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Newcastle v West Ham


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the main thing pardew could do is either revert to 4-3-3 and get ben arfa playing higher up the pitch or play ben arfa just behind ba in a 4-4-2. someone needs to link up the play. cabaye did that last season but he had tiote playing next to him far more often than he has this time around.

 

4-3-3 with cisse on the bench might be the best bet. or ba out wide but that seems daft at the minute with cisse misfiring and ba being our main source of goals when playing through the middle. i can sort of see why he's stuck with cisse though. he only needs a goal or two to get his confidence back and he'll be away again.

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Bottom line is a good mananger will address the problems I've outlined, and for many Pardew was a good manager last season. Whats changed?

 

I agree that this is indeed the bottom line.

 

Great team morale put in place by Hughton / Nolans gang of four.

Great players brought in by Carr

 

Some might argue that Pardew simply kept the feel good factor going with better players and talked a great game whilst things were going good. How much weight anyone wants to add to that is up to them.

 

As always the proof is in the pudding and so far this season he seems devoid of ideas to get it right. We all know the longer it goes on the harder it gets to pick plays up as well. We seem to be repeating the same mistakes game after game. Even the set pieces seem devoid of any creativity.

 

For me its back to 433 with Ba out left and a few other changes. Stick with it for a few games and try and attack rather than be over cautious. (within reason) and play the ball of the deck as much as possible.

 

Krul

 

Santon Taylor Coloccini Ferguson

 

Anita Tiote Cabaye

 

HBA Cisse Ba

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we havr got no creativity or widrh what so ever.. yesterday against west hsam was all same give ball to ben arfa let him run at them...

 

I don't even think it was necessarily the creative spark that was missing, just choosing the simple passes seemed to be a basic ability that escaped our players. Pass it around the back until some space opens up. Don't give it to Krul to hit and hope.

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I was more waving a fond farewell to the likes of Best, Lovenkrands Alan Smith and co.

 

So Ashley deserves credit for letting Alan Smiths contract run down having signed the spunk bubble on daft wages?

 

The Best deal was incredible like :lol: the poor sod.

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the first choice 11, minus steven taylor, played most games over the course of the season.

 

No it didnt. (History re-writing ;) )

 

Only six players started more than 23 games. The likes of Mike Williamson and Ryan Taylor started more than Tiote and Ben Arfa. Obertan and Best started nearly 20 each.

 

The same poor squad got us to 5th. Of course we should have "pushed on" but not getting Debuchy isnt the main problem.

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The key players didn't suffer injuries or suspensions like they have this season is the point CT. that's why we were lucky.

 

And when RTaylor and obertan played earlier on in the season it was because they were first choice in Pardew's eyes at that stage. By and large it was our best season for injuries in ages.

 

 

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Six players formed our core last year and played 32 games or more. Thats 85% of games.

 

Krul, Colo, Cabaye, Simpson, Gutierrez, Ba

 

Half of those have missed half our games already. Looks to be a worsening situation too with Jonas going to hospital yesterday.

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Krul, Colo, Tiote have been the big misses this season. They haven't been on the pitch together anywhere near enough, and the quality of their understudies is lacking

This is a key issue for me and I think anyone would be mad to ignore it. Yes there are other issues but a lot of them stem from this, without Tiote, Cabaye has to do more donkey work and can't influence the attacking play so much and without Tiote, we get physically bossed a lot more (as we saw clearly yesterday with Diame). Anita clearly will never be the sort of presence Tiote is. As well as being by far our best defender, Colo also helps us play a lot more football as he's clearly much more comfortable on the ball than any of Taylor, Williamson or Perch.

 

This is all not say that Pardew doesn't have a job on his hands to get us going again even when all three of these players are back playing together as he clearly does. Simpson is getting worse, Cisse isn't firing at all, Jonas is offering very little in an attacking sense anymore, and generally there seems to be no pattern to our play and distinct lack of a clear formation a lot of the time. If Pardew really is the manager he was being lauded as being last season he needs to show it soon!

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The key players didn't suffer injuries or suspensions like they have this season is the point CT. that's why we were lucky.

 

 

 

Of course they did. Ben Arfa took ages to return from Injury, Tiote missed nearly half a season...... then we had the ANC.

 

Last season other players such as Ryan Taylor or Guthrie managed to slot in and overall the team continued to perform well. This season we havent performed well regardless of who was in.

 

Last season the early form led to a great team spirit. This season they seem demoralised.

 

Chalk and cheese imo.

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I think if we are 10-15th in January, we should write our league season off to be honest. Fuck it. We're in Europe, why not concentrate our efforts on that and the FA Cup? I know one Premier League place is worth £800,000, so fuck, the fact is if we play our strongest team in Europe and the Cup we'll have an outside chance of winning one of them, which is more than our chances of coming top 6 in the league seem at the moment.

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I think if we are 10-15th in January, we should write our league season off to be honest. Fuck it. We're in Europe, why not concentrate our efforts on that and the FA Cup? I know one Premier League place is worth £800,000, so fuck, the fact is if we play our strongest team in Europe and the Cup we'll have an outside chance of winning one of them, which is more than our chances of coming top 6 in the league seem at the moment.

 

It would be interesting to know exactly what clauses are in Pardew's contract. Is it based on league position? Cups runs? Because if we are in the later stages of the Europa League yet below the targeted position in the PL then it presents an interesting dilemma for Pardew.

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Of course they did. Ben Arfa took ages to return from Injury, Tiote missed nearly half a season...... then we had the ANC.

 

Last season other players such as Ryan Taylor or Guthrie managed to slot in and overall the team continued to perform well. This season we havent performed well regardless of who was in.

 

Last season the early form led to a great team spirit. This season they seem demoralised.

 

Chalk and cheese imo.

Haven't Krul, Tiote and Colo played just 23 minutes of one league match together? That's quite a disruption to the spine of the team. Especially when two of those players are so key to ball retention, starting off attacks and also key to the performance of the player(s) alongside them. Particularly Cabaye and whoever partners Colo in defence. Just to write that off especially when you're comparing this season with last year's performances seems a bit off. Especially since the first half of last season was built on the solidity of that spine.

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It would be interesting to know exactly what clauses are in Pardew's contract. Is it based on league position? Cups runs? Because if we are in the later stages of the Europa League yet below the targeted position in the PL then it presents an interesting dilemma for Pardew.

Aye, one thing is for certain, there'll be a sack with no compensation clause in there without a doubt.

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Aye, one thing is for certain, there'll be a sack with no compensation clause in there without a doubt.

They won't be paying up the remaing seven and a half years or whatever anyway.

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So it is, Tiote played 1 more at 24 games.

 

Still the point stands that our success last season was not due to a settled 11 playing most games.

It was at this time last year iirc.

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Haven't Krul, Tiote and Colo played just 23 minutes of one league match together? That's quite a disruption to the spine of the team. Especially when two of those players are so key to ball retention, starting off attacks and also key to the performance of the player(s) alongside them. Particularly Cabaye and whoever partners Colo in defence. Just to write that off especially when you're comparing this season with last year's performances seems a bit off. Especially since the first half of last season was built on the solidity of that spine.

 

Two of the games Colos missed we've won!

 

However Im not saying for one minute that a settled side isnt better, just that we didnt have one last season and imo most of our woes this season are not down to injuries.

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