Lee On Solent Saint

To be fair to Salisu I thought he did ok. When you factor he has not played for so long, it was a decent showing. Not sure he can be considered a regular starter yet, but this surely pushes Stephens down to 4th choice now.

Agree with this. Forster deserves another go in my opinion. McCarthy doesn't exactly fill me with confidence lately, and you can't really argue with four clean sheets in four games. Even if Forster hasn't really been tested.

Big decision for Ralph on Sunday then. Keep FF in goal?

Well that's three and a half games for FF without conceding!

Hopefully we have been practising penalties!

You missed out! I think one of my favourite moments at the Old Dell was the 2-1 victory over Newcastle. We were so out of the game it was untrue. Queue two Le Tissier moments of magic to turn around that game. I think you could argue all day which goal was the better one!

And that's saying something considering the competition! Am reminded of Ian Branfoot's insistence of playing Paul Moody ahead of Le Tiss back in the day

For me neither of them inspire much confidence, throw in Gunn and our keeper situation is average to say the least. I'd look to maybe keep McCarthy as back up and bring someone else in. No idea who though.

Be interesting to see if he is cast aside like PEH was when he made it pretty obvious he wasn't going to sign. Maybe the fact that he isn't captain will save him from that fate.

Think I took a bit of a hit on this one! Maybe I didn't word my original post too well! Certainly not against us winning anything and it would be fantastic to progress. Think I was just in a depressive rut after watching us get nothing against Villa, torn apart by United and embarrassed against nine men! Holds up imaginary white flag!

I would love us to win it, but for a club like us the extra few million or so for say 14th opposed to 9th could be the difference to getting two players or three players this summer. Would rather we make steady improvements in the league, building up a proper squad before tackling another European campaign. Small squads like ours are just not sustainable for European football.

History would suggest they did seeing as we were in the old Second Division in 76. Being only three when we won the Cup, not really sure am best placed to answer that one.

Better teams with better squads.

We aren't going to win the competition, let's be realistic. We aren't going to make any real money from a cup run and our current squad is too threadbare to maintain a run in a European competition. I would love us to win it, but my priority would be league points as a higher finish would guarantee extra income.

I think Salisu needs to play in this game. He'll possibly have come up against Willian Jose before in La Liga before. It's a free hit, if we win great, if not, is anyone seriously expecting us to win the cup anyway? In my view ideal opportunity to give him a start.

Would agree with the confidence issue if there was a stadium full of fans berating him. As think we have seen before that has a negative effective on some players.

Not really sure I would class 8 starts and a further 8 as a sub as a fair crack. Like I said, not saying he would be any different but seems too soon to write off a player.

Redmond's been on the slide for far too long now, but still gets further chances. Not saying that Elyounoussi would be any better, but he hasn't really had a fair crack of the whip. We could have tried again with him and not bothered with Walcott, who let's face it hasn't exactly set the world on fire here.

Who do you think are serious buyers?

Get that with Hoedt and Lemina, especially Lemina who just is a waste of space. Always thought that they got rid of Elyounassi too early though. Sure there is a player in there somewhere. Got to be a better bet than Redmond at the moment

I don't think Mitrovic going down the way he did, did him any favours though!

That's what I was getting at, the squad depth. On paper the starting 11 is pretty strong, but beyond that we are struggling. Even the Newcastle bench had a lot more options than we did today. They had a bit of experience, we had the kids. Have we got too many players out on loan?

Let's hope so

That's how I saw it. In terms of squad size, is Ralph going the right way about things? I know we don't have the resources, but to insist on working with a smaller pool of players is really hurting us at the moment. It's obvious that our back up players are nowhere near the level required. I know it's his mantra, but is it a mantra that is forced upon him by the board? Would his squad depth by better at Leipzig?

I guess the question is, how do we get back to that kind of form?