Peter Stamp has sent us a couple of things in the past few days…the first piece is below. Short and succinct.

Thoughts and feelings?

Well – feelings are pretty easy. But we all feel the same way, so let’s stick to thoughts.

Palace had a lot more pace (and organisation) than Newcastle and frankly we just couldn’t handle it. In hindsight the formation probably played into their hands, but Dick needs results and had just seen us get a great result with that formation, so I can understand him staying with it. But the one enforced change made defensive cover weaker and O’ Shea was cruelly exposed – he had one of the worst games I’ve seen from a Sunderland centre-half, reminiscent of the early days of Richie Pitt.

Do we really dare to turn to Coates? Maybe we should ask ‘could he really be any worse’? What we can do, however is make the formation more solid Needs must, and a boring 4-4-2 would be better for grinding out some results, and would allow Johnson back in, instead of Fletcher (Wickham has improved under Advocaat).

Let’s do more grinding…

Peter