Hodgey

When we went 2 goals down I didn't think we would get back into it as the players loked so crestfallen. So credit to them for their continued belief. Orient were extremely average and that is putting it kindly - make no mistake this is two points dropped. So how can we improve ? 1) James - I know a lot of people on here think he has fantastic delivery but I don't agree. He doesn't have the pace a full back needs and for every 1 lofted cross that a striker takes advantage of there are 10 that would not be out of place in the sunday league. If he is our best corner taker then there is something very very wrong as lofting a ball into the box is food and drink for most keepers even in this league - also not good enough defensively, it worrys me how many crosses (and subsequent goals) come in unopposed from our right. 2) 4-5-1, I get why Pardew does it, when he took over, away from home we were fragile so packing the midfield to win the battle and outplay teams from there makes sense, however it means you need to make a sub and inevitably no manager would ever make a sub after 25 mins which is when we need to go to 4-4-2. 3) Has anyone else noticed that Scneiderlin and Hamond look miles better when Wotton is off the field. I'm not having a go at Wotton here as I think he is playing well but Pardew needs to ensure that if all 3 are on the pitch that they understand what their roles are - to me all 3 sit back far too much yet when they are down to 2 they seem to know when to go forwards and when to sit back - very strange. Yes luck didn't go our way today, but our finishing was also poor and I'm still very unconvinced about our set piece play both defensively and attacking which in this league is worth c 20 points alone. Encouraging but at the moment not good enough to hit the play offs.

Players is the answer. When you go down you lose your premiership quality players but retain the players who took you down. They are generally on 2-3 yr contracts and you cannot get rid of them as they are poor players on high money, but you then fall into the trap of buying new (generally average) players due to fans/board demand to get back in the Prem without getting rid of the dead wood. Then you are competing with lean, motivated outfits moving up the leagues and start your perennial slide. Consider this -I'm informed we have 32 players and a wage bill of £180k a week (£9.4m a year). Anyone think we have got value for money there ??? - thats probably double wages of a number of teams finishing above us. Charlton and Norwich are similar (although slightly less wasteful)

He has one thing the rest of our team do not - raw pace. If you watch a game, even if he plays poorly, opposing defenses drop back or double up on him which should give the rest of the team more room to play. The actual issue is that we are not good enough to take advantage of this. He changed the game when he came on against QPR because of this. If our coaches cannot get the most out of him then they arn't very good - we've been here before when we all slagged him off, he went to Burnley who used him properly and he was one of their best players, and we all moaned, then he came back and was used inappropriatly again. What's more interesting is that with Schneiderlin and Holmes not playing we lose our only effective weapon - which is the long ball from the half way line to the left touchline where Holmes sits. Need a plan B