Hughesy

I would agree with that - whether it was a deliberate shunning is not entirely clear. I thought they seemed slightly more reluctant to pass to him on occasions.

Bony looks an absolute class act now - really wish we had gone in for him.

Good to see the floated corner to Williamson was in full force at the weekend. It works so well I am surprised more teams don't use it.

I think we have got a decent chance of a win in this game. I don't think Everton have been particularly convincing over the last few games.

I was just torturing myself and thinking back to the Sunderland match - why is that pitch invaders at matches are all, to a man, terrible at football? If you are going to invade the pitch and get a ban, you might as well at least lash the ball at the goal from 20 yards out as opposed to waddling towards the ball and scuffing it along the ground.

Ahead of who exactly??

Yep. Totally agree. There were two things I noticed on Saturday though. First, I was surprisedthat quite often our players didn't pass the ball to him when he was free (as alluded to above). Secondly, Ben Arfa seemed a little reluctant to move to make himself available as often as I thought he might do/used to do.

He actually did ok..

I really find irritating that whenever there is a spitting incident in football, immediately people will say 'I'd much rather be punched than spat at'. Neither action is acceptable, but it strikes me as some sort of fake macho stance to immediately trot this line out.

Probably believed the stories about the debt Pardew owes Ashley and wanted to help him out.

Care to paint us a picture of how this scenario may have played out? Maybe Pardew stole 100 pairs of Donnay socks from Sports Direct and owes Ashley loads of money. Like £4.50.

Spot on. Love the Europa league, for all its flaws. Really hope we qualify for it again this year, however unlikely that is.

Gouffran is not a good example, he has been one of our better players irrespective of where he has played. He's never performed like a wide player should in my book. You seem to have quite a fairly unique book though in fairness.

Yeah - there are quite a few stories about Pardew's 'extracurricular' activities.

Not sure what the 'accepted quota' is for strikers in an England squad, but I would be tempted to take a bare minimum and take more attacking midfielders. For example, I would much rather take Sterling, Lallana, Barkley, A.Johnson, Oxlade-Chamberlain and Townsend than a load of strikers who aren't very good.

Ha ha - what nonsense.

Spot on there. He was awful in the relegation season and didn't look capable of adapting at all.

Don't they also get some huge fine if they get promoted anyway? Something like £45 million?

No chants of abuse where I was. As has been said above, the stadium just emptied quickly.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2572412/MARTIN-SAMUEL-Sol-Campbell-wasnt-captain-cruel-injury-not-FA-racism.html This basically. There were plenty of justifiable reasons why Campbell was never captain. Racism wasn't one of them.

Meyler shouldn't have or needed to push Pardew. I am not sure if you are agreeing or disagreeing with me.

What he did wasn't ok, but Pardew instigated by putting himself infront of Meyler, what was he expecting. End of the day his team was up 3-1 and he headshoved a player. He's a manager, he's supposed to manage his squad not act like a spoiled brat. Well no - Pardew didn't move into the line of the ball. He just didn't get out of the way. That doesn't give Meyler the right to push Pardew out of the way.

Still can't work why some people think what Meyler did was acceptable. MOTD were talking as if there was no provocation at all. It doesn't excuse what Pardew did but Meyler's conduct was in itself appalling.

How do you know Pardew?

That's just impractical. You can't live your life constantly waiting a certain distance away from SJP waiting to see if Pardew has said anything. You'd never get anything done.