Hughesy

No lose situation for them really. Everyone will forget if we do well. If we do bad, they can enjoy it and give it 'told you so'. Pathetic.

Let's hear the doubters again.

Overreactions? On here?? Never.

I think people say this every time he plays for the sole reason of contributing to my heart problems. We'll see! I just have a feeling he might put himself about a bit.

I think we might get a decent performance out of Shola today..

Nobody will pay us anything close to what a lot of us agree he's worth. Circa £6m? I just can't see it. A Turkish side perhaps, but I don't think he'd want that. Could see him going for £3.2m-ish. Quite precise - sure it wouldn't be £3.25m? ;-)

since this is is a thread about the manager...i expected us to put our best players on the pitch with a game plan that suits them. this hasnt been the case for months now. Think months is a bit of an exaggeration. I do have issues with Pardew's team selection and tactics (although tactics-wise I am not as convinced as everyone else that Pardew has instructed the players to play long ball, I just think we have some average players who can't play any other way), but some of the comments about Pardew are way over the top.

Some fantastic overreactions in here. As usual. I genuinely don't know what people expected to happen this season, but on any level we have to be ahead of where most people expected us to be. Yes, we are in danger of throwing away our good work and that is immensely frustrating, but did anyone really think we were going to maintain a top 6 challenge all season? That would have been a minor miracle. As it stands we are going through a bad patch, but we are still in 7th. Personally I think we will manage to hold onto 7th and that would have to represent a good season for us at this stage. Looking at the teams above us and their levels of investment and the years that they have been entrenched in the top 6, I can't believe anyone would think we 'should' be taking them on and beating them. At least not at the moment. Expectations have risen ridiculously high on here. Pardew would almost have been better off not doing so well at the start of the season with the way people are now expecting us to perform.

Still don't get why Krul didn't just disregard Simpson and save it. Who cares if Simpson gets a clattering? At least we could then have Santon in the team anyway.

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01389/eric-cantona_1389972c.jpg Bergkamp n all. If you've the talent to make things happen from nothing for the good of the team then running around like a blue arsed fly is not of importance. It's the classic northern European issue, preferring braun and effort over ability and nous. Whilst I appreciate what you are saying, I think the idea that all UK teams prefer a hard worker to a skilful player has become a bit of a cliche in itself. It is perfectly possible and, in my opinion, desirable to have a playmaker who is brilliant on the ball but also puts the effort in for the team. Take Beardsley for example - he chased and harried with the best of them but was also a genius when he got the ball. If it's good enough for Beardsley, it is certainly good enough for Ben Arfa.

Incredibly annoying re the striker. Don't think there is any excuse for not being able to sign an additional striker within a year. The excuses don't add up anymore. Having said that - I think we need a CB and a LB more - so if somehow we ended up getting a decent CB and an LB, I would accept us not buying a striker now.

I particularly enjoy his description in the last line as an 'ace'.

He used to love the triple substitution. And it worked once from my memory when Stephen Glass scored vs Man Utd in 2000. After a Lua-Lua miskick. Bit of a fantasy that. It was true in his early days but simmered down a lot after the first few weeks of that 2000/01 season with Cordone and co. Once we had a good and settled team (Bellamy/Robert onwards), it was pretty rare. Perhaps too rare. In 2003/04: He did 3 substitutions against Man United, Birmingham City, Portsmouth, Fulham and Bolton. That's still quite frequent! Aye but not the 'lets get groovy' triple whammy, which I assume is what we're talking about*. A 67th, a 75th and a 92nd combo doesn't count. *It might have happened once among those games, can't say I've checked specifically. Those all were triple whammy substitutions. Rather embarrassingly - I actually checked the matches. Where can I check? Genuinely interested to see. Fair play. I'll be pedantic and point out Portsmouth was actually two substitution phases 1 minute apart, but still. Four or five is a good couple more than I was expecting. Just trawled through nufc.com match reports! Looks like the year before was less though - think it is only 3 or 4 occasions. Even I was surprised about the number of time Robson made 3 subs in the entire game (not of the triple whammy type) - certainly liked to utilise the bench.

He used to love the triple substitution. And it worked once from my memory when Stephen Glass scored vs Man Utd in 2000. After a Lua-Lua miskick. Bit of a fantasy that. It was true in his early days but simmered down a lot after the first few weeks of that 2000/01 season with Cordone and co. Once we had a good and settled team (Bellamy/Robert onwards), it was pretty rare. Perhaps too rare. In 2003/04: He did 3 substitutions against Man United, Birmingham City, Portsmouth, Fulham and Bolton. That's still quite frequent! Aye but not the 'lets get groovy' triple whammy, which I assume is what we're talking about*. A 67th, a 75th and a 92nd combo doesn't count. *It might have happened once among those games, can't say I've checked specifically. Those all were triple whammy substitutions. Rather embarrassingly - I actually checked the matches.

