulham are shite and rely on Berbatov or Ruiz to pull something out of their arse.

It's tightrope though, they get an early goal and it's all over. kinda, if they score it only means we need to score one more than we do anyways so it wouldn't be the end of the world

late shola winner to put them in the bottom 3 man, fucking hell it'd probably break them

yep, in 2 fuckin years

you'd hope needing 2 goals means pardiola won't be able to be his usual cagey self too, pressure them from the off!!

cisse is the reason basically, if he gets the service he's gonna do these

i've a weird feeling we're going to beat these now, utterly illogical, just have a feeling

so, top 10 finish then?