ponsaelius

Yep, just a complete nonsense.

We're 6th out of 20 in the form table. I'd say that's par with our season rather than slowing down.

Er, not really when Pardew is competing with Wenger with a far weaker team and budget. Come on man.

Oh and btw you had a go at me for judging the quality of leagues on rough trends in European competition but you've just speculated (Germany>Italy) on a sample of one player's fortune when moving.

He just never played for Bayern in the last two seasons and never quite fitted in overall. Plenty of players have gone there and suffered the same fate. I'm surprised how well he's done there but shouldn't be really, his record speaks for itself.

According to RTG, anyone could have scored it. Also Ronaldo's back hell lucky as it 'could have went anywhere.' They then compared the 2 players to Maynor Figueroa because he scored from his own half against Stoke. http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100108063233/uncyclopedia/images/archive/b/b5/20100108063328!Exploding-head.gif

http://i.imgur.com/caOoz.jpg

Aye deffo. Sewelly knows his stuff like. Just seen this. Fucking twats.

Today.

Today.

Today.

Oh yeah, that's another thing. Parkers limitations stuck out like a sore thumb today.

Looked like his knees were finally getting the better of him today. Very sluggish.

Love how Sagna grabbed it and went straight back to the spot. Arsenal were really determinded from that moment onwards.

that means movement which appears to be frowned upon. re the other options but. obertan played a good few times for man utd on the left. Just done a post on the movement thing Didn't Obertan play wide left in a 4-3-3 when he was at Manure though? look at the way man utd play though, it's not a rigid formation like ours. get that player to join tiote and cabaye and we can go that way. i'd even be tempted to give ferguson a go there. Very true. People say that Man United are the only top club left that still plays 4-4-2. I don't really think they play a 4-4-2 in the slightest even when they're supposed to be lining up that way. They certainly don't play with two banks of 4 and two centre forwards anyway. I don't think we're ever going to go 4-3-3. Makes you wonder why the hell we ever looked at Gervinho.

Btw one of the best arguments for focusing on defensive solidity above all else was that it was getting us results earlier in the season. The fact that it is our primary focus and we have the 14th worst defence in the league is a bit , no?

that means movement which appears to be frowned upon. re the other options but. obertan played a good few times for man utd on the left. Just done a post on the movement thing Didn't Obertan play wide left in a 4-3-3 when he was at Manure though?

The lack of movement has been there all season and is arguably the biggest problem. It clearly stems from the rigid, methodical style of play we have where defensive solidity is the priority - less a tactical/formational thing (the same problem was there when we've played 4-2-3-1, 4-5-1 etc) and more so a coaching and mentality thing. Less time spent on defensive solidity and more time spent on encouraging progressive football would be the order of the day, unfortunately it's becoming more clear we won't even try it. I feel daft because I've always maintained that at some point things would click in this sense once we had a full XI but it's just looking less likely all the time. Kind of glad Marveaux got injured. He's another that would have been completely underutilised. Would have probably only ever been used as backup crossing machine for Jonas.

Another thing with having Jonas on one side on Ben Arfa on the other is they could easily swap wings during a match. This is not possible with one of the other options playing. I actually find it amazing we haven't played with both on either flank at any point this season. It seems such an obvious thing to try.

for all he played wide both the goals came from him getting the ball centrally. Well yeah, the idea if he plays wide is he can drift inside to cause havoc and has two strikers to link up with, occupy defenders and offer movement. Wide players in a 4-4-2 don't have to be crossing machines the way Pardew seems to think.

People need to have a look at the number of goals and assists we're getting from midfield and defence. It's laughable, we don't have a player in the top 30 assisters in the whole league. People arguing that Ben Arfa doesn't have a role to play in the system must be delighted with the system then? I'm not. It involves hoofing the ball to a striker completely unsuited to recieving them, central midfielders restricted from crossing the halfway line and who's only role is is workrate and distributing to our sole ball carrier, wingers who's primary role is seemingly to offer defensive support to the fullbacks. The only genuine flair we're getting from the side is when Jonas and Santon carry the ball forward in tandem or Ba does something brilliant individually. It's great that we've won so many points but this tactic will not get us top four and will not allow us to progress. You need more than that. There's nothing wrong with mixing in direct football and using the wings but I'd like to think we'd start utilising the middle of the pitch more. I'd like to think we could pass it out from defence (especially with two excellent ballplaying defenders as part of the back 4), play more triangles, more interplay, more midfielders getting forward to support the strikers, more overlapping runs, more general movement when we're in possession etc etc. There is plenty we could improve on. Look at the likes of Chelsea and Arsenal, both having poor seasons and looking stagnant but neither would resort to the one dimensional stuff we play far too often - they both dominate play. We don't play possession based football and we don't play counter-attacking on transitions. I'm honestly not quite sure what our style is apart from generic hoofing and getting it wide.

His best position from what we've seen is wide in a 4 man midfield, a position he's filled for 45 minutes this season and 1 game last season. He scored 2 of the best goals I've ever seen from an NUFC player in those two games and was comfortably the best player on the pitch in both too. He's spent the season having cameo roles and being shunted about the pitch in different positions, playing when a number of our best players are unavailable and having the system ludicrously changed to - for some reason - avoid playing him on the wing at all costs. Even despite all this he's contributed 3 goals and 3 assists in his time on the pitch.

No purpose? fuck me. If Ben Arfa's got 'no purpose' then what the hell does that make non-entities like Obertan and Ryan Taylor? The only reason he doesn't fit into the team is the manager's inability to encorporate him which is completely and utterly unforgiveable. The idea that a player of his talent has no purpose while frankly rubbish players paralyse our wings is ludicrous.

Eh? Gerrard said they have the best goalkeeper in the world so they were never worried. It's always like this with Liverpool fans "[insert Liverpool player name here] is the best [insert position here] in the world!" You don't have any best-in-the-world-players you fucking cunts. I've seen quite a few of them say Suarez is the best striker in the world.