Gallowgate Toon

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.

Which is where? He's been CM, RB and LB. He's a defensive midfielder, think Makelele.

We just need to play to our strengths and with the players we've got, it's not like there's a lack of options either. We could stick with this long ball stuff but for it to work we really need to push the midfield, or at least a central midfielder, up. Out strikers are useless at winning headers and aren't the best at linking play either, the ball is always coming straight back at us because we're so deep, particularly in the middle, the opposition almost always pick up the second ball. I think this style and set-up doesn't really play to our strengths but we could make it so much better than it currently is. Our other option, if we're looking to try and mix up our play is to get one of the strikers to drop deeper and become a link man. It doesn't happen enough right now, our front 2 are always massively isolated with an ocean of space between midfield and attack, there's nobody filling that attacking central void so there's no easy outlet. Our middle 2 need help defensively as well, we're often overrun and they're consequently bogged down which particularly affects Cabaye, as he's not the best athlete. The other option is to go 4-3-3, I think this suits us the most. It still allows us to mix it up offensively while retaining defensive solidity (if done right). We don't get overrun in the middle and have enough options and consequently enough of a central presence to keep possession and build varied attacks. At the minute we always go wide, there's no threat from the middle at all and that's hurting us. It's a shape that naturally suits the majority of our squad, it's a continental formation that our mainly continental squad know well, it's the obvious choice. I don't want to see us go completely the other way in terms of how we play btw, we've got the personnel to be able to mix it up but at the minute it's so negatively direct, it's useless, we need to start adding some variety to our game, teams are reading us with ease.

Same style, same formation, same type of result. 2-1 loss.

Watching how he started out the season, in terms of PR and general confidence, it's saddening to see what he's turned into. He looks knackered and some of his recent quotes have been what I'd expect Partridge to come out with. That 4-3-3 guff with Swansea was incredible.

I wonder how much the players believe in his tactics. It must be amazingly disturbing for some of our foreign players, to come from good footballing styles and coaches, to this.

He's an evidently good footballer who's not had a chance here. Not that he'd be effective right now, due to our horrendous style.