Sheaf Saint

No thanks. Imagine trying to come up with a song for him!

Let's just hope the doctors made a better job of his surgery than they did with J-Rod's. From what I've seen of him, I think he is a better backup option than Targett, and I think he could fit well with Ralph's philosophy. Fingers crossed for a decent recovery for him, but I guess there is no need to rush him back so I doubt we will see him again this season.

Yeah, because player loyalty has been such a massive aspect of our club in recent years eh?

Well as we have discovered with the whole sorry Pompey saga over recent years, football clubs are pretty much exempt from the normal rules of business.

Oh and I've just remembered - there was a screw loose on the instrument panel, and it was shaking all over the place with the vibration of the engine!

Yeah that's my reading of it. I think I made the same flippant comment after I had my first flight in a Chipmunk trainer when I was in the Air Cadets in the late 80s. It obviously wasn't actually falling to bits - I was just commenting on the apparent age of the thing (which was fair considering it was around 30-40 years old!)

http://www.footytube.com/video/southampton-8-0-sunderland-307218

OK. This report fits his account perfectly... https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=18649 What is your agenda here?

I'm assuming he's referring to one of these... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulfstream_American_GA-7_Cougar

Worse than Darren Powell? I don't think so.

https://twitter.com/RCCelta/status/1087658686879883265?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1087658686879883265&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skysports.com%2Ftransfer-centre

Talking to a Villa fan at work today and apparently he hardly featured. Seems a bit odd if they were paying such a huge amount for his wages.

Would have thought this would be a good opportunity for Gallagher to get some game time to build up his match sharpness.

Sky are reporting that Yannick Bolaise has exercised an option in his loan deal to return to Everton, while they evidently expected him to remain at Villa for the rest of the season. I wonder what implications that will have for their squad and their willingness/ability to buy or sell any players?

Yeah I saw that on the BBC live text. He's probably right though. Better to take a yellow card than to concede a free shot on goal, surely?

Bye bye Wesley. I wish I could say I will miss you, but I would be lying.

No way we would have won at Leicester either. The only one of our four wins under Ralph that I could see us perhaps getting under Hughes was at Huddersfield.

On recent evidence, the term 'black box' is probably appropriate, as we need to find out what caused the crash!

Cahill to Fulham now looking unlikely. They were wanting to buy out the last 6 months of his contract at Chelsea but he wants a longer-term deal and probably doesn't fancy dropping down to the Championship with them, as they are looking very likely to do now. Cheeky bid from us? He's 33 now but has a wealth of experience and the leadership qualities we are very much lacking. Would he fit into Ralph's system?

No, clearly not. But 36 would be cutting it a bit fine. In the scenario I laid out, two wins and a couple of draws in our final 10 games would be sufficient. I reckon we can and will do much better than that though.

Carroll's miss against Bournemouth!

If we maintain our form from the 8 games since Ralph came in then we'd get 8 points from these games, so two wins and two draws is on the money. Would take us to 30 points from 28. Then another 3 wins from our remaining 10 games will see us safe.

So, after today's showing I am going to nail my colours to the mast and predict with high confidence that we will be safe from relegation this season. We've got 13 points from 8 games since Ralph took over, which is just over 1.6 points per game. If we can maintain that form over the remaining 15 games (and there's no reason to believe we won't, given our favourable upcoming fixtures) then that will take us to 46 points, which is the same as we got under Puel when we finished 8th. Is it outside the realms of possibility we could finish in the top half still? 10th place is currently occupied by West Ham on 31 points with a GD of -4. And they lost today to a Bournemouth side who have been in terrible form of late.

The thing that I take most from today was the moment in the 2nd half at 2-0 already and Stephens charged forward and played the ball to Valery, who then very neatly exchanged passes with, I think, Redmond to set up an attack. You could see they were enjoying themselves and playing with a level of confidence we haven't seen since before Koeman left. And the whole stadium was rocking and willing them on. It feels like we've finally turned the corner and shaken off the nervousness and uncertainty that has engulfed the club over the last couple of years. Long may it continue.

Yep. He's been excellent recently and put in another outstanding performance today. And to think both MoPe and Hughes preferred Hoedt over him. Just shows what poor judgement they both have.