Newcastle United 1 - 2 Reading - 19/01/13 - post-disaster reaction from page 53

[Ashley17]

"When you're down at the bottom sometimes things don't go your way..."

When he's done here I actually see Pardew ending up as one of the talking heads on MOTD or Sky, he's already spouting all their usual clichés. His chatter is indicative of him as a manager. A total lack of footballing ideas.

Not after the"touch of a rapist"comment on MOTD2

 

That isn't what he said. There was a bad tackle and he said "he's absolutely raped (raked?) him."

[ScottishMagpie]

I thought I'd sleep on that performance before coming in and making sweeping judgements or making knee jerk comments, but if anything I'm more frustrated now I've had time to think about it.

 

For a start Reading hadn't won away from home all season, they're hardly going to come here going all gung-ho playing attacking football.  Their game plan would more than likely be to get as many behind the ball and try and nick a goal on the break.  As the club have staff that watch our opponents previous games and work on strategy its something that you'd expect them to pick up on and set the team up to counter these tactics, which leads me to our team selection.....

 

For a team thats going to get men behind the ball you need to make the pitch as wide as possible and take opponents into positions that break with their plan, creating space to exploit; our "wingers" were Jonas and Shola.  Neither are capable of doing anything from wide areas that can endanger the opposition.  In the last 5 minutes when we went for the equaliser it was no coincidence that the chances came about when the likes of Debuchy, Santon and Obertan hit the by-line and tried getting balls into the box.  For all his faults Obertan has pace and a trick which against teams like Reading he could use to good effect, counter this with Shola who will amble around, give a free kicks away when he loses the ball and then just runs into someone and his trademark attempted shot that flies wide to which his response is to stand on the spot for an age, staring at the sky with a big grin.  Cisse seems to be suffering through a lack of defined role.  He had a couple of good chances which were promising but at times I wasnt sure if we were using him as a a target man, was he meant to be playing on the shoulder or dropping deep? It doesnt look like he has a defined role, or if he does he's having to do all of the extra work because the team is not setup or has the personell to get the best of him in the role he plays.

 

Our distribution not only from goal kicks but free kicks inside our half is dreadful.  The number of times I sat there and each defender ran up the pitch in preparation for a Krul hoof was excruciating.  All it takes is for one of the full backs to drop off and then you can start again.  I can garuntee that Reading would be overjoyed if all they had to deal with were long balls from Krul.  If we played it short from the back it would mean the opposition have to come up the pitch to close the ball down which then leads to more space elsewhere and it's no coincidence that the times we done this in the first half we created chances and looked a decent team.  As I fan I don't get paid to watch our games and assess our strengths or where we go wrong but I've watched the majority of our games this season, be it on TV or at the ground and I can see that the distribution from the back isnt good enough, it just invites pressure back onto us.  If there's an arial battle in midfield the likes of Cabaye and Anita aren't going to win and it's no fault of their own.  When Debuchy arrived Pardew said he hoped that would improve our distribution from defence as he noticed that was a weak point, but where has the progress been on this?  We've had a full week to prepare for the Norwich and Reading games and I havent seen any change.  If we cant, or are not willing to do this against two teams in similar form to ourselves when are we going to start doing this?

 

As mentioned the substitutes were baffling, as much as I can accept Cabaye was injured the other changes sacraficed the shape of the team as well as causing a negative reaction from the fans.  We ended the match with a midfield of Jonas, Perch, Bigi, Obertan, Cisse/Ameobi (swapping on the right).  I'd be surprised if any of those regularly play together in such a formation in training and I doubt any had any instruction of what role they were playing other than "keep it tight" or "get stuck in and disrupt them".  I found it to be poor management to throw Bigi on when he did as the crowd were agitated and for a 19/20 year old it's not going to help him being thrown in and expected to make a difference. 

 

I just don't know what Pardew and the rest of the backroom staff see as we seem to be making the same mistakes every week which is inexcusable.  The excuses are running out, we havent had midweek Europa games recently, players are coming back from injury and we've had an "easy" run of fixtures.  What are the next excuses? "Missing the spark HBA gives us" didnt Pards say something along the lines of "we're not a one man team" during the summer? I'm fed up.

 

Cracking post!

[David Icke - Son of God]

"When you're down at the bottom sometimes things don't go your way..."

When he's done here I actually see Pardew ending up as one of the talking heads on MOTD or Sky, he's already spouting all their usual clichés. His chatter is indicative of him as a manager. A total lack of footballing ideas.

Not after the"touch of a rapist"comment on MOTD2

 

That isn't what he said. There was a bad tackle and he said "he's absolutely raped (raked?) him."

 

Essien disposed someone in a rather comical fashion and Pardew shouted "HE'S ABSOLUTELY RAPED HIM!"

[Sean]

Decided not to bother watching this, was in ASDA yesterday with the girlfriend when the scores were coming through on the TV's for sale, wasn't even slightly surprised to see we lost, just fucking gutted. Been telling anyone who'll listen for weeks to put money on us going down.

[S.S.R.]

I'm repeating myself, but rape doesn't always mean a sexual assault. But people are generally divvies.

 

"Reading beat Newcastle..." OH NOES THEY'VE BEEN STRUCK VIOLENTLY!