BigWalrus

93% pass completion percentage for Jonas on Saturday. Matched only by James Perch.

Bang on. His first touch is a massive giveaway that he’s not a proper footballer. I remember a moment in the first half on Saturday. I think it was either Jonas or Anita who was in an advanced position. Simpson was in acres of space, roughly in line with the edge of their box, near the touchline. All he needed to do was take the pace off the ball and whip a ball into the box. Instead, his first touch was straight to their full back and they counter-attacked. He’s the master of turning attack into defence.

Zonal marking applies across the midfield as well as the defence, if that's the way you want to play.

Zonal football is incredibly tricky to pull off. Unless you have top quality players in every single position, you'll fail at it. Barcelona can pull it off because their team consists of the best players in the world. Trying to play zonally with our current side is suicide. Danny Simpson, for instance, would struggle to mark a traffic cone, so expecting him to operate zonally with movement may be a stretch too far.

I've consistently achieved decent results with a slab of rump. It's easy to find fairly lean rump steaks too.

24! Looks like she's had a tough (time working her way through all the lads who do the) paper round.

All good points, but he's got a reputation for keeping the balls from going over the line.

Yes I do regard it as an inaccurate observation. We were difficult to beat, we generally were decent at keeping possession and we scored some bloody brilliant goals. I struggle to think of a season when we scored so many first class goals.

That's an incredibly pessimistic view!

I give it it 5-7 years before I pack the game in. I feel less and less association with the players on the pitch with each passing year. When I was younger, losing used to ruin my day. Now I can get over it quite quickly and move on with my life. Maybe my priorities have changed and I have more important things in my life.

I've always found sealing the meat makes bugger all difference. The flour will help thicken the gravy / sauce though.

Sounds class. I did a shoulder of pork over 6 hours in the oven and we just whacked it in the middle of the table and picked at it with a fork. Lovely though.

Our complete lack of organisation the other night left us needing a bit of last minute shopping in. Went to Sainsburys and they'd reduced an absolute shit load of meat. Got a huge chunky 28 day aged ribeye for £1.35 (reduced from nearly £8 originally). It was on it's date, but it went straight in the freezer and was vacuum sealed. Also got a pack of honey marinated smoked mackerel (which is brilliant) for about 80p, reduced from £4. Also on it's date, but whacked in the freezer. Must have spent about a tenner and ended up with about £45 worth of meat / fish. My favourite at the minute is a slow cooked Mediterranean style chicken thing. Pack of chicken thighs, pan fried to brown, whack in a chopped onion and a few chopped cloves of garlic and a bit of seasoning to taste. Once that's done to your liking, stick in a couple of tins of chopped tomatoes, half a glass of red and leave it on a very low heat (or put in the oven) for about 90 minutes. The chicken thighs are juicy and tender and moreish. Plus it's filling enough to the point that you don't really need any rice or pasta with it, so it's reasonably low in carbs. Easy enough to whack in a a chopped pepper, a can of cannellini beans, chorizo or lardons too if you want to spice it up a bit. Plus you can easily make a batch and eat it over a couple of days or take a bit for lunch.

Ah bollocks, just had another crack and you're right. In which case, as it's direct, it counts and it's a goal. Should have read the bloody question.

Proper BOBFOC.

This is not good news. However, on the bright side, once we finally get our core of Coloccini, Tiote, Cabaye and Gutierrez playing together again, we might have the excitement of a relegation battle to look forward to.

7/12 My favourite situation came up - keeper kicks a goal kick into his own net. That results in a corner being awarded. I'd love to see that one tested out!

200% committed to retaining his loyalty bonus when he leaves.

Far from it being a simple solution, but the big issue yesterday was being over-run in midfield. Their five was essentially up against three of us. I don't count Ben Arfa as a proper midfielder as there isn't an awful lot from him in terms of tracking runs, tackling etc. With Ba and Cisse / Shola both playing fairly high up the pitch, there was a huge gap between our front two and the lads behind, meaning long balls were almost inevitable. If Tiote and Cabaye are both in the middle and playing well, we can often get away with such a tactic, but our midfield yesterday simply wasn't up to scratch. Anita has a canny pass on him, but he just isn't the physical presence of Tiote, and against a team like West Ham you need someone who can match them physically. Cisse is an altogether different problem. He looks like a completely different player. Last season (goals aside) his first touch was magnetic, he was taking players on, dropping deep, looking for the ball. Jimmy Savile had a more effective first touch than Cisse has now. I don't envy Pardew though - he has a lot of problems to sort out.

Smooth!

Cabaye has missed Tiote. He looks lost in midfield without his sidekick.

It was on Radio 2 the other night, so presumably it has some basis in fact.

Must be a piss take. But it's brilliant nonetheless. Reminds me of a story a mate told me, about a lad who rang up Babestation and discussed Shearer's receding hairline with the lass on the screen.

Looks like a dog version of Max Clifford

Most centre backs would as good strikers tend to be pacier. We were caught out (on both occasions) playing too high up the pitch. The Suarez goal was more down to a brilliant first touch from Suarez. Last night's was just raw pace. I don't think any of our other defenders would have fared better unfortunately.