SaintBobby

Fulham are in great form. With the run they’re on, they will cruise to a 6-2 win and Saints will be relegated.

Not going to lie, that Skates game was fucking hilarious.

Their other 6 starting XI players must be dire then for them not to be better than Saints.

We get it. It’s fine. You think Burnley have a better first team than Saints. You therefore think it’s no great shakes that Dyche has managed to get about the same points haul as Saints. Others - me included - think Burnley have a worse first team squad than Saints and Dyche has therefore done a fine job - yet again - in piloting them to safety.

He's not bad, but I'm not much of a fan either. If he was a cheap option from a Championship team and aged 19-20, I might be tempted. But he ain't. It's also not obviously a position we need to stengthen in.

A shedload of difference. Ings and JWP are way, way better than their Burnley equivalents. No Burnley player is heads and shoulders above their Saints equivalent - with the possible excpetion of Pope. But upgrading your goalkeeper from a 7 to an 8 isn't a big deal, Upgrading your striker from a 6.5 to a 9 is. In my view, only 1 Burnley player definitely gets in to the Saints team. Put Ings and JWP into the Burnley team though and you transform it. I think seveal other Saints players would make it too - KWP for example, Vestegard, Romeu, Armstronng are all very good shouts. Not absolute head and shoulders over their equivalents, but they edge it. If Walcott was at Burnley, he'd start, I fancy. Clearly, Burnley are the new Fulham.

On reflection, Ralph probably is Premier League manager of the season. Not only does it look like he will keep us above the juggernaut known as Fulham. But he also stands every chance of matching the mighty Burnley toe-to-toe, a majority of whose players would apparently walk into the Saints starting XI. Props to the man.

God yes. I'm kind of hoping for a 4-4 draw and Rotherham somehow winning at Cardiff...

Disagree....possibly 2 or 3 IMHO. I definitely wouldn't say "at least 5". Except Pope, I'd say most of the possible "transfers" into the Sainst team are very marginal. Whereas Ings and JWP, for example, walk straight into the Burnley team.

Nick Pope clearly. Not wild about the rest. Barnes? Wood? Maybe. Other than Pope, there's no one who comes to mind who I immediately think "I wish they played for us".

We may be vociferously agreeing. I think he’s done a great job there, but has had better years. At his peak, he may have been my manager of the season. His squad is measurably worse than ours or Brighton’s or Leeds’, IMHO.

Burnley are shite. They were part of a useless bottom 4 early doors. He’s kept them up again. I’m not saying the Manchester managers are poor - they ain’t. But it’s not obvious over-performance.

Managers of the season: 1. Moyes 2. Rogers 3. Dyche. It will go to Guardiola, of course. But I think Man City would probably have won the league if I was the bloody manager. I couldn’t have got Leicester to top 4, West Ham to top 6 or kept Burnley up though, in all modesty.

We will see how WBA and Fulham get on in their last few games. But it looks like we will see the 18th placed team at the lower end of that spectrum and quite possibly even below 30 points. Which would rather confirm my view that the bottom 3 this year really are pretty awful comapred to others in recent times.

Surely a failure to be able to safely host a match? I assume clubs are responsible for safety in the stadium, at least to some degree. Making sure fans aren't on the pitch tearing it up an hour before kick off that kind of thing? If there aren't penalties for these sort of things, we need a new strategy of invading St Mary's when we have 2 or 3 key players on the cusp of returning from injury. Get the game postponed, get Ings back into the match squad...that kind of thing.

They have a marginally better chance than Fulham to stay up, I guess. But both are almost certainly doomed.

That’s probably true. The bottom 3 are spectacularly awful this season. Feels like the most boring and predictable relegation scrap in years.

We’ve been safe since beating Burnley in reality, but just trying to do the maths. For Fulham to catch Saints, they need to beat us at St Mary’s and take two wins and draw from their remaining three matches and hope Saints lose all our other four matches too. If we avoid defeat to Fulham, they can’t catch us. If we lose to Fulham, but pick up 3+ points from our other four matches, they can’t catch us. For WBA to catch us, given their much inferior goal difference they need to get at least four wins and a draw from their last 5 games and rely on Saints losing all 5 remaining matches. If Saints pick up just one or two points from our last 5 matches, WBA need to win all 5 of theirs to catch us. If we pick up 3 or more points from our last 5 matches, they can’t catch us. Basically, they’re both down and we are totally safe.

I have to disagree with this. I thought Minamino had a really poor game. I was praying for ID to replace him

Real grit there. Excellent point. The red card is bewildering. Can see why the ref give it from his angle, but it’s an obvious slam-dunk overturn on VAR, surely to God? I don’t really blame VAR for the red, that would have been given without VAR. I was just truly surprised that no “VAR checking red card” appeared on TV or the ref didn’t have a second look. VAR is supposed to be an insurance policy. It failed badly.

Well, it’s brinkmanship obviously to threaten to expel them. But that’s how some negotiations work - a sort of race to the bottom in who can do the most damage to the other party. If there’s no question of imposing any sanctions against the clubs or the players, we may as well just say now that the big six can do whatever they want and we will gratefully lick up some crumbs from the table. We dare not do anything else for fear that we might end up with fewer crumbs.

I’m intrigued by the idea that the move is really just for “leverage” or to enhance their bargaining position. To me, it seems to have gone way beyond that. I wonder whether the “small clubs” now need to show some real backbone rather than meekly awaiting unfolding events, which is the normal practice. For example, the 14 other clubs in the EPL could vote to expel the big six or resign themselves and rejoin the Football League.

I think it was a poor decision. It seemed to me evident that the player was onside, if he hadnt been, some part of his body would have been visible rather than hidden by his team mate, surely? That said, it's not the biggest howler. Without VAR the goal would not have stood anyway as the linesman had flagged for offside.

If we lose the semi final and then get a poor points haul, I guess Ralph starts next season under some pretty serious pressure.

I would. You’d get something like 33/1 or better on that as an accumulator bet.