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Hatem Ben Arfa (now retired?)


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Guest firetotheworks

I was thinking about this on the bus before. Surely you're no longer a manager if you're putting stats above your professional judgement?

 

That time he was going on about Santon's stats being good and everyone knew he'd had a poor game, even he said 'he might have looked poor, but...'

 

If you're doing that, you're no longer doing your job.

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I'm a huge believer and lover of performance stats but any statistician/mathematician knows they should only be used as guidelines. You can link rice cultivation to literacy in Greece if you wanted but it doesn't mean we should cultivate more rice. These guys are letting it trump their own brain which is very depressing :lol:

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oldtype has been broken by Ashley / Pardew. :-( Dude sounds so doom and gloom it's depressing. f*** off to the regime.

 

I'm a rational poster. I've just rationally decided that everything that can go wrong at NUFC will go wrong forever.

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Good bye sweet prince.

 

Biggest "what might have been" for as long as i can remember.

 

That last line could sum up his career tbh. The reason we signed him as a newly-promoted club was because he was a troubled genius, the reason he's leaving appears to be the same. I'd like to think that whoever comes in will makes us even better with Ayoze, Cabella, De Jong fit...

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Good bye sweet prince.

 

Biggest "what might have been" for as long as i can remember.

 

Aye, the excitement of him signing, photos in the airport etc, was just an unbelievable time. Knowing what a wonderful player he was on his day and to think he could play for us, it was just so incredibly exciting.

 

Then that goal against Everton, wow. The injury was heartbreaking but he seemed to come back from that strongly, his goals against Blackburn and Bolton will live seriously long in the memory but the one at West Brom, that lightning quick counter, was just exhilirating to watch. What a player.

 

I don't doubt that he was trouble, but if he was managed correctly he could have been so much more for us, we gave him the love he craved at OM and Lyon, it seemed like a perfect match. Heartbreaking seeing what's happened to him, the day he went to Hull was an embarrassment for the club. Like I said, I know he's had issues and perhaps we'll never know the full extent of them, but it seemed all he needed was to feel loved and wanted, I think the club let him down in that sense, Pardew in particular.

 

Attitude aside, deep down all football fans love players like Hatem and it's gutting to know he'll never play for us again.

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oldtype has been broken by Ashley / Pardew. :-( Dude sounds so doom and gloom it's depressing. f*** off to the regime.

 

I'm a rational poster. I've just rationally decided that everything that can go wrong at NUFC will go wrong forever.

 

Aye.  My first game was in the '70's.  We were shit and got beaten following defensive calamities.  Not much has changed really has it?  When I think of the time, money and emotion that I've wasted on this fucking club over the years man....  I accepted a long time ago that we'd never win anything but this isn't a football club any more, it's a plaything for our rotund owner who seems to have gotten bored of owning a football club and has now decided his lifelong ambition is to piss as many NUFC fans off as possible by lurching from one disaster to the next.  And there's very little we can do about it.  Stop going the games?  It may be the only answer.  The empty stands will provide more room for Sports Direct adverts.  Guess who wins again.  Sigh.

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Such a shame, was pinning my hopes on a last reprieve under a new manager,a clean slate. am more agitated at his mis-management than the perceived lack of application.As plenty have pointed out though,something in his make up is holding him back from becoming a great player,and he looks to be rapidly falling away now.

But if I read anymore `farewell my sweet prince quotes`, I`ll be needing boots with curly toes

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Oldtype is spot on, you'd have to have a massive set of blinkers or a serious obsession with Ben Arfa to think otherwise. Neither of which are in short supply on here must be said.

 

 

 

We should all have a serious obsession with Ben Arfa. We didn't fall in love with football for defensive wingers and hoof ball did we?

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Massive set of blinkers?  Yeah because Ben Arfa wasn't treated like shit and wasn't dropped for shite like Obertan for no reason.

 

Wake up and smell the shit man.

 

It's almost as if you haven't read what he posted. Or maybes its them blinkers.

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Oldtype is spot on, you'd have to have a massive set of blinkers or a serious obsession with Ben Arfa to think otherwise. Neither of which are in short supply on here must be said.

 

 

 

Bottom line is he was good enough to get in ahead of the players who started instead.

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Sadly managers will always use criteria other than ability to select a team. Happens at every level and at every club. Just gutting for us that Ben Arfa is exactly the type of player we love and need, and his ability is world class.

 

Frustrating not to know the full picture of how hard he really is to manage as well. From an outsiders point of view it seems obvious that you should just play him every game regardless of what's going on off the pitch.

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The one thing I think we can all agree on is that this is so tragic because it's eminently possible that we'll never see a player of his natural ability play for us again in our lifetimes.

 

It was a truly unique set of circumstances that allowed us to get this guy.  It's such a bleeding shame that the gamble didn't pay off because it could have been beautiful

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