Not been able to post my thoughts on until now, but the frustration that I felt by half time yesterday remains.
We do not have a hope in hell of staying up unless we can get on the pitch every single week, Evans, Krycho, Gibbs and Chadli.
As soon as the team was announced yesterday I was fearful, but laid no blame at the door of Pardew for this, it was more or less all he could possibly select such is how imbalanced our squad is after three years of that utter cretin and the past year of an awful chairman.
I would gladly see anyone play for the remainder of the season in place of Matt Phillips. He is done in my eyes, nothing he can do will make me warm to the lad. As awful as the team selection was yesterday, we were at least containing them, then he bottles a 50/50 on the halfway line, they win a corner and score. He then completely fails to track Bertrand, finally getting back to him at the expense of a corner and they go ahead and after that there was no way back for us. The minimum I expect is for every player to put in a shift, and they all did yesterday, aside from him. He had 10 games last season where he set the world alight, other than that he has been utter garbage for us.
Yacob and Barry as a midfield pairing was never going to work. I love Claudio but he can only play when you have a three man central midfield and should have been removed as soon as we went 2-1 down as he was never going to provide what we needed from the attacking perspective.
We should not have brought McClean on. He is utterly awful, even if/when we go down to the Championship I would still be looking to sell him as I still do not think he has the footballing brain even for that level. We were starting to generate momentum but he came on and lost the ball at every opportunity and put his only crosses behind the goal. Useless.
G Mac has been a fantastic servant for us, but their #9 had him on toast in the hour he was on for, winning every header. Everyone knows my take on Nyom already so no point in me venturing down that rabbit hole.
I honestly do not see us staying up. The only hope is that we get everyone back from injury and can play the 11 players we have who are up to this level every game, because the squad is truly awful.
I certainly do not think it's too early to play the blame game and the number one person in my cross hairs in that respect in John Williams. I do not profess to having a knowledge of the football world on the same level as those paidan inordinate amount of money to know the workings of that world, but I could see exactly what was coming this season if we retained Pulis and gave him another transfer window in charge. Check my old posts, it is all in there. So no one can even accuse me of saying any of this in hindsight. Our Chinese owners who know nothing about football, have no footballing contacts, are paying this man an absolute fortune to run our club and for that decision alone, he should be shown the door immediately.
I do not mind us going down, I will start going to away games again if we do and don't mind the fan base in the Championship as it is the loyal core as opposed to the day trip fans, but ultimately I want success for my club and I want to see the quality players playing for my club, so you can imagine my delight at us getting in Krychowiak and Sturridge, which would of course never happen in the Championship.