Gallowgate Toon

Only just watched it on Football First, I thought we looked good. A bit dodgy after they scored for a bit but I don't think that's unnatural, momentum is funny in football and it's rare that teams dominate others from start to finish. We certainly need to build our confidence more. I thought the midfield 3 looked very fluid today, Sissoko was popping into the hole at times, Cabaye appeared there at others. We need that kind of unpredictability.

Some good comments from him after the game. Said he wants to keep the team 'looking' offensive and said we'll just have to accept that there might be games it runs away from us but it's important that we stick with it. Edit: NUFCTV interview.

Fair play for today, some bold moves. Massively disappointed in him for dropping Anita though, completely undeserved.

Two absolutely brilliant finishes. He's pure class.

Was he on the left, today?

Unbelievably knee-jerk, if true. Pardew must think it's an attitude issue within the side.

Not really a shock, we've seen he can be a very good player and he's only played a few games for us. Benzema, Giroud and Remy, quite a decent striker pool to pick from.

Think as Ron said, if we sit deep and stay compact you would hope they would struggle to break us down and providing Remy's fit, we do have the speed for an effective counter attack. I think they'll be very conscious of the fact that they won't have too many wins this season and will see us as a real chance of getting 3 points. I'd rather that than them sitting deep and watch us ponce about without any penetration. Ron's bang on. We should go there with the remit of being a proper counter-attacking side, draw them out and then hit them with our speed. Playing in that style is the best we've looked over the last couple of seasons, we've got a good side for it.

If it happens, it will be sickening. I still can't believe he actually swapped the whole set up around because of one bad previous game.

Feels like the pressure is really mounting up. All this talk of him making massive changes sound like a man who's run out of ideas and, as a consequence, patience. It is hard with the mystery in football, perhaps the players just aren't listening to him, hence why we get Jekyll/Hyde performances like Everton and Villa. Problem is, that's even worse than him being tactically crap.

I'm sure he'll have blamed the Hull loss on Remy and Ben Arfa as wide men, hence the shift for the Everton game. Completely forgetting the excellent performances they put in at Villa.

Isn't that just Ryder's opinion? Hatem will start on Saturday, I'm sure of it, I just have no idea what position he'll play. Praying Pardew sees sense in keeping the Villa front 3. I'm hoping the presence of Sissoko and Anita will make it impossible for him to go 4-4-2.

It's more than just individual mistakes, pretty much every time we've conceded this season, there have been errors by about 4 players. Even with Taylor back in, we can't let our centre backs become so exposed again, we don't have anyone good enough to play like that. Pardew needs to get back to basics with this defence and get them solid. Neville had it spot on, we should be looking to build ourselves into matches, start off as a compact unit and then grow into the game. I think that's how it needs to be for the next couple of months, then we can look at being more expansive from the off.

He drives like a maniac. Speeding about the pedestrian streets of Ponteland at 50 mph.

What's worrying me is where we go from here. I literally don't have the foggiest as to how he's going to set us up next. He's made a lot of noise this season about looking more offensive and finding a balance, from his sound bites, it seems he thinks that defensive mistakes are simply individual ones and having a more conservative set of attackers and midfielders is what will remedy the issue. There have been individual mistakes, don't get me wrong, but the situation has often been because of a series of errors by a number of players. He needs to change the style of the side a bit but keep the personnel that we saw against Villa, perhaps stick Taylor in for one of the centre halves. That front trio should never be messed with again (bar Gouffran for Cisse) but I'm not sure whether we'll see it for a while, I think the Hull game might have made him re-think their suitability.

As if Kinnear blocked Douglas, man

Confused. We're just not pulling in the same direction, at any level.

It might not be a coincidence that he's been bad since Debuchy came in. It may very well be that Pardew has tried to make us more expansive and failed miserably at it. Santon's never been the best positionally but he seems to get caught high up the pitch with some regularity.

Ben Arfa? A few games ago, I'd have agreed with you but I think Hatem's been off since then, I thought his attitude stunk against Hull. It's all well and good directing attacking play but I think he's been very poor at doing some basic defensive tasks of late. I'm worried he's been given so much responsibility that he's lost the teamwork ethic he seemed to learn in 2011/2012, he was really working in every game then.

Yeah. It was alarming to see it put like that, fantastic analysis though. The confusing thing is, I'm sure we weren't organised that way against Villa, we looked far more compact, disciplined and focused. Perhaps they were just crap, Pardew's tried to change it a bit or the players are tactically poor. The gap between our holding midfielders and defenders was crap as well, so much so that they couldn't compensate for us playing so far apart. Space galore for Everton's attackers.

I thought he looked alright but I think he's tailor-made for that left hand spot. It gives him that extra freedom to come in from out wide and he has more space to work with. He didn't look at all comfortable having to compete with 2 bigger lads for scrappy balls.

Remy's chance that he put over the bar was quite well worked IIRC. Point still remains, we only seem to have one way of looking threatening: Remy/Cisse/Ben Arfa. I really rate Gouffran, he should be playing through the middle but that's not going to happen under Pardew as he just doesn't consider him enough of a threat.

Neville's analysis off our defence last night was worrying. No leadership, no power and too far apart. I feel for the lad in some ways but you just can't do what he did last night. It was so strange after his recent performances, especially the shift he put in against Benteke. If we had another captain, I'd be dropping Colo, personally.

Me neither. It looked absolutely awful. I think the plan was to contain and counter but he tried to make tweaks and it ended up looking like a disjointed mess. He usually tries to compensate for our CBs' lack of height and strength by making Tiote or Sissoko stand in front of them when the opposition 'keeper kicks it long. That didn't happen yesterday, there seemed to be no protection for our centre halves and, to make it worse, they put in the most awful performances. What happened to the tactics and personnel from Villa? I know Cabaye was injured but he tinkered too much because of that.

Swap Cabaye and Sissoko around and that's what I'd go with.