Pilko

That goal was the worst thing that could have happened, 2 in 2 Shola now 'back in contention'.

Vintage 2010 Tiote tackle.

Shola

Absolutely disgraceful from our club captain, like. Way to set a good example, you fucking imbecile. Good thing the vice captain is never one to leave his foot in, oh wait.

What's the point in sending off one player from each team in a fucking friendly man? Absolute cunt this ref, loving the limelight. Hope he gets cock rot.

What a cunt. Who got sent off?

This referee is one of those centre of attention bellends like, about five or six cards in 35 minutes of a fucking friendly.

Attention Marge Ameobi. We have also arrested your younger, thinner, shitter son.

You can't even call this a good physical workout either, it's been largely walking pace due to the incredibly whistle happy ref.

Sissoko is about as much a right winger as he is a fucking astronaut, Pardew is off his fucking box even considering starting him there like.

Our pre-season always seems to be a rag-tag team in some sort of blue away kit wandering around a foreign pitch whilst a supposedly 'lesser' side looks way ahead of us in almost every department - energy, fitness, talent, team chemistry, scoring goals etc. Oh and there's a 23 shirt cunting around at the top every year anarl. That's the worst fucking part.

Pre-season or not, regardless of the opposition: no fluency, little urgency, and the defending is haphazard if we're being generous. Not boding well so far like.

Absolutely piss poor defending there from Sissoko, Taylor, and finally Coloccini. Utter shite. EDIT: and Sammy so slow to react and get across to defend the far post also, garbage.

Hatem's touch has been absolutely lifting so far like, ball's bouncing off him everywhere.

Shola so offside there and ghosting out the way for Sissoko. I'd love to think that was on purpose.

Those problems with ball retention are still glaring as fuck like, and that's before we've reached ten minutes. Debuchy has done the 'Simmo Howk' about three or four times already.

Decent side apart from the fucking Ameobi cunts like. Good to see a progression featuring gradually more and more first-teamers this pre-season anyway, strikers excepted.

Attention Marge Bruce. We've also arrested your older, fatter son.

:lol: that's incredible.

:lol: or had a bag of Scampi Fries.

Score draw.

Bobby Gould or Dean Holdsworth next.

We need to find a balance of preparing to a) counteract the opposition and also b) emphasise our own strengths, that balance is somewhere in the middle of the two but they're not necessarily always at an equilibrium. Last season we pretty much always swung far too much towards a) and part b) was very much on the back burner. There's always a danger we could go too far the other way, but with Pardew in charge I somehow doubt that. I'm glad he's admitted it, anyway. It seems like the mega-cautious approach was his reaction to being beaten a lot, and a way of trying to grind out a few wins to provide that 'platform' to play a more expansive game (see Norwich 1-0 (h) from 2011/12, followed by the excellent WBA, Liverpool and Stoke performances), except this time we couldn't grind those wins out and we just got deeper and deeper into the rut. Hopefully he realises it's a lot to do with personnel too, i.e. the detrimental effect that 90 minutes of Gutierrez has on our team every week, regardless of how attacking/defensive the set-up might be.

The things he's said this pre-season hint towards him admitting that he played too safe and focused on the opposition's strengths more than our own. If he can actually go some way to implementing that then he might be able to start moving forwards.

I bet with a proper/decent target man such as Gomis playing the long ball style will look a lot better, whilst still daft and stupid, it'll at least be effective a bit.