He did but then that was when they were above us. Now they are not of course it will be lying through its teeth.
to be fair most teams in the world would suffer if they were denied ben arfa and cabaye. i can see the mags having a strong run with those two back and fit. for our sake i hope our little run can carry on into the new year and we can get a quality midfielder in in january to really push on.
You might argue its been a roller coaster last 3.5 seasons for your lot. Relegation (1), promotion (2), top 6 finish and Europe (3), bottom half dog fight with us(0.5). Neither NE club is in danger of relegation and I've said that for several weeks and it will be very close for top dog status this season. The UEFA league though has a few canny teams in there Tash so progress will be very, very, very tough imo. I thought Pardew (for once) actually had it about right on Radio NCL tonight. He was not interested in the great performance but more the fact you have played well in games you have not got any points from and that pissed him off and gave him little cheer. Points are all that matter and Man Utd have made a 20 year success story from playing poorly and still getting points as have Arsenal, Chelsea and recently Man City. Its something the NE teams need to master much better if they are to succeed themselves. I reckon by the derby game there wont be a *** paper between us and may be the defining game to sort out who will be top dogs this season but I also think both will be top 10 as well.
Absolutely Cest. The good performance is merely a tiny consolation. I'd rather we got outplayed in every match and win. Points mean prizes as someone famous once said (I think it was Bruce Forsyth) In terms of "top dog status" I am not really bothered. Truth be told, we are both good sides who should be top 10 year on year regardless. the difference between 8th and 10th is negligible. Maybe we can get Europe every so often (like us last season)
They do miss Ben Arfa but most of my mags mates have said that Cabaye was very poor when he was playing earlier in the season and Tiote a liability most games. I dont rate S Taylor at all so they are only really down 1 big player imo. Ba and Cisse have as good records as any in this league so they are at full strength up front. We are down Catts, Bardsley and Brown who were all highly pivotal for us in the couple of years or so and we are light in 1 or 2 main areas.
It is all relative. They may or may not be good players BUT they are the best we have. Their replacements are injured too so we are down to bare bones playing players out of position. Quite frankly I refuse to use it as an excuse because we should have signed way more players in the Summer than we did. I maintain what I said at the start of the season. We have the better first team however you have the better squad. Now you are ahead of us, the squad part at least has proven correct.
lol I never said the league table doesn't lie, because it doesn't, it shows how you many points you've achieved. The flaw in this mentality, however, is that people use it to judge what team is better, and we all know the table will change a lot before the season ends...
