Gallowgate Toon

He (and Lowes too) never, ever has a go at Pardew. It's infuriating listening.

Only Anita and Marveaux can take any form of praise from that. Still can't believe the former was taken off after showing some good signs! I thought we started well, only for their advantage in the middle to take a hold of the game within 10 minutes. We looked more comfortable in the second half (which isn't saying much), again with a good spell at the start of the half, but the positioning was all over the place, probably because we were chasing the game.

Gutierrez has been useless again.

ATTACKING PRESSURE?!??!

Jonas plays terribly, stays on. Anita looks OK, gets subbed.

Sammy man, shouldn't be getting on ahead of Marveaux in this situation.

Ba has been abysmal.

A midfielder breaking forward!

Sammy man

Anita has somehow come here as a defensive midfielder and a stand-in full back, yet he's been played: Behind the strikers; as a central midfielder; a left back; a right back and even a right midfielder. I can only think of one time where we actually played in his position, Liverpool, and that was only after Perch went off injured.

After a decent 10 minutes, that just descended into another farce. So many things wrong again.

Cock piss Pardew.

If we try and go for it now, with this shape, we're going to get fucked.

It's just the same old mistakes, every week man. How can someone simply not get what's going on? We should be keeping hold of the ball today, we've got 2 defensive midfielders on the pitch!

Learn from your mistakes, you egotistical gimp.

Captain shit-tastic.

Literally Tiote and Anita against 4 in the middle there.

Ba again

Ba's such a thick player at times.

Demba's play is awful at times.

That's not the major problem, but I will agree that our players do seem to lack match fitness IMO. We don't have the fitness to play a high intensity game, or press for sustained periods. We look like the most asthmatic team in the league actually, so far tbh. I agree that our fitness looks poor but I was laughing more at the winning headers part, it shows how important it is to him.

At least he's given some reasons for not going 4-3-3, he simply doesn't trust the players available and will only use it as a last resort, which is a shame. He seems to really lack faith in our squad's ability to play well (attack) and win at the same time.

Winning headers and running faster

A manager having faith in his players

Would love to see a box-to-box man come in, not least for a bit of squad variety although I doubt he'd ever be allowed to break too often! If we're going to go 4-4-2 then I think it's Cabaye who should be sacrificed. He's an excellent footballer but just lacks the presence to really be consistently effective there. If it's 4-3-3 then Anita will do fine as a DM and it should be the box-to-box player alongside Cabaye, who should be the playmaking midfielder.