themanupstairs

And for the record I don't think he'll turn us around.

The ONLY good thing about losing and being utter shit is the hope that a managerial change will bring a change in fortunes. It's so depressing now because we can't even look forward to that. If Pardew does get sacked it won't be until the end of the season, and he's certainly going nowhere even then, if we stay up.

I'll say this now, and I'm sure I'll be saying the same thing at FT. We play like amateurs. We rush everything we do. Ultimately this has been the reason we can't string 2 passes together. We play the ball on the touchline SO MUCH that we don't use the whole pitch, and put the receiving players under unnecessary pressure.

If we lose this, which we probably will, Pardew will have 3 consecutive losses to answer to.

We are pitiful to watch. I bet the Southampton fans can't believe there is a team above them as shit as ours. This isn't knee-jerk by any stretch, but Pardew clearly is out of his depth. Initially I thought of him as a motivator/organizer and not  much else. We look as motivated as I was going to Sunday school as a youth.

Pathetic from all 11 players out there. Tiote gives us a semblance of control in midfield, and I thought he and Anita had a good first few minutes. Apart from that we've been pathetic. Taylor and Krul have kept us in it.

Scraping the bottom of a barren barrel for positives here, and maybe with HBA out, they won't really have a target to mark out of the game. I'm probably talking bollocks, but it could make us a tad bit less predictable?

Never understood a "must win game" surely every game is a must win apart from vs the top 5?

fyp

And @neilashton_ reporting that Harry Redknapp is already in place and ready to go as QPR manager - and he knows his stuff.

RDM?

The way we play football reminds me of the way my 5-a-side team plays on Monday nights. For 90 minutes we play as if it's the last 5 minutes of the game and we're a goal down. No matter whether it's 0-0, 1-0 to us, or whatever. For 90 minutes we're aiming to get the ball forward at a blistering pace, desperate to score with every punt and every knock down. If the punt and subsequent knockdown works per chance, we're immediately out wide and the player in possession is running towards the by-line, only to lose the ball somehow.

We exercise no control over the ball or over the game. We're not patient in possession, and we hardly look up, hence rushing everything.

You can't play proper 11-a-side football this way in a Sunday league game nevermind the top flight of English football, or against decent European sides.

thoroughly unenjoyable evening out all together.

 

market stalls shut for the Christmas lights.

Northumbrian Gold went off in the Crows Nest

Got landed next to 3 p*ssed Scotsmen singing sectarian bullshit

The kids in the Strawberry corner sang cringeworthy bullshit all evening

Ben Arfa got injured

we thumped it long

Anita and Bigi constantly gave away possession

Cisse got injured

we thumped it long

it became apparent they would score as we did our usual thing of sitting back.

They scored

The bus home was rammed full of charvas

i know that feel bro

(cba to find the meme)

The players clearly don't train. and if they do, they probably train in silence, blindfolded, playing piggy in the middle for 2 hours before going for a jog around the block.

Thought Santon and Colo were our best players.

The rest

The main thing for me is that we don't move. So fucking static. We don't move to receive the ball for shit. Our midfield work is atrocious. Our players are forever chasing shadows. Utter utter rubbish.

We were abysmal.

In other news, Liverpool were pegged back by young boys.

We must have put in about 25 crosses, one of which was good. Utter utter rubbish.

I expected more from Fergie to tell the truth. Everyone knows he has a wicked left foot to put crosses in but

1) they were all s***

2) he did f*** all else!! you're a professional footballer for f***'s sake! how can you not pass, get involved in the overall play? all he did was turn onto his left foot and put in one s*** cross after another. became so predictable and the full back nullified him.

We really must not train during the week as there is zero evidence that we do. The team overall and the players look completely different to what we saw last season.

Ivanovic, Cole, McAuley and Routledge all not playing

6 out of 10 starting today, with Berbatov to come in tomorrow.

Fergie, Cisse start

amazeballs

The absolute best natural talent the world has ever seen. No doubt.

Needs to win a world cup though to surpass Maradona and Pele in terms of legendary status.

It's not about the 433 itself as a formation. It's about what gives our best attacking player, Ben Arfa, the best chance to hurt teams. I didn't mind him at all playing behind Ba for example as he did away to Man Utd last season. In fact I quite enjoyed watching him play more central, and I thought with a good run of games there he'd really flourish.

