Rayvin

I'd forgotten we even had Santon...

He'll be fine for re-employment. Plenty of managers will be fired this season and he'll swoop into any of the bottom half sides. Wouldn't put it beyond Ashley to re-hire him later in the season tbf.

I think we can probably safely assume that no one is. And that this state of affairs has been running for some time now.

I dunno like, I think he's just chronically lacking in self awareness. Even now I reckon he would probably want us to win as much as we want us to win, and the fact that he's been getting so emotional about it suggests that this really dos matter to him. He's hopeless, and he needs to go, but at the end of the day I feel for him a bit. It's not like he's been actively trying to sabotage the club. Plus, as far back as they were, there have been some good times. That 1-0 defeat of Man Utd last year turned into one of the best nights out I've ever had, it was a truly special result. All of this said, I was expecting to see a headline about his dismissal by now...

For me, this is one of his main failings. An utter inability to think outside of his very limited system. If he could attempt to justify just once, maybe it'd make sense on some level - like his chihuahua was once run over by an ardent proponent of the midfield diamond or something. It's the fact that it's totally unexplained that really gets to me and makes him look all the more stupid. Why do reporters never ask things like "Why are you insisting on having a lone striker up front when it clearly isn't working?"

We could have conceded a lot more.

What he's always told them I guess. We were better in the first half but were also being caught on the counter a lot. He stopped that happening in the second half at the cost of all of our (limited) creativity and structure in attacking.

On the positive side, that's probably the best result possible for anyone wanting rid of him. Damage isn't too bad, and surely it'll see him fired.

I mean, we only have one formation. The players get moved around within that formation, but surely a team needs more than one available formation!?

This has to be the end of the Pardew era...surely..

Ameobi now. All the usual suspects.

We've totally lost the plot here, no structure to our build up any more.

Obertan. It's fitting actually.

So now we're pushing Gouffran upfield to partner Cisse, when we could have subbed him at half time instead of Riviere...

Why did Tiote take that freekick, Alan?

So we put Cisse on but took off Riviere, which means that Cisse (despite last week) will be relatively starved of service instead of Riviere... I dunno why I'm complaining actually, this should be it for Pardew.

Why aren't we trying something different, that's what I don't get. What do we have to lose? Why not try two up front, see what happens. Could sacrifice Gouffran for one thing.

Why are we lofting balls into the box?! It's not working. Anyone could have told you that it wouldn't work against Stoke. Do they have any players under 2m tall?

The other depressing thing here is that Stoke are absolutely fucking terrible... and we still aren't going to beat them.

This is going to be horrifying isn't it...

Well, that's a traditional Pardew start.

That'd be a bit harsh There'd be no post match argument if you ban him...you know you all love it.

That really does sound like something he'd say.

Perpetual war has its uses though. I don't think any of our political overlords are expecting a conventional 'win' here, just considering that there are wider strategic benefits at stake. Which is really depressing. Really don't buy into this pacifying business either... we'd be exactly the same if the US had been destabilising and periodically bombing Europe for the past 50 odd years. Perhaps religion wouldn't be the rallying cry, but knowing Europe it'd be fascism.

Stoke to remember how to score at home, several defensive howlers, and probably the worst result we can manage while still somehow being good enough to keep Pardew in the job for another week.