mrmojorisin75

We didn't try hard enough then did we, and at this time it's cost the club potentially £7,500,000 in prize money. Also, the loss of not bringing in the two players we required will probably have a knock on effect and make it even more difficuilt to bring in the type of player that we want. It's easier to bring somebody into a team who have just finished 5th than it is to bring players into a 15th placed team. Yep. It might prove to have been a cock-up long term. It might mean we end up slackening our transfer policy and being a little bit more willing to push the boat out. What it doesn't mean is that the owner doesn't know what he's doing. At worst it was a cock-up and our policy needs to be tweaked. At best it's a sign that we actually have a policy, which is a relief after the Shepherd days and will serve us a lot better than his approach did in the long run. no, it means he's a gambler which we always knew...his gamble was to set his prices and not move on them based on the understanding that simpson and williamson (in particular) would have another decent season the gamble failed, badly

i don't think that's true, there's an acknowledgement on here that his lack of football understanding and overly rigid approach to transfer deals in the summer has cost us I don't have the stomach to go fishing for examples but I've picked up a definite vibe that he's somehow selling the club down the river. Clearly, he's trying to make the club successful. He's a very good reason for trying to do that. The rigidity of his transfer policy I'm prepared to back even if it will occasionally backfire and I think that's one of the major differences between me and most people on here. It might be that he has to relax things slightly in January in order to shore up the effect of it having arguably (but we can't say definitely yet) backfired in the summer, but I'd still back him if he went straight back to being very rigid and all about sustainability in the summer. I'd be in two minds if we narrowly missed out on similar targets again in January. I think it's worth stretching a little to prevent there being two consecutive dodgy transfer windows and you'd have thought to some extent Ashley would agree - if he misses out by £3m now on a player who might help him bag extra prize money and keep one or two of his other star players next year then he's dropped a bollock. It's a delicate balance I suppose. look, to take the 2 most obvious examples simpson and williamson: anyone with an ounce of football understanding should have known that we should have cashed in on them during the summer when their stock was as high as it was ever going to get...we all knew williamson could not maintain that level and simpson was a very limited fullback take 2 other obvious examples, debucy and douglas, as proposals to replace them...yes they'd have cost money and maybe we'd have had to break our initial valuation somewhat in both cases but let's say for example we paid 6-7m for debuchy and 5-6m for douglas then sold williamson for a combined sum of say 5-6m (not unrealistic imo)...if we'd done that we'd likely have had the defence set for the next 3-4 years and also likely not be in the middle of the fuckfest of a season we're currently in if we couldn't have a net spend for the summer of 7-8m after finishing 5th then something is clearly wrong unless the team doesn't need improving, ours did you say it's a delicate balance but fuck me this is basics man

i don't think that's true, there's an acknowledgement on here that his lack of football understanding and overly rigid approach to transfer deals in the summer has cost us

i've said similar to disco as well, easy to look good against open teams and score goals when the better team knows they can pelt them past you whenever they like everton will answer a lot of questions imo

you should be, you really should

who me? i didn't say anyone invented anything, in fact the opposite imo...HBA from the mackems game on more or less forced his hand to play the way we did at the end of last season..he made himself undroppable and built an understanding with cisse & ba...that in itself should have been built on by the manager it was not

for me it comes down to this in judgement of pardew's mangerial performance this season: we have arguably the best attacking line-up outside of the big boys, certainly on paper, with some fine technical footballers, a good mix of pace and skill through the midfield to two top quality CF's albeit ones that don't necessarily complement each other with all of that pardew has chosen to have the team play a cautious, direct game which for most of the season to date has nullified almost all of the strengths we do have in the squad there isn't a manager out there bar 3-4 who could say they're 100% happy with their squads therefore i'm not buying injuries and/or ashley didn't but whoever to excuse pardew...he's got it massively, massively wrong to this point in the season and that's all their is to it for me yes williamson is shit and so is simpson but a manager has to mitigate these things, the way you don't mitigate them is by playing a game that puts constant pressure on your defence and puts your attacking midfielders on the back foot every game...at least, as we've seen, if we go out and let the attackers play then we'll still concede but we'll be in with a chance of scoring and against weaker teams we'll be in with a strong chance of scoring more than them he's out of excuses for me now, but as dave said, he ain't going nowhere baby

so....?

the open style was forced on him due largely to injuries and his awful decision to approach the games against the shitter teams in such a cowardly way last chance saloon for alan cowardew for me, if he reverts back to the direct game at any time now he can fuck right off like, unfortunately if the club support him with a couple of defenders i think that's exactly what he'll do

seems to me change has been largely forced on pardew due to the injuries of cabaye, jonas & HBA, had they been fit throughout i don't think he'd have changed anything at all oddly similar to last season when we played some great stuff and ended the season well thinking "hopefully he's seen that good football is the way forward", then he does what he did at the start of this season test starts now, he had free passes vs. manyoo & arse but if we can't open everton up things are going to start looking grim again...i was initially convinced we'd be fine but as always happens teams down below will pick up results and we'll start to slide

you'd have to wonder how much more exposed williamson is going to be though if we signed a player who can support the attacks on the right in the same way santon does on the left....

