Lets just take the positives away from the game - My thoughts on the Chelsea game

Goals scored in the past don't win you games in the present. So far this season, and yes it is still very early, he's been poor. I'm sure he will come good soon, but what he may do in the future and what he has done in the past doesn't mean he should be saved from criticism in the present.

 

People have bad runs, we saw that with Ba at the back end of last season, don't remember people criticsing him too much. It's called a bad run of form.

 

Ba got quite a lot of stick for it. Yeah, it is common for people to have bad runs, but that doesn't mean fans should just sit back and pretend they're playing well. Players are paid a lot of money to play football and when they don't perform their job adequately they deserve and should expect a bit of stick from the fans and media. With the length of some runs of bad form they would've been fired in any other profession.

It's not like Cisse has even had that much criticism, just a few people pointing out that he's been pretty bad in the 3 games so far. It's hardly unfair to say that, either.

 

I think it highlighted the need for another striker. Something up front for when plans A and B arent working

 

Could it have anything to do with celebrating Ramadan. Their eating habits have to change for I think one month and so once it's over i believe we'll see the Demba's scoring for fun again.

 

Ramadam finished on the 18th August so should be drinking and eating normally now

 

Spot on for me, we didn't cause them enough trouble in their box. I know some people aren't keen to bring him back but Carroll would have been the perfect striker to bring on in that second half.

We missed Tiote badly and it wasn't an ideal situation for Anita to make his first full start (played full game thursday and being thrown in against one of the strongest teams in the league).

HBA played centrally second half and ran the show. Pardew has to realise quickly that our side MUST be built around this lad. I think he should occupy one of the central midfield slots (like Dembele does for Fulham), get him on the ball as much as possible running at the other teams back four with Tiote told to play the anchorman role and with Cabaye/Anita going forward but picking when to go and when to stay.

Both strikers offered little yesterday, having said that although there was slight contact Torres did go down easily and a goal right on half time effectively killed the game for us. Proud of the 2nd half performance from us though, Newcastle teams of the past would have folded and gone down 5-0 maybe 6-0.

On the whole 3 points from Spurs home and Chelsea away is a good return, however Villa is a kind of must win now (loving how poor they are at the moment, would love it they went down) if we have aspirations of top 4/6. Slightly concerned that we're yet to produce an above average performance, but after the Spurs game people were saying playing poorly and winning is the sign of a good team so can't have it both ways.

All in all a solid but not spectacular start to the season. If we beat Villa things will be looking very good again, however if we lose or draw we then face a trip to Goodison which lets be fair, no team fancies at the moment. A lot for Pardew to consider after this game, for me he needs to retract his statement that Ba "will play 90% of his games as a CF" if we're to unleash HBA this season and keep progressing. By retract I mean have a quiet word with Demba and let him know the team comes first, he shouldn't go public with it and I'm fairly certain Demba will understand it's for the good of the team.

 

Yes its about time Cisse had a rest he's played two games FFS

 

Dammit!!! Poor frontman play ,and the linkup play was horrible. Only HBA was trying to create something out of nothing but he was constantly surrounded by blue shirts. The Chelsea creative front players are dangerous especially when Torres is on song like he was...

Also, 3 pts from possible 6 in these 2 games is actually very good, and we've got Chelsea away out of the way now!

No excuses for the frontmen(except maybe Cisse for playing in quick succession), and they really were poor, but that's just 1 game and I expect them to work on it and play better the next games. Without Tiote, we really can't handle the big teams well enough.