mrmojorisin75

good point, i work with a lad who won't have the formation thing and just puts it down to the players "not doing it"...even if that was the case then as manager isn't it up to AP to affect some kind of change on proceedings? if he's coaching carpet football monday to friday then cabaye & co are going out and playing aimless floatball to ba 'cause they think it's mint he should drop the cunts with immediate effect and play someone who'll play his game that scenario is frankly ridiculous though, when you consider the quality of player funny thing though, trying to think of players who don't resort to floatball and can only come up with HBA, santon and jonas...strangley enough they're the ones in the team who have technical ability and the speed/skill to beat a man, shock!

thing is on the other bit of this post he's got the players he needs to change the style of play with no bother, i just don't think he's capable

what's perhaps bothering me most about pardew at the moment is the absolute lack of a gameplan, i think if we were playing a direct game that had some sort of purpose and direction about it i could maybe live with it but it's all so fucking random and aimless say what you want about allardyce but his teams usually know what they're going out to do, it's patently obvious from watching us that the players have no idea what they're supposed to be doing half the time could go into more detail but what's the point, everyone is watching the same shit, however i do wonder what pardew thinks is going to happen when he keeps throwing the same players out with the same formation at home and the same thing keeps happening every week, does he think it's going to change on it's own or something? we lose the midfield battle every week, cabaye is never going to thrive in a 4-4-2 as much as pardew might want it...also i've rarely seen us so static as a team, no-one gets beyond the ball ever therefore it's always up to the individual to do something to turn a game...it's the easiest thing in the world to defend against a rigid/static team, as we're seeing

wigan (a) last year was a good example people should look at, iirc we'd been raping teams with 4-3-3 for a few weeks and looking amazing but wigan lined up 3-5-2 and ripped us to pieces because they had the right players playing a system that suited them at about 3-0 down pards switched to 4-4-2 (iirc) or to a 5 midfield (?) to match them and we held them for a while but their suitability to their system was much better than our lack of one

agree, we don't have 4-4-2 players and shouldn't be playing it /end

all very, very accurate if you ask me pardew is blessed with some amazing talent at his disposal, you could argue we have some of the most talented players outside the usual suspects (chels, manyoo, arse, citeh & spurs) but i for one agree with the above 100% we need to focus on what's not being done with the players we have rather than what's not being done with players we never signed, imo not enough pardew is starting to look like a competent manager with some very desirable attributes, such as PR with the press and certainly his management of players but how long are we going to allow the excuse that he needs time to implement a better style of football? it's not like he's got the job of turning a team of cloggers into barcelona, he's just got to get the very gifted technical footballers we have playing the football they're used to and capable of by playing a system that allows them to thrive

You must have missed the first twenty minutes, when couldn't possess the ball more than fifteen seconds and defended corners like inefficient children. It is funny the two title contenders we've played have had their two "best performances of the season" against us. You have to feel it more Newcastle than the other side. personally think after going 2 up manyoo could have butchered us if they'd been arsed, they had another few gears left imo

"The stadium, named the Sports Direct Arena after Mr Ashley's sportswear retailer, will be renamed Wonga." just "Wonga"? WTF

Finally, someone sinks in with the cold hard truth. Agree with every line, in order for us to be organized in defense which we indeed look much better than the previous regimes, we lack fluid movement and un predictability, We dont have many players that could dribble and make spaces, thats why its so obvious Ben Arfa has being the one and only first team player creating most of our recent opportunities. In footy, you either keep passing into space to exploit the opposition weakest spot Or you have talented players with pace or skills to make space. Good teams apply both systems. but true, all of it

Ditto. he was our best player vs villa 'til hba let loose

Our home record under Pardew is fantastic. Only lost 5 in the league. no i know, but i was one of the ones saying last year if he didn't change it up teams would cotton on and we'd stop winning as many games at home, around the wolves/mackems/norwich games that became very apparent however HBA's performance against the mackems and the WBA away game turned the season for us imo and changed the way we played now we're back where we were based on limited evidence, pardew playing 4-4-2, the team not able to put any sort of coherent passing game together and a piece of individual brilliance getting us out of jail, that can't go on forever the following is obvious to me: cabaye needs to play higher up the pitch, hba needs to be on the ball more, ba & cisse need either coaching how to play together and stay out of each others way or one of them needs to be off the pitch the only person who can change any of that is pardew, that's all i'm saying we were fucking terrible against villa like, we never opened them up once really iirc, and teams who can defend better than them will come to SJP and shut up shop...it's not about overreacting to one performance but i hate not being able to objectively judge something i can see with my own eyes EDIT: and the lack of movement at times of sunday was horrible, i remember more than once with an opportunity to break we had 4 players moving up the pitch together almost in a bank of 4 with 2 strikers up top, when they got 20 yards or so away from the strikers they laid it off to one player and the other three just stopped and stood still waiting for something to happen so instead of villa having to defend against 6 players making runs they only needed to stop 2 strikers who were already marked and the guy who had the ball...it's basic football for me like

