Capitulation par excellence, so why?

Why with virtually the same group of players can we go from playing some tremendous free flowing explosive counter attacking football with a tight defence to something so starkly different today or should I say tonight.

By the way tonight's result doesn't surprise me in the slightest, we always fail to deliver when expected especially at home and as they say the table never lies.

If you recall we came off the rails at Villa Park losing 1-0 to the then bottom team (nearly the same) who hadn't won since God made Hovis and the rest is History. I believe at this point that Pardew's arrogance and with it his handling of players, specifically the senior ones split the dressing room. This let's not forget didn't just happen with us but at most of his previous clubs so he should have looked at himself and worked to correct what was his problem. Given his opinion of himself that had about as much chance of success as finding rocking horse s---e. One thing that any player must have is to respect their manager; this doesn't mean that they have to like him.
Any respect drained from the Villa match IMO.

The writing was on the wall and how SP didn't sack him far earlier is something known only to him but I suspect it had a lot to do with the American investment and wanting to portray a stable business model. We then had transfer windows where not enough quality players were bought in the right positions, a fact which, has been voiced on numerous occasions on here and the results of which, SA has on his plate today.

The here and now is that we are a side bereft of confidence and with it spirit. We lack a leader and no we can't get Jedi back, he is the past and we have to move on. I have said in another post that IMO we need a new captain as the armband is affecting Scott's game and that Damo is that man.

Up front we have a striker in Benteke who is not playing anywhere near his potential or price outlay. I remember that terrific goal when he was at Villa, think it was against Everton when he picked up the ball from the half way line ending with an explosive shot and goal; he did a similar thing to us. You don't become a bad player overnight and we know it's there it's now up to Sam to get it out of him and shake off the attitude that he has that he is Gods gift to football. At the moment Christian you are not so get working and show us what you can do.

In this short transfer window we need to buy players who not only have quality but character and this won't be easy given our current predicament. Sam will have to use his book of contacts and our players will have to roll up their sleeves and dig in.

The plus side is that Jimmy Mac will be coming back, Benteke must fizz soon, our defence surely cannot play any worse than tonight and Sam's healing powers must kick in shortly.

Wilf going to the AFCON is not the best but could be a stage for KaiKai to show his talents. Bournemouth could be a turning point, let's hope and never lose the faith, difficult though it is at present.

Bring back Brolin

Fair post. Also we need to get behind the team and club. As someone just said on another thread, it's easy to be negative at this time but much harder to be positive. Constant negativity won't get us anywhere. Self-defeating.

Did you know? 98.0000001% of people are morons.