Mattoon

I'm listening in to this one, come on BG fill your boots!

The FA Cup is just another piece of our proud history being taken away from us by the cunts in charge. I feel like the clubs turned into an empty, soulless shell, just another corporation piece with nothing but balance sheets at its heart. The day Ashley and his cronies fuck off and die can't come quick enough!

If he starts with HBA on the left and Shola up front I'm not fucking watching!

Definitely lost confidence in this one now, would like to see us have a real go at it though. Hope we get to see how the Remy, HBA, Cisse dynamic plays out, not a Pardew setup though unfortunately.

Voted must win as being knocked out of the cup would mean a depressing run up to the end of the season just watching it unfold with nothing to look forward to other than a mediocre mid-table finish.

Yep, we were right, that was a sack of shit! "We kept West Brom very quiet..." Fuck off Pardew, why would it be about us keeping THEM quiet, like that's some kind of little victory?!? They've been quiet for over a month ffs!

Pardew = Troll

I think it's fair to blame the players for some of the performance, Shola was shocking (again) Debuchy had a rush of blood and HBA made some bad decisions. BUT the same people that accuse people of being negative towards Pardew are the ones that fault the players for a bad game and praise Pardew for a good one. Glass houses! As soon as I saw the starting line up I blamed Pardew, the writing was on the wall, yes it's an away game but to play a defensive 4-4-2 against this lot was rediculous. No disrespect to Brom but we should have been taking the game to them. I agree we have players who must be feeling it by now but there's no rotation there, Pardew's won a few games on the bounce and is shit scared to change anything, irrespective of what effect it might have on the tired players or team performance. This was the perfect game to start Ben Arfa ON THE RIGHT, these out if position sub performances are doing no one any favours. I have him his praise when he was getting it right, this time Pardew, you were a fucking tool, admit it, change it and win us some matches or fuck off.

The top 6 was there for us to make a claim, we've fallen right off the pace now and there's only one person to blame. Gave the guy his plaudits when he deserved them, he deserves a slating for today, negative from the start. Shola needs to stay away from the team, it's beyond a joke.

I just voted no

If people are thinking we could lose this then the expectation dampening must be in full swing. A draw away to most sides is acceptable, a win here is more than doable, a loss is unacceptable. There's no such thing as an easy game in the premiership.... Yadda yadda. We're 8th on merit, they're 15th for the same reason and on nearly half our points, there's a gap in quality and we SHOULD be winning this.

But it's very uncouth to be yobbish whilst one is watching the Gooners play squire

Voted 7th, this season is a write off for spuds, can't see Sherwood leading them on a march to glory, Southampton have vertigo and are tumbling back down, we should be aiming to take on Everton and a poor Man U for 6th but think we may come up short.

I don't think people are witnessing two different matches here, though it seems that way, I'd tend to agree with both sides. I think we played well defensively, we contained and made one of the best teams in the league this year look toothless and devoid of ideas. A draw on the basis of that would have been a fair result, but also probably the best we could hope for. Pardew only has two modes, defend or attack, there's no balance there and that was evident today, I don't agree we were also contained, it was more of an unadventurous side that were slow to move forward with the ball and content with keeping shape with or without the ball. That left us being predictable and slow and we'd have never broken Arsenal down that way. In an attacking sense we were non-existent today and for that I have to agree with HTT we were poor. Until we can strike a good balance and know when and how to attack in numbers(which requires risk, not a Pardew forte) we'll never play a good all round game in matches like this. Had we got the point or nicked a lucky goal we could never really have argued with the tactics, on the basis of losing the game toothlessly people are bound to be frustrated with the lack of ambition.

Remy for me was the issue too, I only saw the first half and spats of the second as I was supposed to be working But every time we got the ball he was too deep and on a couple of occasions I noticed Sissoko with the ball as the last man forward and rather than make a run, Remy was dropping back to make himself available but it was just slowing the attack down. I thought we were good for the draw as we made them take shots from distance, we defended well for the most part and stayed tight and kept discipline. The goal was a sucker punch.

....and I concur, if we don't wear the "Brazil" kit we've missed a trick!

Must win game if we have any aspirations for a top 6 finish, we should be putting team like this to bed away from home. I've said it a lot recently but think we need to be playing HBA from the start, we have players that are feeling the pinch from the extra games. That said, I think it will be a nervy 1 goal win for us.

And why can't we be pissed up at 13:30? What is the world coming to???

Arsenal will pack the midfield, if we don't go 5 in midfield they'll pull us apart. Classic Pardew, soak and counter, just hope he pulls it off again tomorrow.

I think this one has draw written all over it, but then Pardew doesn't do draws! It shows how much we've progressed this year that I would actually be disappointed if we lost and feel rather confident about this.

Someone beat me to it, if Pardew is looking to rest a jaded Remy I'd imagine him to start with the Big Sho up top and HBA playing off him. Not ideal but I think Shola will play a part in this unfortunately.

Am I the only one who appreciates the irony of the post about us being obsessed and always being on their forum, however the poster particularly points out us and TT and happens to know we have one thread and how big that thread is?

Full strength, full tilt, we should be getting a cricket score at home to these, hope we break our duck and then they can fuck off into obscurity!

That's taking it to the extreme, he's no Bale but he's certainly our most talented player, along side Remy. To think otherwise is tantamount to going full retard.

In no universe should Hatem Ben Arfa be warming any bench in the Prem, he's an absolute talent and it's just highlighting Pardew's shortcomings as a manager that he can't integrate a player of his standard into the team. I'm sick of this brain washing the idea that he doesn't work hard enough in defence, did Sir Bobby worry about that with Robert or KK with Ginola? Yes there is an element of defending and tracking back, all flair players need to learn a modicum of defensive duties in the Premiership but it shouldn't be their main purpose. HBA has come a long way since he first came here as a raw talent, he has worked on his game, that much is obvious. We became too reliant on his moments of magic and the team has benefited from his absence in the short term but he needs to come back into the fold. He's the one genuine player that can carve into teams and cut defences open. We need him to open teams up like Palace.