Gallowgate Toon

Marveaux is the closest thing we've had to Solano since he left, excellent technical footballer.

Reina

If Perch is available I'd rather play him at right back and put Anita in a midfield 3.

I love Jonas but apart from a select few games a year, he should never be played as a winger. If Pards continues with this 4-4-2 lark then Jonas has to go and Marveaux needs to come in, we need some natural width and good delivery.

Two of the games he's excelled for us- Man Utd h and away at Villa he was in a midfield two with Cheik. I get that it's not a system he is used to or prefers but it's only an excuse that goes so far. He's literally had 2 good games there out of about 30, of course he'll put the odd good performance as he's a good footballer but he's overrun in a midfield 2 and consequently shrinks into the background more often than not.

He's not going to influence games as part of a midfield 2 for us, it's not his game and we won't see the benefits until he's played where he's most effective.

Interesting to see we went 4-3-1-2 for the majority of today, don't think it was really the right game to try it though as it suited a narrow Villa who were OK to sit back after they went up. It was a decent idea and it was nice to see something different but we should simply have 4-3-3 as plan A and use others to pull us out of the shit. Hopefully AP's starting to realise that it just doesn't suit the players.

Anita's a good footballer, much like Cabaye, playing him central in a 4-4-2 is a waste of time. Looked a useful full back, actually knew how to bomb forward and put in the odd decent ball.

I get the feeling that he doesn't really know how to play the side at the minute. One thing's clear, if wants to use that starting 11, 4-4-2 really isn't the way to go.

Saw him wandering around the Metro Centre on his own the other day, he was looking a bit miserable

Fair play to him really, don't like him but respect him trying to do something different.

In a heartbeat, much rather him than Carroll if we were only to get 1 more in.

Paves the way for his inevitable return

He'd be fantastic on the left side of a 4-3-3.

We lack balance in a 4-4-2 and ultimately rely on individual brilliance to pull us through, it's not sustainable. With a 3 man midfield we keep our defensive strength and are far more cohesive in attack, with multiple threats to the opposition. We're a team of technical footballers, 4-3-3 encourages their natural game. Tiote Anita/Jonas Cabaye Ben Arfa Ba Cisse This suits everyone in the majority, in my opinion.

He was brilliant on the ball but it's noticeable watching on that video that when he was picking it up from deep, there was no movement ahed of him and he so rarely got it in an attacking position himself. Great how sharp he looks though, hopefully we fully utilise him.

All things considered it's not a bad result and was always going to be a tough ask, we did make things harder for ourselves starting out 4-4-2 (in my opinion) and I hope the penny drops that 4-3-3 is the system we need to progress with, it suits so many of our players that it can't be ignored. No shame tonight however, we gave it our best shot.

So Anita should have been tracking Hazard on the edge of the the box while a CB was already marking him? That would have left us with a bit of a numerical disadvantage. Whatever way you try to gloss it, Hazard scoring a penalty has no relation at all with Anita keeping him fairly quiet in open play for large parts of the game, this isn't particularly difficult to comprehend.

One assist, one goal in one half An assist being a simple pass and the goal being a penalty? He's had the odd moment in the half but he's hardly shredded us to pieces like some are suggesting. If its a simple pass then surely he should have it covered, and it was a pen he gave away. He was canny s*** in that spell, but im not going to lose sight in that its his debut, against a good side with unknown attacking quality and he had 90mins in mad heat 48 hours ago. I don't think anyone is assigning him to the scrap heap after one game, but you can only comment on what you've seen. There's nothing wrong with tbh Why should he be covering the pass when Hazard was with the 2 centre backs on the edge of the box? Also being 'kept quiet' refers to open play not penalties, a spot kick that Hazard didn't win I might add. He nicked it off him a good 4 or 5 times and tracked him endlessly, to put it simply he did the majority of his role well and wasn't disastrous at all.

Get in Hatem.

One assist, one goal in one half An assist being a simple pass and the goal being a penalty? He's had the odd moment in the half but he's hardly shredded us to pieces like some are suggesting.

He's been fine apart from the penalty, harsh lesson but he's also tracked Hazard well and kept him relatively quiet. He's a good player and it's not been a mess of a debut.

After the Spurs result last week, we really should have started with 4-3-3 here, why would you want to give a team with so many good players on the ball the extra man to dictate? They're not the same team as last season, they've got far more movement and pace upfront before anyone brings that match up.

Anita's had Hazard, shame about the penalty.

Looks like Larsson will move into the middle with Cattermole, Johnson right with McClean left, Sessegnon central and Fletcher upfront. It doesn't offer a lot of protection for what isn't a great set of defenders, they relied on 2 banks of 4 to keep games tight last year.