Gallowgate Toon

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.

But the signs were creeping through that the tactics weren't working last year too, until 'that' run. He was getting criticism around February time for consecutive poor performances and results. I think we got something like 17 points from 17 games?

Find that very far fetched personally. I find the idea that Pardew would specifically instruct the players to always just lump it forward to be significantly less probable. And yet Krul very rarely attempts to play it short, one of our coaches is quoted is saying 'we kicked it longer' after the defeat on the weekend and our own manager describes our style as 'fast, front-foot football', which is just code for get it into a dangerous area as quickly as possible. There are worse footballers and teams that play better than us, so blaming it on one or two individuals is simply unfair. The lack of movement is also to do with coaching and poor tactics. Some of our players (each one of our starting front 6) have previously played for sides with great movement, yet they're suddenly statues here? It doesn't add up.

To be fair to him, he was played as an attacking midfielder and he's simply not ready for that lack of space yet. You can tell he's out of his comfort zone at the minute, I'm very confident that he'll be fine in time but this is an important period for him. He needs to play games in a set position, which I hope will be as a DM.

They'll never learn, not that he was ever the right man for the job but he deserved a little more time at least.

Outside of 6 months of insane form there's nothing to suggest that tbh. He is playing under a team that suits him now as well and he's still struggling. Think what he was going through under Hughton before we sold him was just a purple patch tbh. He'll get some goals but he does bring other valuable assets too, he's decent in my book.

Decent striker, nothing more. Really didn't want him in the summer but with the way we've been playing so far, we'd be doing a bit better if he was here.

I'm pretty sure he'll be here in January or next summer. He'd be a lot more effective in the current set-up than Cabaye, he's not as good a footballer but much more of an athlete, which is really what we need in the middle with the way we play.

I saw the front 6 like this: Tiote Ben Arfa Anita Ferguson Ba Sammy It was akin to a diamond, no chance it was 4-3-3 though. Bottom line was, we still hoofed it and had very little central presence. That first half wasn't bad considering our recent showings but it still wasn't particularly good either.

They are some unbelievable quotes.

Get away man, he's one of our senior players and the vice captain. He'll be straight back in. I know he'll be straight back in but he simply shouldn't be, he's been poor all year.

He should not come back into the side unless it's as part of a midfield 3, he's had a crap season.

Theoretically we could still pull the long ball game off, if we actually moved the midfield up a little bit. No centre forward wins every single header (I know we rarely win any), what's really important is to have people following up to pick up the second balls but our central midfielders are always so deep, we always end up surrendering possession. Ironically, Pards played Anita at the tip of a diamond for much of the first half and a bit in the second on the weekend, that's not his position at all and you could tell he wasn't confident enough to collect the ball in such a congested area. However I think Cabaye (or even HBA or Marveaux) could actually do some damage there but he's always played used as defensive cover and I think there lies the key to our problems, the complete mis-use of our main central midfielder. I'm not at all condoning playing long ball as it really doesn't suit our players but if we're going to do it, we might as well do it properly.

Good result for them. Don't think it'll do much for their season though, they've got glaringly obvious problems.

May force Pards to move towards a 3 man midfield, if true. I don't think he believes the replacements can consistently stand in for him in a 2. I'd fancy Marv or even Amalfitano to do a good job as the furthest forward midfielder but wouldn't be surprised to see Jonas simply take over and we continue with the same shape.

Did he shite not play 4-4-2 in the first half, where the hell does HBA fit into the formation you've just said? Defensive mid? It was an attempt at a diamond but we still had 2 strikers. It was OK but once again glaringly obvious that we really missed a presence in midfield, they were very comfortable.

Amazing to actually see a midfielder breaking forward with that Lallana shot before, I hope we take note.

His answers to questions about tactics are the most worrying thing for me, he seems genuinely clueless.

It was both a pointless and pathetic change, the worst aspect being we brought on a defensive minded player despite being a goal down. I'd like to see Marv get more of a look in next week but it'll be Jonas straight back in for the next league match, with the same shit as always.

Worrying quote about Jonas too, seems like if he'd have been fit he'd have waltzed back in, despite having a thoroughly shit season so far.

I thought he looked useful.

Woeful match followed up with some even worse post-match quotes. We were once again done in the middle of the park and for long stretches of the first half appeared to be playing 4-1-3-2? Why on earth Anita is playing pretty much as an attacking mid is beyond me and having Sammy as a striker I bet the rationale for that was because he's simply tall. It's becoming comically bad and Pardew seems remarkably defiant, borderline rebellious in his persistence with a simply failing system. We don't have the players, yet they're just shoehorned into something. He's trying to simply just do what we did for large periods last year but we just don't have the same balance and to some extent, luck. This time we have better players and he seemingly does not know how to get them working together and seems petrified of going away from his beliefs. He just doesn't appear to be the right manager for our strategy as he can't adapt to the players, they have to adapt to him which is a recipe for disaster.

I think he's starting to lose it. His post-match comments are just cowardly nonsense and his insistence on always having 2 strikers on the pitch is a detriment to the team, once again today we had very little presence in the centre of the pitch. The formation was just weird in the first half and using Sammy as a striker was just stupid. We don't have the players to make a 2 man midfield work Pards.

I thought he was OK, especially considering he was played as an attacking midfielder for the majority of the game. He'll be a very good player for us, as long as he's primarily played as a DM but I can't see that happening in the foreseeable future, unfortunately.