80

I definitely like the idea of loyalty, but I think some people are being weirdly touchy about the idea of any man choosing to leave another club to join us. It's not inherently a disreputable thing to do, it's just a question of how it's gone about. Same as a footballer.

I get the vibe he's genuinely not sure whether passing or taking a shot himself is more likely to benefit the team oftentimes. Partly as he's extremely good at shooting so the choice is less obvious than it would be for most players. But it is something he'd benefit a lot from resolving.

The original suggestion was that the clause could only be activated by a certain club/s e.g. Real Madrid could use it but Arsenal would have to negotiate from scratch as usual. No idea if true.

To be honest, this could be interpreted as throwing the team under the bus, if you didn't want to be charitable...

Got to say I'd be fucking lambasting Pardew for coming out with something like that. Hopefully he's just lying to cover up something he sees as a deeper problem. Assuming it's real.

He had a few sniffs but didn't seem to have any ideas he believed he could execute when up against their defenders.

Probably, although I don't think those thoughts are mutually exclusive. I didn't take Geo's post as meaning "I need to get out of this shit hole". I think Bruno deserves a ton of credit for taking the attitude he always has so far.

Yeah I had that thought. A bad night for the club.

Not sure what people are seeing in present day Karius to be so convinced he's worse than current day Dubravka.

A player doesn't need to be forced to the ground for it to be a penalty either. Although admittedly it makes it more likely for the ref to blow his whistle. Unless you're Sean Longstaff.

Well, fair play for the accurate comments. The 2 minutes thing is funny, but entirely true. In the first few actions of the game we looked confident and purposeful. And then we didn't. My impression is the motivation was wrong - trying to overperform, leading to rushed passes, naive pressing and snatched tackles. Credit to Crystal Palace, they were really good tonight, which contributed to us looking bad. This was a long way from our worst performance this season. But in a way that makes it all the more disturbing that we were comprehensively outdone by them tonight. If there was a team here that you'd think would be making a champions league push next season, it certainly wasn't us. We were shifting momentum at the end of the first half and beginning of the second, and starting to turn the screw, but they had so much more zest and potency than us, ultimately - despite us having had 10 days of rest and training.

Yep. Thought he was trying to take responsibility and put himself about, at least.

Thought he was one of our better players. Anonymous in most of the first half, but worked himself into the game and dictated a lot of any decent tempo we had. Certainly not his best performance, but he didn't have much to work with around him.

I don't blame him for the penalty decision even though it was wrong. Wouldn't be surprised if it being Longstaff hitting the floor put him off. But what is the benefit of VAR, again? It's turned an "oh well nevermind" into a "what the fuck", as usual.

Really weak performance tonight. They had his number from the first whistle. Was hoping he'd pull it around with a crack from outside the box, but it never came. Glad Eddie took the initiative and withdrew him. Tonight was definitely not his night.