Interpolic

Spot-on. Every transfer window he was in the paper saying we need to spend some money and every time he was ignored. Reached his limit in that Liverpool game when he was the best player on the pitch despite conceding 5 goals.

GW13: Aston Villa 2-1 Sunderland Cardiff 1-3 Arsenal Everton 2-1 Stoke Norwich 1-1 Crystal Palace West Ham 1-0 Fulham Newcastle 2-2 West Brom Tottenham 1-2 Man Utd Hull 1-3 Liverpool Chelsea 2-1 Southampton Man City 4-0 Swansea

We can ask tomorrow whether discussion of the merits of Comic Sans is allowed.

Don't think most people like it m8.

Ahhh. Still.

I wasn't sure I'd ever side with Happy Face, then N-O's answer appeared to be GIFs and Little Britain clips. Reconsidering my position.

That's the question today. Yep, one or the other.

You must be policing it better then.

Would cost a fair bit of money because he isn't out of contract soon. :lol:

Man.

Alright, alright. Fine. The hell with all of you. I'm just defending the shield. You saw him in the summer, IP. I saw him score a couple of nice goals in an international friendly, but look at yourself - you're defending a goalless mackem striker's form for the mackems. Take a step back and see what your wild patriotism is making you do.

Not this again, Mike.

His all-round game was fine (albeit nothing special) when he first joined us and seemed to get better and better the more goals he scored. I think that's the issue here, that he's one of the biggest examples of a confidence player we've ever seen at the club - he's either scoring belters or his whole game turns to absolute shit with no decent hold-up play, misplaced passes and multiple offsides. If he turns around his goalscoring form then you'd hope his all-round play would also improve, but it really should be the other way around for a striker in bad form trying to turn things around, i.e. playing the right way and seeing the goals follow. I can't help feeling like he's finished at NUFC tbh, aside from a few important goals he's been poor for the best part of 18 months.

I'd say that deliberately posing no attacking threat for long periods of a game, game after game, and therefore relying on a lack of incisiveness from the opposition (Chelsea, Norwich) or incredible profilgacy from the opposition and a world-class goalkeeping performance (Spurs) is an approach that relies on having a certain amount of "rub of the green" and is a risky strategy that can and will come unstuck when things aren't going so well. It's working for us at the moment, but I do find it perplexing that we're still taking this all-or-nothing approach to our attacking play during games. All 3 victories have been inclusive of stretches of 45 minutes plus where we weren't even attempting to build meaningful attacks of our own. As stated in the last few days, I knew what would happen second half against Norwich, as would most people, as that's what we do every time we go into half time in a winning position. Playing in a similar way 2nd half to what we had 1st wouldn't have involved us leaving all sorts of gaps at the back or anything of the sort, it's the fact that sitting back and giving the opposition the entire initiative is far more risky in terms of potentially letting a game slip that riles people up and it's what people want to see the end of. It's frustrating because we played some lovely stuff 1st half and have done better in this respect all season, but this is another pattern of our play that needs to be addressed.

It was and it wasn't, I think you're right in the sense that (unfortunately) teams benefit from having moaners on the pitch looking to influence the referee but there were certain times when he would get too wound up and it would affect his game. Seemed to calm down a bit in his later years. Loved him as a player.

Lovely football. Man City are one of the best teams to watch in Europe when everything's going their way.

Lovely finish by Navas but what the fuck were Spurs doing there? Our 0-3 there doesn't look so bad now, give Pards a knighthood, etc.

Tit.

Well exactly. That's the point. We end up drawing or losing games because of it, or going dangerously close to doing so. The concept only works if it increases your chances of victory and for us it doesn't.

Otherwise we would have went out and tried to beat them 4 or 5 nil. Yep. Honestly, nothing personal but I find the whole of your post completely astonishing.

Hadn't even seen many posts including this one before posting myself this evening. It's really not very difficult to see what's going on.

Your posts have all the wit of the Nuremberg Trials. And they hardly get as many laughs. WBCP's a canny lad man, gan watch some basketball and calm yersel doon.

There are always a few on here that will keep making excuses for Pardew's management...they cling to nurse for fear of something worse... The inability to notice very basic trends by some people on here is a real eye-opener. I'm not Stephen Fry or owt but I'm not thick enough to not see what's clearly happening in front of my own eyes. It was 2-0 at half time and I knew what our approach would be second half, and that the outcome would be to at best make the second half a non-event and win the game 2-0 and at worst end up drawing or losing the game. As it happens it was somewhere in between and we pretty much hung on against a poor side. We took a similar approach in our last game against a good side and had a world-class goalkeeping performance to thank for an excellent result. I knew we would have tried to shut up shop second half because I'm not an idiot. It happens every time we go into an interval with a lead under Pardew. Not once or twice, every time. But nah, the players decided to sit back or were tired or something.