As things stand, HBA is shackled, badly, in his current role, and I applaud him for continuing to track back and cover his defensive duties despite his frustrations. It's easy for a footballer like him these days to shrivel up and hoy the toys out. It's what is expected of him of course, being a professional and all.

Something isn't going right somewhere, and I'm not sure Pardew can put his finger on it. The much famed "Team spirit" seems to have dissipated a bit compared to what we've seen in the last couple of seasons, and I believe it may have something to do with the transfer sagas of the summer (Agents, heads turned etc..) coupled with second season syndrome, injuries, suspensions, etc..

I hope this is just a phase, an exception, rather than the rule.

The only reason I thought we may have stumbled upon a very good manager in Pardew last season was the fact that he looked like he was learning from his mistakes, and tinkering slightly with line ups and formations until he found a way to get the best out of Ben Arfa and Cabaye in that 433. It lead to us cementing our place right up there, and got the results we needed to finish in the top 5.

This season he doesn't seem to be trying to remedy the obvious paralysis in our attacking play and ball retention. This is what has me worried. We're also conceding goals we weren't letting in last season. Fair enough we've had to make personnel changes right through the back 5, but even when we did that last season we only really paid for it at Norwich and Fulham (Spurs away was just one of them days).

He has got to stop us playing to contain the opposition and let the opposition worry about us, which in my mind gives us the psychological advantage going into a game when the opposition see Ba, Cisse and Ben Arfa lining up against them in a front 3. At the moment we are losing that battle before a ball has been kicked as the opposition manager and defence go into the game knowing that all they have to do is get to the long ball first.

Nickname for this play?

 

Yo-Willo, bro.

Will-Yo stop it ffs

Not seen it mentioned in this thread, and admittedly I've only skimmed through most of the last couple of pages, but Pardew said in his post-match that Cisse had come off at HT because of a back problem.

Going to this, very excited.

 

Have an abysmal record though. My luck/fate has to turn at some point though, right?

 

My record of never having seen us win in person continues. *sigh*

If that record spans over 5 games, you should never go see us again. ffs Beren

As a result of our transfer policy (as opposed to strategy), what you see is a team with some fine individuals, but no clear style of play or obvious tactical gameplan. Pardew strikes me as a 4-4-2 man with, in an ideal world, wingers hitting the by-line and peppering the penalty area with crosses and a natural finisher converting the chances. I have nothing against this style of play, Bobby Robson produced exciting and winning football this way, but Pardew has not been backed in the transfer market to assemble a team to play his way. Robson was, and we had a recognisable gameplan back then. Right now, I can't identify any gameplan, and the signings don't point to one either.

There aren't that many of these types of wingers out there anyway. I wouldn't swap the likes of Jarvis and Etherington for Ben Arfa/Sammy/Marveaux etc.. Our "wing" players have a multitude of skills and ability and shouldn't be shafted out to the wing at every possible opportunity. Use the wings by all means, when the opportunity presents itself, but f*** me if someone like Ben Arfa is going to be limited to tactics that make him so easy to mark out of a game....then we really are heading nowhere.

We should abandon the "width" in terms of structure, and use width during the game to change things up, as we have some players who can exploit it - to a certain extent. In the main though, we should almost always be going through the middle because of the type of players we have. I think Pardew's fear is losing the ball in the center which theoretically makes us more vulnerable to a counter, as opposed to losing the ball out wide.

We should be seeing more goals (chances) like Shola's against Brugge, Obertan's against Bordeaux, Ba's first against Reading, Cisse's first against Chelsea, Cisse's against Stoke etc.... Final balls coming down the throat of the opposition CB's. Enough setting up to whip crosses in, when we can't even muster 2 or 3 of those in a game to begin with.

f*** all to do with investment. Sure it would have been great to have made a few additions, but in no way does it excuse the pathetic displays we have seen this season.

Fuck me that was absolutely woeful. We can't be having that, I'm sorry. Have no problems losing to anyone, but have major problems losing in this manner. If WH were even slightly ambitious they could have had a hatful. Why bring on Ameobi to have no one in the box beside him to mop up the knock downs?

Taking off Cisse because he wasn't in the game? He wasn't in the game because of how shit our pattern of play is. Maybe Cisse needs to shake something off in his head to get back to form, but he's still got 3 goals this season, and I lay the full blame at the feet of Pardew for why this lad isn't performing.

Utterly miserable.