He used to love the triple substitution. And it worked once from my memory when Stephen Glass scored vs Man Utd in 2000. After a Lua-Lua miskick. Bit of a fantasy that. It was true in his early days but simmered down a lot after the first few weeks of that 2000/01 season with Cordone and co. Once we had a good and settled team (Bellamy/Robert onwards), it was pretty rare. Perhaps too rare. In 2003/04: He did 3 substitutions against Man United, Birmingham City, Portsmouth, Fulham and Bolton. That's still quite frequent! -- Bugger, ignore this edit.

He used to love the triple substitution. And it worked once from my memory when Stephen Glass scored vs Man Utd in 2000. After a Lua-Lua miskick.

So, in brief: You find the reactions of people who you don't agree with annoying, but you find the reactions of the people you agree with justifiable. I find it annoying when people misrepresent the opinions of others. Was a bit of a joke to be honest. Obviously should have whacked a smiley in there somewhere.

Well - that is where I would start him. I think Obertan has had a good run in the side and hasn't performed. Although I actually think he played reasonably well yesterday. But, I still stand by the fact that I understand perfectly why Pardew may not have felt comfortable playing him up until now and I stand by the fact that there seems to be a general feeling on here that we need to treat him with kid gloves so he doesn't storm off back to Tunisia/Paris next week. And I regard that as being unacceptable.

I really really hope Ben Arfa makes it at NUFC because he has all the talent in the world. But... 1) We don't know what is going on behind the scenes. We don't know how Ben Arfa is in training. We don't know his fitness levels. 2) So far Ben Arfa hasn't shown enough to be cast-iron starter at the moment. On talent - we all know he should be starting, but I am not convinced that his performances this season so far have merited a starting XI place. As has been pointed out so far, our relative 'success' owes a large amount to the formation we have been playing and the solidity and industry of the team as a unit. Understandably, Pardew has probably been reluctant to change what was a winning formula and/or jeopardise the work rate of the team by including a talented but not so industrious player. 3) I also find it a little bit odd (not going to trawl through for posts, more an impression I have got) is that people seem to think we should pander to Ben Arfa because he is a talented player and everyone thought getting him to NUFC was a bit of a coup for us. We can't live in fear of Ben Arfa's potential hissy fits. He should realise that he is part of a squad and he needs to earn his place. Already there are 'stories' that he doesn't look very happy and possibly starting to sulk a little - if that is the case he should grow up and realise that he can't just throw his toys out of the pram at every club he is at if things don't go right. Having said all that - I would have brought him on yesterday and want to see him in the starting XI sooner rather than later.

Exactly - was just thinking about the reaction on here if we had gone all out for victory from 55 minutes into the match and then been hit on the counter (as Swansea were beginning to do in the second half) and lost. Hindsight is a marvellous thing. Especially if the ball had been lost from a Ben Arfa dribble... We had done enough in the first half to persist with the team as it was set up.

So, in brief: You find the reactions of people who you don't agree with annoying, but you find the reactions of the people you agree with justifiable.

I really wouldn't try to ever compare Pardew to Wenger, and I have never mentioned his ability to buy young, unproven talent. I think Wenger is a very good manager who gets his team to play a good brand of football and usually gets the best out of his players. Secondly, I don't think he got any of his substitutions right today never mind all of them. We have had two dodgy results but we've been lucky on quite a few occasions where we've had results which were better than our display deserved. Today was a poor result against a team we should have beaten and we didn't do enough to get the points. Our game plan wasn't working and we stuck with it until the end of the game, I’m not going to congratulate Pardew for screwing up, you can if you want to. As for who is deluded, we’ll know by the end of the season, won’t we? I wasn't comparing Wenger to Pardew in terms of managerial ability. I was discussing your comment asking what Pardew was good at. For example (and I paraphrase), you claimed that us signing good players was not down to Pardew but Carr. Well - is Wenger responsible for the players he signs? No, he isn't. Not sure what you don't grasp about what I said. Interesting that you say Wenger plays a good brand of football and gets the most of his players. Under Pardew, we are playing better football than we have done for a while. Under Pardew, I would argue that one of his strengths is getting the best out of players. So yet again - not comparing Wenger and Pardew or claiming that Wenger and Pardew are equals. Substitutions - I can see reasoning behind most of his subs. I think he should have brought Ben Arfa on though and I am not sure why he didn't. To me, that was his major mistake. Other than that - didn't see much wrong. We have had luck on our side this season. Who hasn't? Every team has. We have also had bad luck. We did enough to win today, for example. Luiz should have been sent off in the Chelsea game. We had a severely depleted team against Norwich (no way we would have lost that game with a full strength team). Not sure where I proposed congratulating Pardew for today?? More stating that no manager will get every game right and Pardew, in my eyes, has done enough to deserve a fair bit of leeway when it comes to a game like today. A game which we deserved to win.

Clearly a hard man to please then!

So has he been saying them after each match when we were winning? Or has he voiced his opinions after defeats/draws? Have absolutely no problem with people having opinions - otherwise this forum would be dull. But I think that some of the criticism levelled at Pardew after this 'banana blip' is a bit OTT to be honest. As I said - we are having a great season at the moment. Would be good to remember that and not start complaining that we didn't beat Swansea.

Can you tell us the respective points per game for each manager? And exclude Championship stats.