Remy has saved us

With out Remy we would have been relegated this season. When he is out we are toothless.I am sick of Pardew backing up Ashley. We have been the lowest spenders in the premier league in the last 2 seasons, yet we have the 3rd highest crowds. What are these so called big clubs like Swansea and Southampton doing when they average 25,000 fans and revenue less than us.
They have owners that invest, we have an owner who bleeds the club dry, gets free advertising and god knows how much each year he takes for himself.
Last home game of the season there should be an organised protest during the game. No banners, everyone stand up a certain time something to say this cannot go on.

 

Totally agree about Remy. But for him we would have been down.
The hardest thing to take is the fact that, even with Remy we are woefully short of cover up front.

 

Is that not to be expected of a top class striker, take away the liverpool duo and they would have had to find 49 goals to be in the same position, take Lukaku away from Everton and their season would look rather different, if Ba hadn't gone to Chelsea we wouldn't have struggled for goals, the game of if, but, maybe and could have been, Remy has played and has been missed when out of the team, but as I said that is exactly why he is here this season because he lifts the team as would another top striker in form.

 

Hopefully we can find another one.

 

After Saturday's farce, i honestly believe Pardew has lost the dressing room. If he thinks that is acceptable he should not be allowed in the city far less manage the club. The players need to take a good look at themselves as well. They should all club together with their vastly overpaid wages and reimburse any supporter that travelled to Southampton.We haven't won anything for years which we all have accepted, but we deserve 100% effort. Which we didn't get.

 

There is a difference if you look closely

 

I know what you are saying but surely its a bit of a mute point because we have had him? The board have done enough to get where they want to. We'll never go any further because over the course of a season goalscorers will get injured, lose form etc etc. Teams looking to qualify for Europe of challenge at the top end buy more strikers to help achieve this.

We are woefully short of attacking options every season under this regime. It does not take a rocket scientist to work out why. Strikers/goal scorers cost more money than any other commodity in football. Goals win matches. We like to run on a shoe string so having lots of attacking options is not likely. Our ambition is limited by the fact we are not going to go down the route of either spending money in some sugar daddy way (the owner isn't interested in spunking his own money, he has stated this)or speculating to accumlate (the owner has once again stated we have no interest in taking this risk, choosing a more sustainable less ambitious route)

 

100%. Basically the best we can do is get Ba back. And I think he would come if we offered.

De Jong looks a long way off from being premier league quality, he's got good control but his shooting and heading is woefully weak, he can't be a starting player going forward. With Remy probably leaving Ba is our most realistic chance of getting goals. Also what was going on between Willo and Tiote on Saturday?

Our defence is also seriously worrying me right now. If Colo leaves we're left with what Willo, Taylor and MYM? None of them in combination is good enough to keep us in the league, especially when we're playing dodgy fullbacks. Debuchys injury has really killed us. Not scoring goals is one thing but having absolutely no shape at the back is far worse.

 

Not a moot point. Remy won't be here next season. We therefore will need someone of similar quality, supported by a much more creative midfield than we have possessed since January. And that will only be enough to just get by if injuries are kind to us.

The OP's point is we will need very serious investment to survive. Your point is MA won't sanction a serious investment. I think you may both be right - - which is worrying.

 

My point is though he always does just enough. So while we won't have Remy, we probably will have someone capable. We had Ba previously, Cisse, then Remy. We have been good at getting that one player who will single handedly do enough to keep you out of the ****. We just won't have a strikeforce to compete any higher. This panic happens everytime. Then they do something which looks mildly progressive. In fact we just maintain the status quo.

 

What?

 

To be fair mate Willo and Mbiwa have been a decent combination for us earlier in the season. Taylor can f**k off in the summer with my compliments.

 

I don't think anyone has panicked, just expressed a concern.

With respect to the "we always do enough to get by", that has been so for 4 years. Previous to that, of course, we didn't.

As you note, the way we have gotten by for the 4 years in which we have done so is by finding 3 singularly successful strikers who were available cheaply. I don't think it is unreasonable to be concerned that this might not be a trick we will be able to pull off every time we need to.

 

The year we went down was not really to do with a lack of investment though. It was mismanagement of investment. Whilst it is not unreasonable to be concerned, there seems little merit in worrying what might have happened this season if we had not had someone we did have? The time to worry about next season will surely be on September 2nd when we know what we have then? We have no say in this and what will be will be regardless.

Its not like an organised protest is going to persuade the owner to deviate from his plan either is it.

 

I don't think it is as easy as that.
A comparable would be saying that, without Shearer's goals we would have never gotten into Europe.

 

I agree about the protest though I think that we should start worrying well before the window closes.

 

Why would we worry though. They do as they please. You're probably right though because the business has usually been done long before the window closes so we'll know early enough what the plan is. Ba and Remy were both in place well before the window crazy time malarky. I fully expect us to have a striker with a decent enough record of guaranteeing us enough goals to stay in the league. I just don't expect any more than that.

 

Brilliant insight but it does entail certain complications.

It is a key principle of good mental health that you should avoid worrying about things that you can't influence. As we can't control the transfer policy, there is no point worrying before 2 September, after 2 September, upon entering the relegation zone or at any other time or circumstance whatsoever.

No point in getting excited about things we can't control either, or in taking pleasure in the occurrence of an event to which we in no way contributed (given our inability to influence anything).

In fact, everything we write on this board is a pointless waste of time. The only course for a merciful moderator to take would be to shut it down NOW.

 

I'm not one to pick on individuals, when stuff goes wrong, and it has gone horribly wrong a few times this season it's always a summation of shortcomings.

Our best players (that's qualty, their importance to the team, and their effectivity to decide football matches) in order, probably are:

Remy
Colo
Debuchy
Gouf
Tiote
Sissoko
Krul
(Anita, Willo?)

The rest of them... even judged in good spirit, are not capable of adding value, rather they're being carried, they're interchangeable, and it's more a question of how bad will they screw up and cost us in the game they're being used in, than what they might do to win us a game/prevent us from conceeding. Needless to say, ideally you don't want any of those players in a squad. Of course you cannot afford the luxury of having 23 first team reliable players, but you want to at least have say 16 players in the squad that can start the football match without blatantly weakening the team. Well, we don't have that. We don't have 11 of those players. We basically have about 8, maybe 10 of them including two goalkeepers. Two of the main guys not playing, we start getting seriously stretched and under pressure, 3 or 4, we're totally screwed. Alas what we've seen the last few games. With that team out there, we will not win another game this season, barring devine intervention (that's random sending offs, own goals or falsely awarded penalties).

Questions should be asked of the manager of course, since there are players in the squad, such as Cissé and Ben Arfa that clearly are not playing as well as they can, but there's also a whole bunch of dross in there that is beyond fixing and fielding them makes the team that much more weaker, it's robbed of any competive quality. If you asked the leagues managers who they would wish to play next game, 19/20 would probably answer us.

At this stage it looks like we've lost one too many of the our steady performers. The one that broke the mules back so to speak. So the whole team needs overhauling. We've done it before. When Enrique, Carroll, Barton and Nolan left.

 

Well said