Gallowgate Toon

We've made it hard for them, which is right considering we've pretty much played 4-6-0. Need to have some more 'fret'.

Going to be mint watching Shola lose every header to Terry and Cahill.

Liverpool-esque line up. Shockingly bad.

Big shame for the first goal, he may have perhaps still had that knock or was tired but it was the only downer in a really good performance from him. Hopefully, he learns from the experience. It was nice to see him charging out of defence in ET too, a bit of confidence.

He was releasing the ball a bit quicker and played a lovely pass to Cisse for that chance. Should have done better with a cross after skinning Zabaleta though, just needed to play it low.

Can't see him making Saturday, as much as I'd like him to. If Sissoko plays alongside Tiote then I won't be too upset though, I think it'll be quite an open game and our best chances will come on the break. As much as Tiote has improved of late, whenever we play weaker sides, he shouldn't be in the team over Vurn.

Gouffran will offer even less through the middle IMO. I know he's flavour of the month right now, and Cisse is the pantomime villain, but I haven't seen anything to suggest Gouff is going to be an effective CF. This is true but too many NUFC 'supporters' are blinded by their hatred of Cisse to admit it. I don't hate Cisse at all, in fact, I was defending him on here a couple of weeks back. I just think we need someone who's a bit more solid at playing football for now.

Gouffran will offer even less through the middle IMO. I know he's flavour of the month right now, and Cisse is the pantomime villain, but I haven't seen anything to suggest Gouff is going to be an effective CF. Good mover, solid player, surprisingly good at shielding the ball and quicker. He's just the better option, right now.

hes no likelier to score either More consistent footballer though.

The only way he's going to get back his confidence is if he has a run of games where he gets a lot of chances. We can't afford to play like that though, I also doubt we've got a coach who can get the system to generate said chances. Gouffran through the middle from now on.

Yep. Played relatively well considering the weak team we put out, absolutely no excuse to not go for that though.

We were decent until we got tired. Our fitness should be much, much better.

Thought their 'keeper did well for his chance but some of the other stuff he's done... He actually had a good 70 minutes or so, as well. What a shame, absolute shadow of the player he once was.

MYM's had such a good game too. Concentration has to be better.

Cracking ball from HBA for the Cisse chance. Want to see more of that ability from him.

Cabaye in his pink boxers and Anita getting a back rub Quality coverage.

Would actually help if we had a natural winger in our side who likes to get crosses in the box. Once again that's down to lack of transfer activity, i'm not saying Ben Arfa is incapable of putting a cross in the box, he was clearly going solo which was disappointing but at least he was giving it a good go unlike others on the pitch. If we don't learn quickly how to break a side down when they've got men back in numbers, the season isn't going to be pretty. We need to pick our front 3 and stick with it, chopping and changing game to game is not going to get us in any sort rhythm and no awareness for one another will be found. Then why suggest that tactic if we don't have the players to execute it? Because you would like to think if you tell Ben Arfa to get wide and whip a few crosses in, he would actually follow your instructions and give it a go. He's took matter into his own hands and done it his way. Sure he will have got a bollocking for it but it's just the type of player he is, he's capable of producing that moment of magic to win any game but nothing was paying off for him on Sunday, he couldn't even dribble a few yards without slipping and sliding, the ball is usually glued to his feet but it was like he never had it under control. Doesn't address what I said though does it? We dont have out and out wingers, sunderland were playing with 2 CB's who like to dominate aerially, but yeah lets whip crosses into to Cisse/Shola. Or is that all Ben Arfa's fault as well? I'm not blaming Ben Arfa at all, i thought he was one of a few players actually trying to win us the game. Just at times he picked up the ball centrally and had Santon out wide but was always delaying the pass by about 5 seconds, just wasn't quick enough, he had another off day but can't fault his effort. Was more p*ssed off with Remy the fact he didn't want to know, he's capable of coming deep for the ball but he wasn't interested. Genuinely don't know what any of that has to do with what I said? I said the tactic was a ridiculous to implement with the players we have. You said "Because you would like to think if you tell Ben Arfa to get wide and whip a few crosses in, he would actually follow your instructions and give it a go" We don't have the players for it, so why were we trying to do it? And not only that, it plays pretty much into their hands. Their CB's are slow as f***, should have been looking to exploit that. Screams sunday league "Get the ball into the box" They were too deep for us to really get behind them in the second. They barely got out of their half. We have massive issues when teams do that as we don't have enough skill and passing to play through numbers and our wide play is poor. But why would you give their CB's the exact type of ball they will be happiest dealing with. Cisse isn't great in the air, neither is Remy. It doesn't play to our strengths at all, we should have pressed them high up. Or played quick on the counter. We did neither Well, we could have perhaps made more effort to get to the byline and put low crosses in, or tried some early balls to catch them out. I'm only talking second half here, there wasn't much of an opportunity to counter, they were happy to protect that lead as a team in their position would. Pressing should have been much better. I'm not saying we should have gone exclusively to a wide game but varying it would have been a good idea. We're very predictable against teams sitting back.

