I tend to agree with this TL. I was also struck with what Roy said afterwards, namely that we didn't attack enough. In other words, he didn't send the team out simply to defend, as a number of posters seem to assume.

I give Lampard credit for playing Kante and Jorghino who, along with their captain, broke up what few attempts we made at quick counter attacks.

Far too early to judge us this season. With Cahill, PvA and Tomkins back in training, we should look better come the end of the month.

Also we do need to see Batshuayi given a run (probably at Ayew's expense, assuming Wilf doesn't suddenly leave today).

Finally, I would only play ONE out of McArthur, McCarthy and Luka so that Jairo plays as well as Eze and Townsend/Ayew.

You have to look at when they fouled us in relation to the score at the time OK, otherwise yes you're right, but I think about eight of our fouls towards them occurred after they had scored two of their goals which means frustration to me, you have to look at the fouls when the score was still 0-0 and with the possibility of us actually being able to cause them problems, you also have to faction in that we created their first for them and that we still held a threat towards them until the second so you have to take note of their fouling towards us until about then really don't you.

nearly got us relegated is the same as 'just enough to stay up', which is our current mandate. Yet that's ok?

Different contexts. Had Pardew stayed till the end of the 2016/17 season, we almost certainly would have been relegated having won just 1 of 11 and in 17th place when he was sacked at Christmas 2016.

That would have been interesting as he would have certainly shown interest in Susanna!

You could say this and largely be correct. However, a couple of points: firstly, when you play as deep and defensive as us, when you break you get caught in your own half or near the halfway line. Therefore, teams can foul you and not risk much from the resulting free kicks. If we were set up a bit further up the pitch this would make it harder for teams to do it, as the free kicks could result in shots or decent deliveries into the box. That leads to the other thing that has been frustrating for a while now. We never go direct with free kicks, we barely take any quickly and we look like we don't practice them. That is down to management.
Consider that Ayew and Wilf were amongst the most fouled players last season, even consider we had 17 free kicks against Chelsea: one looked dangerous, nobody got to it.
We are poor at set pieces, and we could change this. If we're always going to be fouled in the middle of the park, then why not bring up the big guys and put the ball in the box? Other teams including top sides would. We could score loads more goals if only we bothered with free kicks. Passing sideways or backwards is just encouraging teams to foul us. We're not dangerous from set pieces and the opposition know it. They wouldn't do the fouls if we were.

Red and Blue Army!