i didn't say "when not in possession"

don't believe this for a second myself, if we signed debuchy and douglas on 1st january i don't think it'd change his approach one iota I don't see why not, mate. There's being cautious and there's pissing points away. i just think his primary gameplan and goal is always to keep the defence tight, so signing better defenders would lead him to revert to the plan of last season which was based on starting out to keep it tight for a 1-0 win and if we somehow managed to score more then great just my opinion, you never know, i've been frankly devastated by the way he's set the team out to play this season after the way we ended the last...it's like he went out of his way to undo all the good work that was done i'm not too sure debuchy is that much of a better defender than simpson, he is much better in possession though. edit, also the plan of 99% of teams is always to keep it tight when not in possession. debuchy would be very, very interesting in terms of seeing what pardew would do with him...we'd essentially have 2 santon's out there able to get up, support play and comfortable on the ball i'm intruged to see how he'd manage that in all honestly...and it's a genuine question raised elsewhere i think, should we be even considering debuchy (if we are) without a new CB? could be a recipe for utter disaster

don't believe this for a second myself, if we signed debuchy and douglas on 1st january i don't think it'd change his approach one iota I don't see why not, mate. There's being cautious and there's pissing points away. i just think his primary gameplan and goal is always to keep the defence tight, so signing better defenders would lead him to revert to the plan of last season which was based on starting out to keep it tight for a 1-0 win and if we somehow managed to score more then great just my opinion, you never know, i've been frankly devastated by the way he's set the team out to play this season after the way we ended the last...it's like he went out of his way to undo all the good work that was done

don't believe this for a second myself, if we signed debuchy and douglas on 1st january i don't think it'd change his approach one iota

on the why i like cisse thing; he just always seems to be happy to be there, and gives his all accordingly...same as any of us would feel it's a privilege to be pro footballer, let alone at a club like us, and he exudes respect for the position he's in at all times love him to bits

I can't see us ever smashing anyone again under Pardew, it's not in his nature to go for the jugular. I agree with you though, the real worry is the future of players like Cabaye, Cisse, Krul and Ben Arfa. said it in the other thread but what have you seen to suggest we'll be able to open up the likes of reading, southampton, stoke, sunderland etc. if they come up to SJP to defend and steal a point or a narrow win? personally nothing, looking better against better teams is pretty easy in all honesty as they leave space and let you play a la man city, they just end up scoring more than you looking at the table i think going down is very unlikely due to the utter shite below us, but i think it's going to be a real limp past the 40 points mark for us this year

and arsenal imo, "big" team but more takeable than manyoo for at least a point surely? agree though, once the opportunity to raise themselves (yet lose) against the big boys has passed it'll become clear where we really are...funnily it's probably easier to play better football against bigger teams 'cause that's what they're all about themselves, they're just better than us at it my worries is and remains teams coming to SJP and shutting the doors, seen nothing to suggest pardew has the first idea how to break them down and will revert to form

can you not, should you not, get charged for shit like that? i'd report the fucker personally

oh fuck aye, that thing where he said me, mike and dekka wanted some players then in the next sentence mentioned it wasn't carr's fault or something? aye my mate's talking shite then if that's the quote

mate of mine's piped up saying pardew has said ashley admitted fucking up in the summer window not signing anyone, there a link to those quotes anywhere?

same argument as "tired" players; messi and ronaldo aren't tired playing 70 or so games a season are they? nobody would be talking about europe if we'd swashbuckled our way through the games, or indeed any fucking games at all the entire season to date i'm entirely convinced everything about this season is coming down to our coaching and style of play with the obvious exception of injuries and the depth of squad in certain positions...we saw it last year, players didn't want to leave the pitch and would play through to stay in the team, this year they can hardly hide their distaste at being on it if you ask me

war in the camp? 1. we're not getting results 2. we're not playing football and everyone but pardew knows it fix either or both of those and the war bullshit will cease to exist

They are in that they're great rivals but Celtic's fight is very much in support of Irish republicanism, they're often in bother for singing IRA songs and you see way more Irish flags at a Celtic game than Scottish ones. I don't really understand it either. Nobody really gives that much of a toss about Scottish independence compared to the Irish/Catalans/Basques, it's just a platform for Alex Salmond to get his fucking mug in the papers if you ask me. It's because they were founded by irish immigrants. Glasgow had a huge influx of irish back then and still does. Look how close the ferry is from Stranraer to Belfast. Very narrow minded view you're putting forward about independence there Wullie. I think you'll find that plenty of scots give a toss about independence and Alex Salmond doesn't really matter one way or the other. seems to me salmond is selling some type of norwegian 1970's oilfield-fuelled utopia to the scots that simply won't happen 'cause most of the oil has already been drained by us massive case of be careful what you wish for to me, scots might not like it but to be completely independent of the UK would ruin you imo unless you could somehow ramp up tourism enough to fill the void