Happy Face

Is that why he wears that fucking tramps coat?

I reckon Arsenal and Spurs won much more of their points than we did decisively. Irrespective of each teams slumps.

Like I said, I don't think it's luck. It's spirit, individual brilliance, opposition strikers or any number of things. If it was only the 4 games above it would be less of a concern how often we as a team couldn't pull it together collectively to look more comfortable. But it was incredible the number of games we pulled points out of the bag despite ourselves.

It's not luck to have players battling and winning goal line clearances and scoring wonderful individual goals in very poor overall performances, but even with the work that went into picking up good players very cheap, the number of cheeky points won with those players has still never filled me with complete confidence this is a sustainable level of point scoring for seasons to come, without further improvement. Undoubtedly we were excellent occassionally and more than deserved points against 'top' teams like Man U and Chelsea and Liverpool and Spurs, but often we scraped through. Admittedly this happened less as the season went on, but it surprises me how litle discussed our "winning badly" approach has pervaded. People much preferring to trot out trite "the league doesn't lie" phrases. Without looking at the points dropped when we played awful - Wigan(a), Fulham(a), Spurs(a), Wolves(h - second half), Everton(a). etc - here's the BBC overview (I'm biased) on points we won where we weren't the better side.... So that's almost half the season where we barely deserved anything from the games or not as much as we got (which was a third of our total points). I'm all for winning bad, like the best teams do occassionally...rather than losing bad, but the line is too fine and it happens too often for comfort still.

I don't really believe in curses. They must just give it to shit managers quite often.

http://www.debatabledecisions.com/tables

I was making a biased point. Feel free to compare him to the other winners if you want to oppose it...they're Fergie, Wenger, Moyes and Hodgson.

The 2011/12 Premier League Cash Table Manchester City £60.6m Manchester United £60.3m Tottenham £57.3m Arsenal £56.2m Chelsea £54.4m Liverpool £54.4m Newcastle £54.2m Everton £48.9m Fulham £47.4m West Brom £46.6m Swansea £45.9m Norwich £45.6m Sunderland £44.4m Stoke £43.6m QPR £43.3m Wigan £42.8m Aston Villa £42.1m Bolton £40.6m Blackburn £40.3m Wolves £39.1m Up from £48.5m in 2011

He joins an illustrious group of great managers from the past 20 years, also recognised by their peers at the LMA...Steve Coppell, Joe Kinnear, Frank Clark, Peter Reid, Danny Wilson, Dave Jones, Alan Curbishley, George Burley.... It's more of a curse than a blessing.

Win ratio quite close to Pardew.

Scholes playing on another year.

I was spot on with 65 mind

We won 3. Half the home ones.

....and spent almost £20m....£10m on Nzogbia....so swings and roundabouts.

Christmas Tree · Spurs are finished. They are on the way down with no CL money. They'll finish below us next season.

Gary Neville gets the England coaching job....stays as a pundit on Sky too. Never thought I'd see the day when I'd be pleased for him. Wasn't convinced I could ever like the bloke early on, but in the space of 1 season he's become the most common sense commentator out there.

Does he not have a mate to tell him to pipe down when he's making a dick of himself? Or a professional, someone from the Sporting Chance clinic to talk him down.

Just in the morning to mid-afternoon then. The table is talking absolute bollocks if it thinks Aston "7 wins" Villa weren't one of the 3 worst teams this season.

Live by the tweet, die by the tweet.

I only looked it up after motd showed agueros goal at Swansea and the man city end was half empty. Couldn't believe the champions elect took so few on that short journey.

I don't dwell on the tactical importance of 4-2-3-1 versus 4-4-2 etc too much either tbh, in a game like yesterday where the front 2 seemed to spoon the ball 50 yards with every touch they had in the first half it's less to to do with getting out the blackboard and working on tactics, more to do with getting on the training pitch and working on the basics of concentration, control, movement off the ball, making space, passing to feet and that...which we know we can do, but just seems to go out of the window whenever we travel to a club in any kind of form. Pardew and the players get all the credit they deserve when they play well (for the most part this season), the results above tend to be papered over by it though.

Slightly annoys me that the bad performances are passed off as 'one of those days' or just 'run out of steam'. We can be critical off woeful performances while also recognising the huge strides taken this season, I'd hope Pardew concentrates on the failings in away performances like yesterday, Wigan, Spurs, Fulham, Liverpool and Norwich, because there were quite a few of "those days" this season, not where we lost valiantly, despite best endeavour, but where we just never showed up at all. You don't improve by looking on the bright side and ignoring it. Happy as anyone with the overall season, let's kick on and hopefully get some better first team options than Simpson, Williamson, Perch, the Taylors, Obertan, Gosling....

Best away support in the league.... http://www.statbunker.com/football/btb/index.php?PL=competition&CompID=373&statType=away_Att The top 4 all in the bottom half. One for Stevie.

I backed him to the hilt when he was one of ours....never doubting what a complete twat he was though. More than happy to rip the shit out him now. He did plenty to us. Served jail time, sent off during the relegation fight.

Spuggy was mint on Byker Grove mind.