aimaad22

Might have been difficult to get the potential Russian champions to play our reserves thousands of miles from home.

What a relief we have Gouffran now. Too bad he cant play in Europe.

Never been this excited about signing a defender! Stoke is going to be a good test for him, lets see how he does against that type of team.

Thats the idea of having a strong squad isnt it? The whole defence was excellent today to be honest, even Simpson wasnt half bad. Mbiwa and Haidara(less so) are potentially different class though, what a welcome change from the kind of defenders we've been signing over the years.

Job done. Very interesting 2nd leg we have on our hands here. Hope it will be a great night!

You can forget for whole phases of the game he's even playing.

Absolute gem. This guy is going to be world class.

He's quite good on Nickelodean too.

Part of me thinks the fact Mourinho has been so accepting of the fact ManUtd were done by the ref and even said they would not have won it otherwise is designed to add salt to their wounds. I mean, the feeling that you were done by bad luck gets exponentially larger when the other party comes out and says they wouldnt have had a chance otherwise. Certainly wouldnt put it past Jose

I dont know about this moral high ground English football is supposed to be on according to some people. From what you see every weekend there is a good deal of diving, cheating and feigning injury going on and no club is exception to it. You could aruge some continental sides to it more but to suggest English teams dont do it and are somehow at a disadvantage because of it is absolute rubbish.

Silly ref but because its Man Utd cant absolutely loving it!

Sums up my feelings about Santon. Cant expect him to be the finished article already.

Wind up surely.

This poll and the fact I didnt want to click on anyone made me realise we've come along a fair bit as far as squad strength goes. Santon and Tiote are the question marks out of that list. Cisse too according to some people I suppose. As far as Im concerned we should stick with all three for next season at least anyway. This summer is going to be about improving the squad players rather than the first team mostly. Colo, Shola, Jonas perhaps.

Same can be said for Swansea, we've played very well against two of the fastest, most fluid teams in the league albeit without getting a result. I cant believe Mertesacker is a German international. And this Monreal seemed to be all over the place, although its still early days for him of course.

ONLY Pardew? He can help, but im pretty sure its upto the player in the end. Look at the criticism Barcelona have been getting over the last couple of weeks.

Class, defenders didnt exactly cover themselves in glory though.

Im all for people offering up their opinions and analysis of the game. Its funny though that with some people when we're doing well its all supposed to be because of 'individual brilliance of the players' yet when we get beat its somehow all down to Pardew.

Couldnt watch it but sounds like it was a frustrating afternoon. From the match reports it seems another Santon error at the back has cost us, exactly what did he do?

Just need Villa to lose on Monday then.

About bloody time!

Aye, good to see some common sense prevailing at last in football. Stability is what we've never seemed to have. Lets hope Pards can build on the strong spine to the team that we now have.