Thankfully, Derby are still more rubbish than us, while Wigan have the same record over the past five games. Not great reading, eh? Enough negativity, though, it’s time to eject some positive vibes into this piece. Arsenal’s talisman, the absurdly talented Francesc Fabregas misses out, as do the almost equally gifted Robin van Persie, Alex Hleb, Abou Diaby and Mathieu Flamini – all midfielders, bar the lad who has the Craig David remix to his name. I have to say, it’s refreshing to see a club with such a position-specific injury list almost as ridiculous as ours.

As well as that slice of fortune, Steven Taylor could be back to partner David Rozehnal in the centre of our defence, Stephen Carr is injured again (he did alright against Blackburn, actually) and we simply cannot be as bad as we were ten days ago here against Liverpool… can we!? …Nah man! Have some faith! Hopefully the atmosphere and the performance will be miles better than what we witnessed against the Merseysiders, but they seem to go hand-in-hand these days, unfortunately.

The visitors will be clear favourites for this one – something we’re growing more and more used to at St. James’ – but we’ve given them a rough ride here on numerous occasions in recent times with worse teams/managers than we have now, let’s put our hands together and pray that we do more than that come tomorrow night, because we absolutely need to. Optimism is the order of the day, because – and whisper this quietly – if Allardyce loses this game, then he becomes the first manager ever to lose 3 consecutive Premiership home games at this club. So, howay the lads!

I’ve made my views regarding Allardyce known by now. However, I’m not one for booing. Lets support the club and the players first and formost and get behind them. Booing won’t help them.

It seems as though I’m saying this all the time, but we MUST play 4-4-2 and we MUST have Zoggy and Milner on the wings in order to stand a chance. Enough of playing players out of position and enough of the fancy tactics and formations, we really MUST go back to basics.

I think Allardyce knows this, well I hope he knows this and the Arsenal game could be his last chance. If I’m being honest, I don’t think it should be his last chance and if we lose to Arsenal, he should still be in charge for the Birmingham game. However, I do feel alot of the problems this season have been his fault.

Unlike with Roeder and Souness, you can actually see where Allardyce is getting it wrong. Strange substitutions, awkward tactics, strange formations, negative approaches - it’s not right, but if he makes the relevant changes, there’s no reason why he can’t get it right.

We have to go into games now, gunning for the victory; home or away. Hopefully we can start that on Wednesday night, in front of 52,000 supportive fans.