Lighthouse

Home it is, Stoke. That'll do.

Coming up fairly soon.

Serie A isn’t what it was twenty years ago and in any case, I’d want to see more than two league goals before drawing any conclusions. This time last year Hammers fans were raving about JWP, now he’s on loan at Forrest, likewise Schneiderlin.

I certainly wouldn’t be putting ‘Hezbollah commander’ on my life insurance application form at the moment. Maybe put ‘after dinner speaker’ or ‘influencer’, something vague and non-committal like that.

I like how you've basically said that the squad isn't the problem because 20% of our players are good enough. I disagree, I think that is a problem.

Israel are dicks! They're reckless, arrogant, stupid dicks. And Hamas are pussies. And Hezbollah are assholes. Pussies don't like dicks, because pussies get fucked by dicks. But dicks also fuck assholes - assholes who just want to shit on everything. Pussies may think they can deal with assholes their way. But the only thing that can fuck an asshole is a dick, with some balls. The problem with dicks is that sometimes they fuck too much or fuck when it isn't appropriate - and it takes a pussy to show them that. But sometimes, pussies get so full of shit that they become assholes themselves... because pussies are only an inch and a half away from assholes. I don't know much in this crazy, crazy world, but I do know that if you don't let Israel fuck these assholes, we're going to have our dicks and pussies all covered in shit!

I fear that name has been damaged beyond economic repair by one man in particular.

It’s been perpetrated for many centuries, there’s no reason at all to think it’d end in our lifetime.

They’ll go in and kill any perceived threat to their state, same as they’ve done in Gaza.

Some names just sound weird when applied to children. There’s something about the sentence, "would you mind if I breastfed Grant?" Which is a little unsettling.

Yep. She saw more monarchs that Saints victories, some going that.

It used to be Goodison until a couple of years ago. I believe it’s now St Mary’s. At a rough guess I’d say Swansea was our best away ground in the PL.

A fixture we won at a similar point in the season two years ago, which saved us from the ignominy of going a whole prime minister without winning a match. I'd probably stick with the same team as Ipswich but for the love of all that's holy please don't bring on BBD to play wide left again.

If we’d been Ipswich yesterday, all the posts would have been, "typical Russball FFS, we have all the better possession and still end up needing an injury time deflection to get a point." That’s just football sometimes.

Not really, we knew when we signed him that his fitness was almost non-existent, he’s the last player you want on the pitch defending a lead like we were. I’d much rather Les was on the pitch. As for the rest of our bulk-subs, Fraser was doing very little and Stewart on for Archer hardly felt like a downgrade. We played better after those subs than we did for most of the first half, when Ipswich were all over us.

That was an absolute fluke, they somehow managed to come 9th scoring 39 goals. To put that into context, last season they scored 35 and were welded to the bottom of the table. Ramsdale, Suga, KWP, Fernandes, Dibling and Downes look like they belong in this league. That's six players in the whole squad, the rest we're just maknig do with.

Yeah, just a small problem with that.

None of our history is of any relevance whatsoever to the fact that we have one of the bottom three worst squads in the league, particularly up front. When you’re bringing in players like Archer and BBD to ‘strengthen’ your striking options, you know they’re pretty dreadful. All of this talks about getting rid of Russ and getting someone who can keep us up; who and how exactly? What’s this obvious formula that gets BBD banging in the goals that everyone except Russ has figured out?

None of that is stubbornness. He’s tried plenty of new ideas, there’s no quick fix. He went to five at the back at the end of last season, which helped cover McCarthy’s distribution flaws. When it wasn’t working this season he switched back to a four. He’s dropped, changed and utilised a large number of different players. AA has very rarely played as a central striker and he didn’t today. We defended well enough today, certainly better than we have so far this season, and their only goal came from a badly marked set piece. As for your last sentence, those ARE the players we appear to be trying to build a team around.

Onuachu has never scored a goal in England. Russ has changed a lot of things during his time here, in terms of formation and player selection. He’s many things but not stubborn. Every manager is using us as a CV entry for a better job. Anyone who isn’t is crap, unmotivated and happy to pick up a pay cheque.

I’m just glad the cameraman got the Stone Island logos in the shot, got to keep the sponsors happy.

Dibling was quite clearly cramping up when he came off.

I didn't think Fraser was that great, personally. The others I agree with.

Probably a fair result in the end, we had the better clear cut chances but they had more of the ball in better areas, especially first half. I like the look of Fernandes, Suga and Dibling but f**k me BBD looks a right donkey. Clearly not a wide player and glacially slow. Today was a step in the right direction but we need more, longer strides if we’re going to stay up.