Pardew might have got better performances than Sam in the matches mentioned where we didn't show up, that's probably fair. I won't take last season's win against Chelsea away from Pardew as we were flying at the time but it must be said, Chelsea weren't great last season and the popular tactic was to attack Ivanovic at right back, which we did successfully as well.

The points that will be more important come survival are:

Sam was, is, and always will be a better equipped manager.

His signings are far better overall.

These 2 points will hopefully make either Sam's long term stay more welcome than Pardew's, or smoother and/or more successful for his successor rather than a repeat of what we've just gone through.

And if he'd been brought in earlier we wouldn't be discussing a few points difference. And Sam would without doubt get more points than Pardew from the start of the season so I don't see the point in discussing how Pardew would get a few more points whilst still eroding fitness, spirit etc to further damage our future. Oh and which other signings would he have picked off back page of the mirror in the Harry Redknapp mould?

Last season it was in the middle of the Mourinho bonkersness and Chelsea were well down the table and s***e. We might almost have been expected to beat them.

What stood out to me, is we seem to now have the quality to put chances away, 3 pops on target give us 2 goals, having said that, when chelsea scored i was like, here we go and expected it to fall apart, but the fans stayed loud, the players heads didn't drop and the fitness and desire was there for the whole game.
We saw against swansea what fatigue and extra time (with no game plan) does, compared to yesterday where we shut up shop.

Yesterday's match is this season's marker to aspire to, all warriors.