I don't think anyone is happy with the position we find ourselves in and it does puzzle me given that in theory we have a stronger squad than last season.

In retrospect maybe we should not have sold Gayle as he potentially would have thrived playing with Benteke but we will never know and we should all realise that scoring goals in the championship is a little easier than in the premiership.

Losing Soare has been a massive blow and without doubt a replacement must be our number one priority in the window plus a defensive midfielder who can protect the defence and play out from the back and most importantly we need to get some support for Benteke.

Do I blame Pardew? No not really, he isn't always getting it right but the team also have to take some responsibility for lapses of concentration. We never do it the easy way and at the start of the season talk of Europe was probably a bit premature. Survival is the key and with some decent additions in the window I think we will survive.

I thought we were poor against United but much better against Chelsea. I curse international breaks because we seemed to have started to hit some form and then came back like headless chickens. Everyone is entitled to their opinion about the manager and the players but i hope we get behind the team as usual whoever is playing or managing.

Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I don't like that attitude. I can assure them it is much more serious than that.

First rule of life - back a fellow when he's down on his luck.

All these anti-Pardew posts are so boring. Give the bloke a break, and let's help him to turn things round.

Nothing worse than gloomy, defeatist, flaky fans.

..is that not the reason we have a goalkeeper and the same reason the opposition have one as well?

..goal diff and all that, against teams you play as they come, against chelsea and Man.U we had difficulty breaking through their defending because weirdly they have probably the best players playing for them, you pay huge amounts of money and you get really good players in return, it usually does go that way, then against teams like ourselves who have players like ourselves it can depend sometimes on which way the wind is blowing, recently we bought a really good striker for lots and lots of money and surprise, surprise, he has only gone and scored goals and given our whole attacking play a meaningful sense of purpose, our defending though has been blown off course and we are now utterly and totally dooooooomed because there is no way we can fix it, we have no more time!

HHHEEELLLLLPPPPPPP!

I remember something quite similar with somebody called Ramage or something like that, we got relegated fifteen times! ..we don't learn do we.