The thing that's irritated me most this season is that our performances in general have been so disappointing. How many games have we looked really good throughout? I can only think of the match against Blackburn, and that was against, well, Blackburn. I was very impressed with the performance away to Stoke, but we faded in the second-half. On the flip-side we've rarely looked awful, but even with this squad that lacks depth I'd expect us to play better.
Apparently Pardew states we play 'possession football'. It's certainly an odd form of possession football given the ease at which we give the ball away and the difficulty for many of our players to find space. Instead we opt for the long balls, and that's pretty ineffective as well as being ugly.
I'm not sure what Ben Arfa's place in our team is - apparently he's not a winger but he doesn't look suited to the support striker role either as he isn't given a great deal of freedom in this league. I'm not disappointed Obertan is out against his old club as he is simply awful, it has to be said. It will probably be Sammy Ameobi there, but I wouldn't mind seeing Ryan Taylor on the right because he can offer a fairly good delivery even if he lacks the skill and pace.
Pardew shouldn't be exempt from criticism, but the fact we're 7th with a pretty weak squad can't be ignored. We have class in Krul, Coloccini and Ba. Cabaye looks like a good player but I've not been overly impressed and Tiote seems very hit and miss. Perhaps Ben Arfa is class also, but he hasn't looked it so far. We then have liabilities at full-back, a hard-working but ineffective left-winger and an incompetent right-winger regularly starting for us - it's a pretty imbalanced squad in the end.