Jayson

Valencias on another level this season. Best winger in the prem easily atm.

Didnt realise Tiote might be out, Guthrie in then. Hopeful Ben Arfa keeps it going

Well its not an assumption, as the manager id assume you take it on a game by game basis. If your strikers doing the business & your defense is weak, you create balance by covering your weakest link & leave the rest to your strikers. Noticably after Ba went off to ACON, we ended up placing more emphasis on a possession based attack v Fulham. Your 2nd line makes no sense. Stoke are 14th, we're 6th. They dont seem like similar models being achieved.

Hes a danny murphy style player though, you're not overly concerned but he has the potential to win games with his passing.

Itd be nicer to watch yeah, but it probably wouldnt have had much affect on the points we've picked up so far. Thats the point of the post. The current attacking system has been pretty efficient against anyone youd expect to pick up points against & our defence also. Plus to play possession based attacking football you've gotta allow your central mids to get more advanced. Ours are more based around covering our defence atm. You've more chance of scoring playing that way sure, but you need a decent defence to cover for it also. With Williamson/Simpson/Santon i dont think we have that atm. The better sides do & can allow for it.

Only ok with it if hes replaced by someone better obviously. As a squad player, hes been pretty great this season & all good teams need them. Especially with the likes of Tiote/Cabaye picking up yellows the way they play. Dont think itll be another Milner like but i expect he'll get into someones first team and do pretty well.

Only found out about this this morning, really really hope he gets better. Really nice lad on all accounts, just needs to hold on. Would he be able to play football again after this?

Got to use clever terms man, makes it look all official and that. FWIW based on how his systems worked so far, we should be looking to win 7 of our next 10 games. Thats if Ba's form continues & we dont concede any silly goals due to pens or whatever else. The everton game at the end of the season could be a big game for us. Dunno how HBA will affect things, but if the overall system is the same v Norwich today we should win by 2 or 3 goals today & concede 1 or less. Clearly going to go wrong now like

A lot of people want us to adapt how we're playing to a more attacking/less direct style & the point of this is to look at whether doing that would actually result in us getting more wins than we have had so far & against who. I want to try to understand whether Pardew simply prefers a defensive strategy, or whether hes doing it based on his idea of what makes us the most effective side possible. Main consideration: Ba Probably the #1 thing that has influenced our attacking strategy this season has been Ba & his goals. Potentially his ability has ended up influencing Pardews overall tactical approach to games. Lets look at our goals in games Ba has been available for since he started firing at Bburn, theres been 20 of them. Teams weve scored 2 or more against with Ba in the side: Blackburn, Wolves, Stoke, Everton, Norwich, West Brom, Bolton, Avilla, Wolves, Spurs, Man utd Teams we've scored 1 or less against with Ba in the side: Arsenal, Man city, Man utd, Chelsea, Spurs, Liverpool, Sunlun, Swansea, Wigan Analysis: Of those games, only Sunderland (missed pen) & Wigan are real failures for goals scored. The others contain the top 7 & Swansea who went ultra defensive in our game (Their least poss% all season). Ill look at whether we couldve expected more points from those games later, first the games we scored atleast 2 & the resulting points. The games 2 goals was enough to win: Blackburn, Wolves, Stoke, Everton, Bolton, Avilla, Man utd The games we scored 2 & drew: Spurs, wolves The games we scored 2 & lost: Norwich, West Brom (0/1 Fit Cb's) Analysis: Pretty much everytime we score twice with Ba in the side & we have a normal defence, we win the game. The only times we havent managed to do so were the draws against Spurs/Wolves via a penalty/deflected goal respectively. With fit Cb's, our defensive system has made 2 goals enough to win every single time when Ba plays bar individual error. Conclusion So putting that together. We near always do enough to score twice against anyone outside the top 7 with Ba playing & two goals has always been enough to win the game when our Cb's are fit (Bar pens/deflected goals). Looking at the 9 games we scored 1 or less we failed to pick up points in 5 of them: Arsenal, Man city, Chelsea, Spurs, Lpool. To have gotten just draws from those games, we'd have needed to score 2, 3, 3, 5, 3 respectively. Do people expect that? Realistically of those i only see Lpool as a pot game we couldve affected by trying to pass it more. The other 4 games we picked up 6 points from a win vs Wigan & draws vs Sunlun, Swansea, Man Utd So would a more attacking/possession based style of play have resulted in more points than Pardews system? Perhaps in recent games against Sunlun, Wolves & a big maybe to the Lpool game. Thats 3 games. Outside of those, his system has worked pretty perfectly in terms of us picking up points from the games we should expect to via conceding few goals in most games & our attack doing enough to win. I think its been well balanced.

