Pardew: 'Fans Criticised Us Playing 4-5-1'

Last updated : 13 February 2012 By Footy Mad - Editor

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Alan Pardew: “We have to take it on the chin.

“We can’t dwell on it.

“The Press and fans have criticised us when we have played 4-5-1 at times this year. Now they understand why.

“We’re not going to come up against a team like that for a while, maybe Man City near the end as they’ll be going for the title with two games to go.

“That might be something we need to look at for then, but I don’t think we will play a team as good as Tottenham, and in the same emotional state that they were in.

“They wanted to prove to the manager they wanted him to say.”

"The fortnight’s break is welcome, it’s probably a good thing. We can forget about this.

“The second half was about not losing our heads, and being disciplined.

“We did that. That’s all we could do – the game was gone.

“It was evident at 4-4-2 we could not cope with them. They were just too good.

“Sometimes that happens, and unfortunately for us we’ve got a scoreline that we wouldn’t want.

"On the positive side for us, we were 4-0 down at half-time, and could have lost our heads and been silly.

“We could have lost somebody to a sending off, but we didn’t. I can only think of Spurs having two attacks in the second half.

“We did better. We’ll take that to the next game. We’ll take the embarrassment of the headlines on the chin, and go to the next game.

“We have two good strikers, but they didn’t have a chance.

“Papiss isn’t going to win you the game when you’re 2-0 down after five minutes. We need to be able to cope with having two strikers."