Can we have some good news please?

You can't expect to win football matches with ten men and you simply can't with nine. That was the trouble at Cardiff on Saturday in a nutshell. That, and the fact that we couldn't score again when we did have chances. "Unlucky" would probably be a fair assessment but that's the way it goes and we will now have to cope without Hudson and Semedo.

The table doesn't make pleasant viewing with us having slid to 19th, although a better way of looking at is to say we are four points of 6th and five off 22nd. Alan Pardew needs another Valley win tomorrow night to again ease the self-inflicted pressure. Our failure to secure back-to-back wins since December last year is also becoming a problem, although the next two, at home to Bristol City and then at home again to Burnley gives us a decent opportunity.

Rumblings elsewhere in the press that Zabeel might have lost interest does little to lighten the mood and we have to consider the real prospect that a failure to conclude the deal could leave us in a real mess. 

As if things aren't bad enough, Mrs P and I have been laid low with dysentry (or something similar) since devouring something from Pizza Hut on Saturday evening. I should have learnt my lesson last year when I had exactly the same experience. I'm blaming Alan Pardew as we rejected the idea of cooking ourselves in need of comfort food to make us feel better after the grim news from Cardiff. They can change the name to Pasta Hut if they want but I am never making this mistake again.