Window Cleaner

Not looking like a great start for Hants today. Lancs 126/2 after 21 or so. 2 batsmen moving on to big'ish scores. Donald and Alsop will be opening for us later....hmmmm Well Crane bowled Jennings but we're still getting tonked. Might not end well. Markram looking like a big miss already. And as I write, Crane gets the big tonker Vilas.

So if those figures are anywhere near accurate we're getting less than last season by about 5 million. Strange.

Nah, they don't pay a lot of money for defenders. They want goalscorers and flair players for their money. Spanish football innit.

Now I'd say that Ajax didn't know how to defend a 3 goal lead against a side full of good players that had nothing left to lose. Spurs came at them and they just didn't know what to do. Looked like they were still trying to score more goals. Barca just cracked from the start, played rough and got done at their own game.

Doubt if any other team but Liverpool would have given us 70 million or so for him either. They needed a CB of his quality, can't remember who else did at that time. Still they made the ECL cup final in his first season there so it paid off for them, and has done again this season. The extra money from 2 ECL finals will have just about covered the sum they paid for him. If only we'd used the money more wisely instead of squandering it on garbage like Carrillo, Elynoussi and the yet to come 20 million for Ings.

Perhaps we could give them Ings in part exchange once we've given Liverpool whatever it is we have to give them for him.

They surely are but with Blind at CB and Schone as a DM they are fragile if the opposition have the right kind of players. Llorente is kind of an old fashioned CF, he's a bit past it but he stood on Blind and let the rest of the Spurs side surge forward. In short he used his experience. Didn't Ajax come from behind to beat Juventus ? Maybe Real as well. Perhaps they've not yet learnt to handle being ahead.

I'd have thought so as well. Ajax cracked pretty easily once Spurs rattled their bars a bit. Vastly overated by some because they have weaknesses that can be exploited by experienced players.

So you get a divorce, which is kind of what Virgil did...

Here I'm referring to the 2014/15 season, we were still 3rd after the 24th round of matches and eventually finished 7th, 2 points behind Liverpool in 6th. We seemed to be going somewhere, Koeman was doing a pretty good job and we would have been a attractive proposition for Virgil. Then in Virgil's first season we signed some good'ish players and made 6th. Then suddenly it all fell apart, Koeman left for Everton, good players were sold and the club was reportedly up for sale, with the consequences we've seen of late.

I've always suspected that Les Reed had a sort of England mania. If you were playing for the England Unders at some level or other you were like a magnet to him and he'd offer you shedloads of cash and a long contract just to have you in the club. Whatever happened to all those lads who were top dogs in the England U17s and all that? Did any of them ever make good?

Not really. We were no longer the club for which he signed. Same is probably true for most of the others.

Aren't Newcastle playing Everton in some sort of youth team final today or tomorrow?

That was Victor wasn't it?

Umtiti was on the bench, don't know what his problem is just now but he'd have done a better job than either Pique or Lenglet if he was on top form. Seems to be a modern Barca problem, they keep buying players that they don't need and keep playing the ones who are on the way down. Probably a result of uncompetitive domestic football. I mean look at Digne, far better than that idiot that they had at LB last night.

Wasn't Mané's problem about him being consistently late on parade for training and team meetings?

No need to waste anyone's time in discussions, just ship him out to somewhere that's at his level, whatever that may be.

Who was that then ? Lambert was fading, JayRod got injured and we had no-one else IIRC. Oh Osvaldo, forgot about him but as he was always either injured or suspended that's not surprising really.

We were in 2013/2014.

They'll win the ECL. Neither Ajax or Spurs will be good enough to stop them. From last night's game I got the impression that somehow the absence of Salah made them by far less predictable, perhaps that's just the way Barca played though.

Absolutely right. Ralph has lost more games than he's won with Saints, no top club will be running after him as of yet.

We aren't trying to compete with the Top 6 anyway. We just play them all a couple of times each season, sometimes get the odd good result as well. We had our chance a few years back, we blew it because we couldn't or wouldn't drum up a few quid for a real striker when we needed one. Top 6 clubs don't do that, they always have money for whatever they need, whether they spend it wisely is something else.

None of the top 6 from the previous season I suppose. Both articles seem to say though that it's an arrangement and not a fixed rule. How did they get on when Leicester made Top 6 I ask myself.

That's the way I see it, so does the Liverpool OS. Still there'll always be people who know better than most. https://www.liverpoolfc.com/team/first-team/player/danny-ings

But in reality City and Liverpool will probably both win 3-0 after going ahead in the first 10-15 minutes and the day will be a total anti-climax. The PL need to programme some games between "big teams" in the last 2 rounds of fixtures. Liverpool derby, North London derby and Manchester derby on the last day would shake the bag up a bit.