pardew needs to find a way to make things work in home games like, and i'd like to see him do it sooner rather than later i was watching with a lad yesterday who put the performance entirely down to the players and the long ball shit had to all be down to them too according to him...i just don't buy that - even assuming pardew sent them out with the remit to play carpet/possession football and they took it upon themselves to hoy it up the whole game it's his job to affect change to proceedings, he didn't do that yesterday it reminded me so much of norwich, wolves, mackems (first half) and so on from last year where we looked clueless and got away with it due to a piece of individual brilliance for me it boils down us having hba, cabaye, ba and cisse and we're simply not getting enough out of them in home games...he's got to find a way to make it work and personally i'd stop playing ba & cisse together immediately, it doesn't work and doesn't look it's it's going to work in a 4-4-2, they're both playing in the same areas, it's so fucking obvious

8th or 9th

agree, there's no pressure whatsoever now - the longer he's held back belting them in the reserves the expectation will grow and grow then when/if he doesn't perform right away the pressure would be on him be better getting him in the squad now, let him play with zero expectations and he may just thrive don't think pardew will do it personally though, i think he'll flog ba & cisse into the ground or play 1 up top

is it a new smiley? if so i predict much useage!

i'm more frustrated at the unwillingness to consider loan moves than i am with the lack of permanent transfers i understand the clubs approach in not wanting to pay over the odds or pay for players they don't want on the books as a panic reaction to not getting top targets but with the people we know have been shifted off the wage bill and only anita signed there has to be room for that money to be allocated to loan fees and wages for the season for a top quality loan or two i'd have taken park from arsenal, for example

that smiley

that's a fair comment that, can't believe i didn't look at it like that

I don't really disagree with much of that, except that I have a feeling we won't get such a flying start as we did last season, and there's going to be a bit of after the Lord Mayor's show this time round. I can't see fan's being happy with being overtaken by Liverpool and Everton this season because our vision is focused on getting the right players over the longer term. i think this season is going to be a struggle in a way, not a relegation struggle or owt daft but i think it'll take it's toll on our tiny squad and we''ll have less consistency and consecutive good results that helped us so much last year i also choose to look at our 'activity' in a positive sense too in that before pardew had the fallback of people like smith, loven and best who were capable but very limited (not best)....now he's basically gonna be forced to put the bairns like campbell in or run the first 11 into the ground rather than rely on older known quantities as we've done in the past it might not work out so great this season but it'll stand them and us in good stead down the line

agree with most of that johhny

i think it's become critical to our chances this season, to have another attacking fullback who is good on the ball to play opposite santon look at where the movement comes from in our team "generally" ba & cisse are always providing movement, granted hba provides movement but he's on the ball more often than not, or should be, but he also does have good off the ball movement santon you might argue jonas but he moves better with the ball than without it most of the time tiote & cabaye aren't the type to get beyond the play and open up teams with their movement, or certainly haven't shown much of that to date, anita we'll see an attacking RB would add so much and make us harder to defend against

for all the good he is on the ball might as well swap santon and simpson to try and have santon making runs off ben arfa then, if you want different types one thing i noticed a lot saturday was the amount of times santon made runs either with or slightly ahead of jonas and they invariably just ended as nothing with him stopping short of going beyond their fullback, not sure if he didn't have the confidence that jonas would pick the pass or what but it happened a lot, he just ended up stopping in his tracks

I know I can't often make this claim but so far this season he's our only player with an assist from open play and he was putting in crosses against Chelsea that nobody got on the end of, or at least nothing came from them. I'd have Debuchy in a heartbeat as I think he'll upgrade what we've got. I just don't think Simpson is as bad as made out, he can defend and has offered more this season going forward than normal, maybe he can learn and move his game on. imo at times he was putting in crosses when he shouldn't be, ba & cisse on their own with 5 chelsea players around them (or whatever) with the ball being launched from deep, NEVER from the byline of course...strikers are rarely ever gonna get goals from that type of cross this is my problem with simpson in a nutshell