Hughesy

Had to use my wildcard. Then just picked a team that is probably as bad as the one I had before.

I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with you. He could prepare his team to play to its strengths instead of looking for an opposition weakness, then it wouldn't matter who we were playing. Don't know which of the responses to go with - I'll choose the first one.. I do think Pardew should shift the focus towards working on offensive work, but I would imagine that working on opposition weaknesses is something that every single manager does. They may not place as much emphasis on it as we apparently do, but they will most certainly do it.

Isn't the preparation point more that Pardew doesn't enough training ground time to prepare his players for a match against [insert European opposition] and then [insert Premiership opposition]? It doesn't really have anything to do with personnel selected for the matches. For Premiership matches last season Pardew would have had 6 days to prepare specific plans for the opposition. With Europe now, that time must be potentially halved.

I don't really like writing players off, but he really is crap.

What on earth are you banging on about? Is Arsene Wenger just a French bloke underneath?

This pretty much sums up how I feel. I am not impressed with us this season and am beginning to worry a bit more about the direction we are heading. But, the fact remains that Pardew did very well last season and deserves more than a third of a season to show that he can turn it round this season. We do need stability and, whilst I appreciate the arguments that stability is only good if you have the right man, I think Pardew has earnt the right to more time.

Yes?

OK, name them. Me, can't stand the bloke. Thought he was a crap manager when he arrived, thought he was crap manager last season, think he's a crap manager now. I don't do knee jerk. Did you, Sir, remain flaccid when we played like a dream at the Hawthorns, or shrugged and emitted a "flukey win, that" when we beat Man U, or did you by any chance lay there counting till ten in a missionary position as he took us to our first 5th place finish in years thinking, "oh he'll be done soon enough?" I ask because I don't know how you have to be knee-jerk to give credit where it's due. One can be sans any kind of jerking, knee or otherwise, simply by reacting as a human being to what's being put in front of you. He was hardly a crap manager last season, and to say otherwise is using hindsight to simply back your own opinion on him. I never rated him highly when he arrived either, but I'm putting my fingers where the keyboard is and saying after last season, I have at least some amount of faith in him, and that he may just turn this around, the silver-haired fox. I could be wrong, but adults make choices and take stances where they could possibly turn out to be wrong, but they do so based on evidence (for me that is evidence of last season, not this season -- just to clarify). That's a f***ing great post that should be read and absorbed by everyone. Spot on. A bit of sense.

Last season wasn't brilliant, our league position was and a few games were but it was also poor at times, especially early in the season. Show me a team who plays well all season? I just don't understand this viewpoint. We did exceptionally well last season. Unbelievably so in fact. Of course we were poor at stages - so were Chelsea, Arsenal and Spurs with better squads than us and a lot more money.

Absolute nonsense.

Has anybody said they haven't? You didn't seem to factor it in earlier.

And it would be acknowledged that Chelsea and Man City have far stronger squads than us.

You've just told half a story are you now going to compare Maratimo to Real Madrid? Nice try though. Well - if we merge our half stories, we might end up with a full story.

To be honest, I do agree with you. The evidence is there to see that we are disjointed and look clueless going forward. But, as I said earlier, the preparation that Pardew used last season worked brilliantly so I can understand why he might continue to use it or, at least, wanted to have continued to use it.

Didn't impact us in 2002/03 when we won every game after Europe. So what? The fact that it didn't affect us ten years has absolutely no bearing on how it might affecting us now. Maybe Pardew should learn something about what we did then. Which was to play the basically his strongest team and formation in Europe and the League. Has football really changed so much? Imo it hasn't. I would say most managers do it. I don't think that somehow we stumbled upon a secret formula is 2002 that no-one else before or since has used.

Didn't impact us in 2002/03 when we won every game after Europe. So what? The fact that it didn't affect us ten years has absolutely no bearing on how it might affecting us now.

No doubt you are right, but I suspect Pardew saw what was achieved with the same methods last year and, up till now, had no reason to fix what wasn't broken. I do agree though that Pardew should have been looking to evolve our style and his methods.

He's full of s***, how can he complain that we are suffering because he is having to field two teams a week then complain that other teams have or use more players? Also, how is playing Maritimo at home then Southampton away any harder than playing Real Madrid at home and then Chelsea away like Man City are doing? Chelsea has played 21 competitive games so far this season if you include the charity shield, we've played 19, he should get somebody to read his script before he puts it into the public domain. He's feeling the pressure and he's using any excuse he can think of to deflect any blame for results away from him, some will fall for it. Might be worth comparing the relative strengths of our squad with Chelsea and Man City? Chelsea's bench against WBA included Ivanovic, Cole, Ramires, Mata, Oscar and Marin. Man City had Zabaleta, Lescott, Kolarov, Sinclair, Garcia and Dzeko. Bit of a difference, given that we had such footballing luminaries as Tavernier, Abeid and Amalfitano on our bench against Swansea. God knows who else didn't even make the squad for Chelsea and Man City in those matches.

People seem to be overlooking that fact, Ian. Quite clearly with the Europa League you have a lot less time to prepare for PL matches.

You can almost see the players trying to play the ball on the ground a bit more I think - Krul seems much more content to play the ball short to our defenders or roll the ball out. The problem is that with certain players in the team, when put under pressure or when a goal down, they revert to type and the ball gets launched. And as somebody has pointed out, it isn't even a good direct ball. It's just aimless.

Maybe people just don't feel the need to repeat the position they made clear last week, dude? A problem has been evident for some time and a concern is becoming a serious worry, but it would still be lunacy to advocate sacking the man at this point. Spot on.

Mike Williamson is a good Championship player, Lovenkrands even. Routledge is fantastic Championship player who's demonstrated he can do a good job in the Prem. I don't think he can do a good job in the Premiership. I don't think he is awful and he may well have been a decent squad player for us - not denying that. But he hasn't proved he can cut it in the Premiership for any of Spurs, Portsmouth, Fulham, Villa, us or Swansea.

Routledge is a good championship player and that's about it.

It was there to be hit.

Seems like we aren't renewing his contract. Get in.