alexf

Never thought he would leave anyway as Levy will slap a huge price tag on him.

The name of Sunderland training ground. I thought it might be oh dear

Academy of light?

Also seeing how many games Jonas has started makes me sad. He really has had a terrible season and it says alot that he almost had the most amount of starts. Cisse starting so many also shows how badly we need new strikers. You have to be able to freshen up your attack and manage your striker's form throughout the season so that when he has a bad patch (as Cisse did) you can rest him. We simply couldn't do that with having Shola as the back up and Pardew not having much faith in using Gouffran upfront until very recently.

Ben Arfa only started 16 league games in both the last two seasons. I know he just wasn't selected for half of last season but I hold out hope that any team interested in him will see his appearance record for us and think better of it.

just another question for pardew. "why did you crush the confidence of our young players early in the season when our senior players were performing just as poorly and therefore were far more responsible?"

I actually thought he was ok in the first half. Seemed to do his job far better than he has in most games.

Few nice dribbles in the first half and then after Arsenal's goals when he moved central and went on a couple of bursts I thought "ok here we go he's stepping up a gear now" But looked shattered after about 70mins onwards and seemed to just stop passing and then pretty much lost it constantly. Get yourself rested and healed up Hatem and comeback stronger than ever next season!

Looked like Andre Marriner was desperate for spurs not to win today and it took an individual Bale goal to do it going off the highlights.

I know he's not going but I really wish he was

That would be highly annoying but wouldn't surprise me.

haven't followed the thread but how does this make the players care any more about this game?

As if Shola gives a shit about playing every week. He physically can't anyway. He's under contract so unless he's sacked and paid off he's not going anywhere.

Been looking over old posts in previous Pardew threads. Anyone remember the "why won't Pardew play Ben Arfa on the wing(at all) ahead of Obertan" debate?

I accidentally clicked "absolutely not" by mistake which isn't true as I would like him back under the right circumstances. If he was cheap(wouldn't pay more than £10m), Other striker was brought in too (Aubameyang!!!!) and if he wasn't a guaranteed starter and was more of an alternative to Cisse. After writing this I realise that the opposite to those would happen. He would probably be our entire summer budget, so the only new signing. He would start ahead of Cisse every time and encourage us to HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOF

Arsejuice?

Happy Face man we came 5th last season! Our highest finish since what? 2005/06? Ofcourse he is going to have a high percentage of points won etc. Doesn't quite prove that he is up to the job now does it?

I think back to that Chelsea game where the french lads made their home debuts. Probably the best overall performance from us this season and we were even missing a few, Ben Arfa, Tiote, Maveaux(sub). Just goes to show we can put in a performance when we're up for it although a lot of it could be put down to Sissoko and Gouffran giving us a big breath of fresh air.

Hell of a risk you must admit though Ian? I agree completely when you said before that we will be better next season and I'm sure we will as we can't be much worse, plus no europe as he keeps banging on about. I'm just stuck with the idea that we are wasting a potentially gifted set of players with the wrong manager and eventually we will lose Ben Arfa, Cabaye etc before we have even seen them at their best in a free-flowing attacking team.

Scary how accurate the trend is in his career so far. Even last year I always had the nagging feeling we were doing well in spite of him but I gave him the benefit of the doubt with the run we ended the season on and expected us to continue playing in that way this season. Unfortunately it has followed the trend and he appears to have been "found out". Reminds me a bit of Roeder except Glenn had a far weaker squad to work with in my opinion and didn't talk anywhere near as much bullshit as Pardew does.

Really hope this thread doesn't return next season. As soon as I saw it appear this year it just seemed sort of inevitable that we would have a shit season.

Why doesn't it just go down to a head to head? like in spain where they use that even ahead of goal difference.

Does amaze me how easily people are fooled by the way media report stuff. Was speaking to a Villa fan last night and he was adamant Harry did great and it was all because of Mark Hughes that things went bad for QPR.

Great title edit

The only really relevant game left. Well apart from spurs but their game becomes irrelevant should Arsenal beat us.