People keep mentioning the idea that spending more time attacking results in less chance of conceding, but its obviously flawed. An opposition scoring 20% of 10 chances results in more goals than them scoring from 5% of 20 chances. If the likes of Williamson/Simpson/Santon arent covered by someone else we're more likely to concede from less anyway. The issue is whether attacking in a less direct manner so our mids get forward more would improve our attack more than it would weaken our defence. Ive no idea.

boring

Chance man

Man United & Tottenham, have two of the best wingers this season in Bale/Valencia. Both cover their Fb, Valencia specifically has played FB this season & bale obviously also in the past. Those teams dont go "nah itll invite pressure lets leave it" & they have far better FB's than Danny Simpson.

The right winger doesn't have to track back, otherc can cover, why should we be set up in such a rigid way? The general idea of good attacking football is to pull players out of position & exploit the spaces that leaves. You cant base a gameplan around doing it yourself man.

His performance vs England put me off us signing him a bit. I know he was coming back after injury, but he was backing off more than Simpson does. Im sure people have been on here in the past with more knowledge of him than me, saying defensively hes kinda average?

I think to Pardew Ben Arfa has just been weaker defensively/losing the ball in dodgy positions more than Obertan/Raylor. For him to balance that out, he has to offer something going fowards in every game & he didnt always do that. Qpr, Fulham he was very good, then when that earnt starts at Brighton/Blackburn afterwards he did very little. As people say, maybe more games would've got him back quicker. Pardew wasnt willing to make us more vunerable at the back to accomodate that. Both opinions make sense, one is just more defensively minded & less exciting. No idea whether it was the correct decision, i suspect myself he'd have created more than he'd cost us. Either way if this period of time has him working harder its only a good thing.

That Zonal marking vid does back up what some on here have said of Cabaye lately. Looks like he sits deeper to cover Tiote when Tiote goes out to pressure the ball & vice versa. Rather than one always being more advanced than the other, they both interchange. Guthrie basically doesnt bother covering when hes on, so if Cabaye/tiote push fowards aswell it leaves a gap infront of our defence. Prob makes us more attacking though.

Colocinni & Cabaye cleared up for interceptions & Colo for winning possession in the defensive 3rd in a diff article that was on here last week. He was well ahead of the others. It is an interesting read. We seem well drilled but losing Saylor was a huge loss, the guy was always blocking/clearing attacks somehow. Different level to Williamson as people say. Simpson/Perchs stats are suprisingly good actually. From that most of the goals actually seem to be conceded slightly to the right of the penalty spot on Colo's side oddly enough, suggesting he gets pulled out of position trying to cover others?

A Kuyt with Ben Arfas ability on the ball would be the perfect attacking midfielder really. He shouldnt be tired out by working a bit harder to get it, hes probably just expected to cover Simpson a bit more.

I know people make fun of Pards for going on about work rate, but surely getting him to put in more work than he was before is going to result in a better player. Simply because hes more likely to get on the ball. Its debatable whether it should be expected from a flair player, but its certainly only a positive if you get it happening.

He really is something. The ease with which he scored against Arsenal was just a joke really, made it look like it was nothin. Could easily make himself the highest scoring winger in the league next season with the ability he has.

Really wonder where you get this stuff. This season sides have had a very hard time scoring many goals against us specifically because of the work Pardew puts into us being stronger defensively. So far 4 out of 5 games this season if we score more than one goal in a game we'd win that match. Going forward its potentially more based on individual ability than it is any form of tactics towards fluid football sure, but claiming we have no strengths whatsoever & its purely down to the individuals on the pitch? Be serious man. A side that just thrashed spurs & destroyed Milan had to score in the 5th minute of stoppage time to beat us with Williamson/Perch/Simpson & a defensively dodgy santon & you think its down to the individuals. Aye what a well reasoned pov.

Worst post of the year, particularly 'no one has any idea what actually went on in terms of our play'. Congratulations, that's quite staggering. Blows my mind that people can watch football without actually watching it. You've ignored the following discussion on that then yeah, brilliant. As i said before, its not obvious what is specifically down to Pards instructions vs a players individual reaction to a series of events. Many also said we played hoofball in the 2nd half vs Arsenal, rewatch the 2nd half and tell me how many times our defence kicks it long. See if it blows your mind.

Interesting thread this, missed it before. Hes definately a reactive manager yeah. Result of that has probably been our defence overperforming & our attacking play suffering a bit. Ba was just sorting it on his own before so the balance was successful overall, much less so recently. As they say a mix of both is best. The emphasis for us is definately swayed towards being hard to beat mostly yeah. Hopefully that would even out a bit with better defenders, less need to be protected and better on the ball. Next season will be a much stronger indication of what we're capable of under Pards in the whole i imagine.

Getting in the way of shots is just defending, largely doing that results in you not conceding. So its unluckier for me when it happens in such a way that of all the directons/angles, it specifically loops the one place your keeper has no chance. I dont see that as a sign of a defensive system failing. Pens is more towards individual error again for me, times theyve hit the woodwork you have a point on yeah. If i include the deflected goal though. Its still only 5 games from 25 with 2 fit Cb's we've conceded more than once in a game - pens. His defensive system has given us a 4/5 chance of winning games if we can score more than once.