Would actually help if we had a natural winger in our side who likes to get crosses in the box. Once again that's down to lack of transfer activity, i'm not saying Ben Arfa is incapable of putting a cross in the box, he was clearly going solo which was disappointing but at least he was giving it a good go unlike others on the pitch. If we don't learn quickly how to break a side down when they've got men back in numbers, the season isn't going to be pretty. We need to pick our front 3 and stick with it, chopping and changing game to game is not going to get us in any sort rhythm and no awareness for one another will be found. Then why suggest that tactic if we don't have the players to execute it? Because you would like to think if you tell Ben Arfa to get wide and whip a few crosses in, he would actually follow your instructions and give it a go. He's took matter into his own hands and done it his way. Sure he will have got a bollocking for it but it's just the type of player he is, he's capable of producing that moment of magic to win any game but nothing was paying off for him on Sunday, he couldn't even dribble a few yards without slipping and sliding, the ball is usually glued to his feet but it was like he never had it under control. Doesn't address what I said though does it? We dont have out and out wingers, sunderland were playing with 2 CB's who like to dominate aerially, but yeah lets whip crosses into to Cisse/Shola. Or is that all Ben Arfa's fault as well? I'm not blaming Ben Arfa at all, i thought he was one of a few players actually trying to win us the game. Just at times he picked up the ball centrally and had Santon out wide but was always delaying the pass by about 5 seconds, just wasn't quick enough, he had another off day but can't fault his effort. Was more p*ssed off with Remy the fact he didn't want to know, he's capable of coming deep for the ball but he wasn't interested. Genuinely don't know what any of that has to do with what I said? I said the tactic was a ridiculous to implement with the players we have. You said "Because you would like to think if you tell Ben Arfa to get wide and whip a few crosses in, he would actually follow your instructions and give it a go" We don't have the players for it, so why were we trying to do it? And not only that, it plays pretty much into their hands. Their CB's are slow as f***, should have been looking to exploit that. Screams sunday league "Get the ball into the box" They were too deep for us to really get behind them in the second. They barely got out of their half. We have massive issues when teams do that as we don't have enough skill and passing to play through numbers and our wide play is poor.

We did need to cross more and try to get some width to stretch them out. They were happy going compact and we weren't going to play through them. We just ended up trying long rangers instead. We don't have any brilliant crossers of a ball but out of HBA, Santon, Gouffran and Debuchy, I'm sure one of them could have stuck in a decent enough delivery.

Didn't he start behind the striker yesterday? Absolutely rubbish move considering it was Hatem ahead of him. His role should be a very simple one, stick him next to Tiote/Anita and play Cabaye ahead. Or, play him and Cabaye ahead of Tiote/Anita in a traditional 4-3-3. He's a pure box-to-box player, his passing shouldn't be expansive and his main role should be to help drive the team on with his running/dribbling, supporting attacks and helping out the defence. He looks low on confidence to me and it's not really a surprise considering how he's been shunted about this campaign.

Pardew's biggest achievement was finding a balance and making a real effective team player out of Ben Arfa, he's long since stopped managing him like that. It's been puzzling watching him try to fit the lad in so he has to do as little defensive work as possible, I don't understand why he hasn't gone back to how he used to handle him, he's proven he can do the work when he's motivated.

He was fantastic against Cardiff, that was his best performance for us, in my opinion.

That was the biggest issue, we didn't open them up at all. Too many daft shots, not enough movement etc. We are a counter-attacking team with our current set up but we have shown we can do a bit of damage in possession when the fool stumbles on to the right balance. Today, they largely sat back and our disjointed lot could do naff all about it.

Still don't get the rationale of starting with a false 9. They are an absolutely rubbish defence who are susceptible to pace. We shouldn't have set up to play in front of them, we should have had someone up top who was looking to get in behind them, pressuring and stretching them with pace and movement. The changes afterwards were dire. No idea why he felt the need to switch into a midfield 4, even worse than that, he kept HBA up front and put Gouffran out wide but then placed Hatem wide left for the start of the second half. Why not just play your striker as one of the strikers? The man seemingly loves to over-complicate such a simple game.

We could do with a couple more British players but it's the managerial side that are the far bigger problem.