Gallowgate Toon

Still showing their utter ignorance regarding Gouffran's record then. Amazing, and they call it 'pure football'.

Epitomises their club. Thoroughly uninspriring player.

Having watched the game again, I'm less annoyed with him. I was frustrated with him straight after half time, but watching it back, he was doing well up until he took Perch off and went 4-4-2. That switch was daft, and while he quickly rectified it for a bit, he then went all out stupid with Shola as a centre back etc. He needs a better gameplan when we're under pressure. They had good physical players, so having height made sense, but we weren't set up to threaten them at all which could have been a massive help in pinning them back, more important than simply having some big lads there to help. In his defence, I think the new recruits were caught out in that second half and consequently tired very easily, and while we have strengthened, there still isn't much in the way of attacking options off the bench. Obertan would have been useful but he was strangely absent.

Christ.

Simpson and loans for us.

I rate Taylor but he's just not made for the Chelsea game, he lacks pace and agility. MYM should start as he's simply a better fit for the players we're going to come against.

I'd be happy with a point but they're vulnerable. I think we could grab a win, but it depends on how well AP sets us up.

Perfect game for Anita and MYM to come in to, Chelsea aren't a physical side and we need more agile players to combat their attacking threat. Formationally, I'd approach this the same way as Reading, using a single DM instead of 2 to pick up who ever they use at AM. Krul Debuchy MYM Colo Santon Anita Sissoko Cabaye Gouffran Cisse Obertan I think we can get a result here, 2-2.

It's not so much the beginning of the second half that scared me, it was his (slow) reaction to Lambert's changes. We needed Sissoko to drop back, we were effectively 4-4-1-1 against a team with a packed midfield, it was extremely risky and they were ripping through us at will. He tries to be too clever with the 'link' player, always using them to pressure full backs and centre backs, effectively taking away a layer of protection and giving us a 4 man midfield. He needs to be smarter and faster, he's been caught out by formational changes before, see Fulham for example.

Pardew said in his NUFCTV interview that MYM won't be used as a midfielder here, just today for height as they were bombarding the box. His words were 'he's a centre half or right back'.

I forgot all the Ba rubbish, amazing the amount of judgments made over little playing time.

He'll be far more effective when our other wide forward isn't a bit crap. I think we'll strike a nice balance with it really, Cisse and Gouffran will move around and keep defenders busy, while Hatem and co. pick them out. There's more to come from this one.

Indeed, like the wins we eked out over Norwich and QPR this year that sent us on big runs. I meant as in he seems to like grinding out a result after a hard run and then releases the shackles a bit. I don't think it's how he should go about stuff but that seems to be his usual style in these circumstances.

His acceleration was incredible. A brilliant piece of play.

Pardew says he sees Sissoko as the midfield and attack link man, I think I'd rather play Cabaye there and use Sissoko as a box-to-boxer to be honest. I didn't feel like Sissoko offered a lot of defensive protection tonight, perhaps he ran out of steam, or was told to play higher up, but we really need him to help out in that regard.

Says he feels like he now has a good enough team to go and attack Chelsea, whereas at other times this year he's felt there's been a lack of fire power to set out to attack. We'll see how he goes about it, he's got history with eking out a win to build momentum. See Norwich last year.

He played well as an attacking midfielder, but I think he and Cabaye should have swapped roles second half, we needed a little more energy in the middle. Ideally, I'd like to see in the long run: Anita Sissoko Cabaye

Yep, one of the main reasons we were so under the cosh, we needed him to fill in.

Shame we didn't get to see more of his attacking movement in the second, he has great instincts.

He'll be fine, he just needs to adjust his thinking a bit. Great first half.

This was similar to Fulham in a way but Villa didn't capitalise. He basically went 4-4-1-1 against a turbo crap team who naturally overload the midfield, the result? Us being all over the shop second half. We needed 3 in the middle to shore things up and get a foothold of the game but he dithered for 20 minutes or so and then we were just a mess. The guy's a gutless knob, I hate seeing someone so conservative in charge.

A slightly different formation makes him look a right mug, just like Fulham too. Doesn't help when he tweaks a formula that looked so good first half.

Is Jonas special?

How is he so clueless, they have the fucking midfield and attacking numbers you cunt, don't give take away men from that area.

Fucking get Jonas off.