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If we learnt anything against Hull it's how much we rely on Andy Reid. Pardew has often been criticised for playing Reid in a role where everything has to go through him, but on the face of it you can now see why.
The thing that disappointed me the most was that nobody else took the step up to take responsibility. This was Ambrose's chance to be the playmaker. Thomas's chance to show he's not just a one-trick-stepover-pony. Sam's chance to show his skills against a side who would be gunning for him after the trip to the KC earlier in the year.
But what happened? Nothing. I can't remember a single decent move, no invention. All we did was resort to lumping it up to Iwelumo and hoping his flick-ons would reach, er, nobody in the first half and a confidence-shot McLeod in the second.
What I don't understand is why we didn't simply go for it. We were playing at home in a formation that relies on creativity to get the wide men supporting a lone striker, yet we were missing the vital element. If we started with a 4-4-2 of McLeod and Iwelumo it would have given us something different.
For a start, we should have played a central midfield pairing of Zheng Zhi and Semedo. They both have the tackling and the ability to play a telling pass forward, whereas Holland is forever looking sideways. This would have given the opportunity to play 2 from Ambrose, Thomas or Sam to push the Hull defence down the wings and support the forward paring.
We'll see what Pardew has in store for my trip to Norwich on Boxing Day, but I really hope he just goes for it. A point was worth nothing to us yesterday – if we want to have any hope of getting out of this division we need to start showing some desire to attack and scare teams. People fear playing West Brom – we need to be the same.
If the opposition keeps thinking they can turn us over at The Valley, we're in trouble before we've even started.
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