Interpolic

Deserved at least a point today on the balance of play.

Giving the match a miss tomorrow as I've struggled to find a ticket for a decent price, any good pubs to watch it in town? Struggling to think of anywhere non-shite.

They have Villa, Southampton, Stoke, Hull, West Brom, Palace, West Ham, Everton, Cardiff and Swansea to play at home, we have little to no evidence on which to base the idea that they can't beat these sides at their own ground and won't get a feeling for this until they've played a few more of these games. They didn't need to get out of the bottom 3 with an away win today, on 28th December, they need to make sure they're out of it in May and the fixtures could well be stacked in their favour. Anyway I'm out, people are just taking no notice.

An active January window did play its part for us . I don't think that they have the means to do the same without first selling some players It did but what I'm saying is that we lost 5 out of those 7 home fixtures (vs top 6 and a derby) that we're talking about, 3 of those defeats for us (from 4 fixtures) came after the January signings. I don't think you can declare Sunderland incapable of defeating average/poor opposition at home on the strength of 2 games against Fulham and Norwich. Another few draws or defeats in these games and I'll be more confident they'll go down.

They'll probably end up writing games like that off, it's the home games against average sides that will make or break their season. Teams near the bottom largely succeed or fail depending on their home form - the bottom 3 last year got 10 home wins between them and that's why they're in the league below now.

This 20 out of 21 teams thing is such a red herring like. Like I said the other day, if you'd flipped our home fixtures last year so that we played the top 6 plus the mackems at home before Christmas then we'd potentially have had as few as 8 points at the time the mackems had 10. They've got about as good a chance as anyone else down there now.

They're definitely not down yet like, it was never as simple as saying a team in their position had never stayed up. They need to start winning these "winnable" home games, until we've seen how that goes in January/February (and also their transfer business in Jan) we'll not know where they're likely to end up.

Jackanorry looks a tidy enough player like.

They got better as the game went on but to say it had been all them is a little misleading. If I was a manager who have a fixture coming up against them, for defending all I would tell my players to do would be to close down ASAP, don't give them the yard they need to get a shot off. There is so little overlapping runs, little movement elsewhere in the pitch that makes 'keeping it simple' all you need to do. It was all them for 20 minutes. This is really easy to understand, I'm running out of ways to rephrase. First 25 it was all Cardiff.

Put it whichever way you want, they almost scored 3, 4 or maybe even 5 times in 20 minutes while Cardiff did nowt.

They looked awful for the first 25 minutes or so tbf, been all them since then though. It hasn't been all them though, They have created one decent chance that hasn't came from a long range hit and hope shot. Nope, wrong. They've had all the pressure for 20 minutes and have forced multiple chances. They were useless before that as I say.

They looked awful for the first 25 minutes or so tbf, been all them since then though.

Poor Mike I'm moving the goalposts to Johansson being a great striker. AJ! AJ! AJ! Didn't America want bigger goals to increase drama when they hosted the World Cup? Would have done Diana Ross a big favour. Might as well keep the post going up so when you blaze the ball over you still get points. Then just to add some more excitement you should be able to pick the ball up, run with it, and if you go off the end of the pitch you get some points for that as well. Sounds like Rugby. Ya'll posting this shit like you're Spain. You won a home field WC. A fucking what?

OK, the mackems deserve to be back on level terms here.

Don't encourage them man. Fair enough, I retract my question. Diven't tell me who AJ is, cheers.

Who the fuck is AJ?!

I'm done with the argument, IP. I'm clocked out. You wished the mackems well for a while, the damage is done.

I often hear that view but think it's a bit harsh considering the lack of minutes he's had on the pitch. Most players had shockers last year, he must have had more of an effect on games than most per minute he was actually playing. God knows why he hasn't featured this season mind, it's clearly over for him here.

Why? The first sending off and even the second one were situations within Stoke's control to cause/prevent, which is not the case the other way around.

I think people are just saying that the entire balance of the game shifted, it was looking grim on 40 minutes then we got 4 breaks in 5 minutes (2 sendings off, a penalty and the Williamson hand ball call leading to a goal). We seized the opportunity really well but I'm not sure how that can be disputed, I'd say it about any other side in the same circumstances, i.e. something along the lines of "They were barely in the game then 5 minutes of madness and the whole context of the game changed". Some clogger being a dafty on the halfway line sparked all of that off, so we were quite fortunate that he was thick as 2 short planks to spark a revival. To reiterate though - we took advantage really well and delivered a really pleasing second half show. Could have scored 8 or 9 in the end.

We weren't unlucky against Southampton like, draw was a fair result.

Our lot did that booing thing every time the opposition got the ball versus Portsmouth/Boro in the relegation season, never heard them so intent on influencing a result as those games.

Man, that's just an incredible post. We were obvs going gung-ho and I just can't see it because I don't really like Pardew's hair or accent very much.