it is time

marshy brought off a real quality save from jerome, but still feel i want to rotate. i am not saying rotate for rotates sake, but feel we need to. by all reports declan john was star man of the match and ben turner the worst. ben is one of the casualties of our haemorrhaging at the back. the time has come for a bit more surgery and bring back mark hudson. i suggested this before stoke. the man is a born leader.

its four, four, two chaps so somebody to move out. medel to partner gunnarson in the middle with bellers on one flank and whitts on the other. not set in stone as i may go for odemwingie or noone. cornelius and campbell up front under the watchful eye of our (new) manager

Hudson is slow, so it would be a risk playing him. He could be very badly exposed at this level.

I don't know where to start with this Dave, other than to say that there is no easy solution.

Just like Stoke, we had no control at all.  It was all one-touch-hoof and head-tennis.  Whitts, Kimbo and Mutch were simply awful........I don't think they found each other with a pass all day and consistently were caught in possession.....I don't know about Cowie, as we didn't see much of him.  Medel has been found out in that it is clear that he doesn't play the ball forward as effectively as he does sideways.

Noone came on at half-time and although there were a couple of flashes and a good cross late on, nobody gave him the ball.

Campbell never had a chance as, again, there was no supply to him.

Jerome and Chamakh pressured the back four all day and Turner, in particular, looked hurried and uncomfortable for the second game running.  Plenty of effoty from Katie-Cathy, but he had nowhere to go most of the time and he eventually resorted to the Turner hoof-it-away tactic.

The icing on the cake was bringing on our saviour-in-waiting Cornelius and employing the same tactic of hoofing the long ball towards him.  We could have saved £7.5m and been equally (in)effective with Rudy instead.

Tony Pulis and his team have done wonders with the Palace players they have inherited, a team which, from I have watched, have played with plenty of spirit from the off this season.

Palace offer a demonstration of what can be done with a group of players given a change of direction by new thinking.........that is what we need......now!

Medel isn't ineffective, it's just that we don't have a back up plan. As our defenders can only play long balls, whenever we try and play it out from the back the ball HAS to go through Medel as he plays so deep he links the midfield and defence. Therefore it's pretty obvious that if you mark Medel the defenders can't give him the ball and then we hopelessly lump it upfield, bypassing Mutch and Kim and asking Campbell to run down blind alleys after it.

I like Turner but if he doesn't sort his one touch football out he will keep causing us problems. As seen against Man Utd, if he is pressured, he f**ks it up. We can't expect Medel to be our ONLY outlet from defence as we will keep being found out.

And if we don't bring in a proper winger things will continue. We don't have ANY capable at this level as Kim isn't a true winger (although he is very classy and capable) and Cowie is a workhorse. Noone isn't quite good enough either. Either Aaron Lennon (who is only averaging half of Spurs matches this season) or Jefferson Montero who is highly rated by many need to come in during January or we simply won't be able to provide any decent balls into whoever is playing up front.

Agree with everything written here! We look classic relegation fodder, a team on the evidence of the last two games is clueless and increasingly heartless!
One thing to suggest we change the gaffer but for who? The obvious choice was Pulis, ironically available when the massed hordes were singing "don't sack Mackay" but no longer!