CB Fry

I think this qualifies as a situation where whatever Koeman said people would put a negative spin on it.

I always see an endorsement from Jason Cundy as the platform for an outstanding season. This is going to take some getting over.

It's been locked from the start, with updates added by the mods as they appear.

Nothing says "the true spirit of football" like pining over the impossible dream of having a stadium on an out of town trading estate. There could have been a Frankie and Benny's and everything. Oh I wish we could be like Reading, I wish we could be like Reading.

I don't understand why people don't understand that. It's pretty obvious why he does it like that.

Yes, someone is definitely making naive assumptions here.

Because we're not Sunderland.

The kind of transfer we would never do. Which is fine.

Delgado £12m. Delap £2.5m.

Stoneham would have been absolutely fu cking sh it so it always makes me laugh when people still grizzle about it not happening. How great we could have been in a 25,000 out of town stadium just off a motorway junction. Oh, the humanity.

Dear god.

That you are.

Lowe didn't sell 8 players in two years or whatever the number is that Delldays/Batman likes to use. Quite frankly Lowe did a brilliant job of keeping our Prem squad together. Maybe one sold a season - the dream Everton model, surely?

I concur.

In the anticipation of a clutch of European fixtures we have loaded up the squad with reasonable/average filler. Following yesterday's debacle that now looks rather silly. We've beedn unlucky in not having a fit Clasie - him being any good early on (in the way Tadic and Pelle did) might have built some confidence. Still think VVD is coming but that probably is it for the window.

No.

Why not at least compare it to our 2014/15 team, the one that recorded our best finish in 30 odd years and our highest points tally on the Premier League era. Seems a slightly strange need to pretend last season didn't happen with some people. Why is that?

We've already been better than anything he did.

He's gone and it worked out fine. He's not coming back either. Get over it.

We didn't have much heart and soul when we choked out of the cups pretty appallingly last season, and the season before that. Today's abomination is not unrelated to those.

Has no one started a Jack Cork thread yet?

I think that is really pessimistic at this stage. But he wouldn't be the first one season wonder in the Premier League. Steve Clarke unraveled pretty quickly after WBA finished eighth, too.

Pardew took Newcastle to the Quarter finals and I think Everton did last season. I said in my hopes for the season we would emulate that, but I expected at least to have the group stages to enjoy. It feels like we built the squad expecting this too, Koeman probably instrumental in that. I'd say the realisation that he ballsed this up pretty bad tonight was written all over his face in that post match, and I think he has probably got a couple of players he might not need now, or he's worried that he might not be able to sign the one or two additional players he wanted. Back down to earth, anyway.

We'll finish mid table, and fingers crossed for a nice cup run in either of the cups. We've got a bit of squad bulk now which might help that. Gutted we are out of Europe already, but on that performance (across both legs) we deserve to be. A club like ours is going to run hot and cold in any season - we did last season, with a terrible run in December and again towards the end of the season. We'll have a hot run again sometime soon, which will start putting points on the board and take us into the dull security of twelfth or thirteenth. From their we might build towards ninth, or not. Who knows.

Don't say unlucky Ronald. Don't moan about last week's match. Come on.