The Prophet

Relegation or not if Sunderland stick with Poyet he'll do a canny job for them.

I'm obviously delighted but that's a 'papering over the cracks' result if I've ever seen it. We were excellent first half and while it was inevitable Spurs would improve in the second we did ourselves no favours with our second half tactics. We sat too deep, kicked it long and became sloppy in possession, Krul kept us in the game. Great result but nothing has changed.

Having only scraped enough points together to avoid relegation by the skin of our arse cheeks this coward’s position should have been made untenable months ago, but alas here we sit, the likelihood of his decaying stint in charge coming to an end looking slim at best. I call him a coward because it’s the most appropriate to sum him his up as a manager. Hiding behind his smug public persona lays a man who hasn't the faintest idea how to go about maximising the talent at his disposal. We have a squad of players devoid of any confidence punching well below its weight, so much so another season flirting with relegation seems inevitable. Worrying about the opposition threat has become the norm, players expressing themselves and imposing themselves on matches has taken a back seat with emphasis on ‘shutting up shop’ when a positive result becomes attainable. Moving the club in a positive direction looks as desperate off the field as it does on it. A loathsome hierarchy who has no interest in moving the club in an ambitious forward direction isn't going to bin a man who is meeting their expectations. We all know the owner and his board are the real crux of the matter and why would they sack a coach they can walk all over, who keeps our heads barely above water while eroding the hope and expectation of the fans? He’s the perfect employee to have around while they continue to grind out a profit, only a threat to Ashley’s financial gain in the form of a genuine threat of relegation will see Pardew’s future in jeopardy. There’s no doubt we still have pulling power as a club but surely any self-respecting manager worth his salt is going to think twice about working under the current ownership? A fair point for but how long can this keep Pardew safe in the minds of sections of the fan base before they turn on him and his tedious approach to the game? Being scared of the alternative is not a reason to tolerate or even worse support the present debacle when in all truth it would not take a particularly ground-breaking appointment to improve the performance of the current players. The fact is Pardew has been found wanting time and time again and with the current state of play he’s going nowhere any time soon. The board are happy to accept our indefensible performances under his reign and it seems too many of our fan base are too. Until this changes we’re stuck with this clown and the dross his side produce on a far too regular basis.

'I felt we gave a good account of ourselves it was never going to be easy against a side like Man City, especially before Halloween. Some of the lads are a little frightened and we tried to reduce the impact of that as much as possible. However it's fair to say a few of them are unerved and that had a part to play.'

The game was there for the taking. It's as if the players were told at half time not to go for broke in case they got hit by that pesky sucker punch. Obvioisly sitting back and waiting for the inevitable was the way to go.

Supporting this club has become so predictable, tedious and frankly joyless over the last couple of years, you could have actually written a script for tonights game. It was textbook. Ah well at least the horrible bastards running the show will be happy, afterall it's not like the ultimate aim of football is to win silverware, I'm off to furiously masterbate over the small profit we'll grind out following our trophyless bottom half finish.

I'll go with RB/CB.

Provisional in.

Showed a different side to his game today, very good.

I want to give him man of the match but ultimately he's at fault for the penalty incident.

I love a bit of Ricky Lambert like. Benedikt Howdes, Ilkay Gundogan and Stefan Kiessling are a few of my Bundesliga favourites.

A farce, a debacle, a fiasco, an omnishambles.

Why terrible?

No one will disagree with that though.... thing is you need to come back to reality. What will happen is he will play upfront with Cisse in a 4-4-2 with no width and it will fail massively. No one would be against Bent if it was just merely to add depth to the squad but it won't happen like that. This is my fear as well, Cisse and Bent are players that play in the same position......it's obvious that they shouldn't play in the same team. I agree with the comment that he'll be a good backup to Cisse, but that's about it. To be honest, if we are looking for a backup (or even a replacement) for Cisse, why don't we go for someone like Defoe (not sure if he's available, but he's not exactly been in favour at Spurs over the last few years)...all similar players but he's by far the most consistent! How do you arrive at that conclusion?

A decent back up to Cisse. You'd think he was Heskey by some of the comments I've heard over the last couple of weeks.

http://ts4.mm.bing.net/th?id=H.4869497531795339&pid=1.7

Having moved away from the North East at the turn of the year I've been somewhat removed from the emotional rollercoaster of last season. However the decision to appoint this laughing stock, this absolute joke of a man has embarrassed and enraged me in equal measure. It's times like these I wish I had no emotional attachment to the club, that I could just jack in being a supporter. Instead I'll helplessly stand by and watch this imbecile rip apart everything good we've built since our promotion. Mike Ashley has made some foolish decisions in his time but this right up amongst his worst and most puzzling for that matter. As much as I want to chuckle at 'Kebab' and 'Amemobi' I can only blush, words genuinely fail me. Having Pardew ramble on about fatigue and referees as he guides us to mediocrity seems like a dream today, instead I'll bury my head in the sand while this fucking idiot with his delusions of grandeur and his prehistoric idea of the game drives away any lingering positivity we held for next season.

Martinez is fucking brilliant. Absolute gent too.

Small time b******. Surely the opposite of small time?

I'm a big Martinez fan, he's brilliant.

He was bad, Taylor was worse.

Ok. Enlighten me why you think that? I don't want to ridicule your post so I want honest reasons to why. Because there's no way we watched the same game. We started the game the right way, we nearly got in behind a couple of times with Gouffran and Cisse. Mignolet came to their rescue. As the half went on they grew in confidence, began to hassle us on the ball we needed a rocket at half time. Again we came out and put the pressure on and should have been level. As the half went on we were blowing steam and were duly picked off. The biggest error was shoe-horning Jonas into left back.

There are a lot of things to dislike about Pardew's management style but I thought he didn't get too much wrong today, we were the better side for decent periods in the match.

Awful result, we've played worse this season and won mind. We started brightly enough and looked as if we'd get in behind early on. They grew in confidence as the half went on making up for a lack of quality with desire and application culminating in them scoring and finishing the half on top albeit a bit of a flurry shortly after the goal. Second half we tried to raise the tempo but we lacked the cutting edge before wrongly being denied by the linesmans flag. We tired as the half went on and eventually got picked off. All three goals while good finishes were awful defending, we backed off inviting the shot everytime. Jonas and Taylor were woeful, Yanga-Mbiwa not much better. I'm unsure what those who thought they were the better side were watching. We forced Mignolet into some cracking stops and wrongly had a goal chalked off. It was a fairly even affair. Fair play to them for the desire they showed.