Lighthouse

A good job we are then really, isn’t it.

Perhaps it was hoped that he would be able to play both games but having assessed his fitness since Boro it has been decided that on the balance of things, it's better in the long run to have him on the bench. All the matches are important, they're all worth three points.

It remains to be seen where exactly they line up on the pitch but who would you rather played? Manning?

It's fairly obviously fitness related, one way or another. Clearly he has been assessed as not ready to play twice in four days.

Nice to see we can have a fun, light-hearted April fools thread, without needing to turn it into another whining, cry baby, political thread. Top work chaps!

You can if you like, it won’t be relevant to the point at hand. You can’t simply say that Leicester will smash us because they failed to convert a shedload of chances, when we’ve done exactly the same on numerous occasions this season. Stick Lambert and Sharp at the top of this team and we’d have put double figures past someone.

I like how you’ve only applied that logic one way.

Yep, just seen him share a photo of an Emirates plane with Hants tagged in it, so I’m guessing he’s on his way. Presumably he’ll be living in the Hilton again.

I vaguely recall our very own Lucy Pinder being on WL years back on a models special, back in the Anne Robinson days. The questions were... let's just say calibrated towards those specific contestants. I seem to remember Lucy not getting a single one wrong and immediately getting voted off by the other girls for not being denser than a neutron star. Sadly this was in the days before you could pause live TV, so Lucy was gone before I could erm...

I'd rather have a 90 year old prawn sandwich.

He was meant to come out earlier but his spaceship got held up at border control.

Jones would have won 3-0.

A month ago most neutrals would have said Millwall aren’t beating Southampton away. Last night someone said sticking a tenner on Leeds was like printing free money. Whatever the odds are, anything can happen in any given game.

Scotsmen writing 'A' instead of 'I' when typing in the first person. You've literally misspelled a one letter word.

Pulling your small one is never a poor decision, IMO.

Bookmakers have a word for people like you; welcome.

I would happily drive Che Adams to Shakhtar Donetsk, if they wanted him, then stay for three days to help him build IKEA furniture.

We are though, aren’t we. It’d be a brave man to bet on us but we’re not out of it.

Fraser definitely, that’s a fair point. Brooks I want to say yes but I’d like to see a bit more consistency. There were games like Millwall where he was nonexistent. Mason Holgate has 126 PL apps for Everton (and 1 rather hilarious app for Sheff Utd), I can’t say that’s a particularly accurate barometer. Ultimately I think Bednarek, Stephens and most of the others mentioned are decent Championship player, nothing more. That’s my reasoning for my initial assertion that the playoffs are the bare minimum, rather than top two. If we come 4th with a points total that would have beaten the Blades last season then so be it. Not great, not terrible.

I think you’re overrating a lot of those players. KWP, yep no arguments but the rest are not PL players. Bednarek - Consistently looked a weak link, every year he played under Ralph. I’ve never thought he looked comfortable at that level and neither did Villa. Stephens - Again, only ever a weak link in a team likely to be fighting PL relegation. Smallbone - Crap at PL level. Looked decent enough without being special at mid-table, Championship Stoke. Sully - Sh*te. Danny N’Guessan in a posh frock. Has done absolutely nothing at either level outside of two goals in a dead rubber against Liverpool. Edozie - Raw potential and inconsistent at this level, did nothing last year. Bree - Decent but he’s competing with by far our best player in his natural playing spot. Stu - Not been anywhere near decent at PL level since he caught Covid. Seems to have re-settled into some form a level down. Aribo - Lazy and useless for all of last season. Looks quality down here in patches but can’t even nail down a starting spot. AA - Yep, fair enough his tenacity will always bag him a decent goal haul against Championship defences. He is somewhat sporadic and reliant on defensive mistakes. Ultimately, if you told me right now we’re definitely getting promoted, KWP, THB and Downes are literally the only three players I’d want in the team next year.

Ipswich.

A lot of people say this but however you try and spin it we are comfortably ahead of 5th in the table for a reason. It’s not as if the likes of WBA and Coventry have do or die, death or glory players, who never make mistakes under pressure and always grind out results in tough games. Ultimately they’re a lottery, although more often than not the better teams in third or fourth do triumph.

But in terms of actually playing as a coherent team, they were. The second half of last season was completely rudderless, we went into every game without a clue of how to achieve anything. Mostly Selles just set us up to only lose 2-0. Leeds and Leicester were at least in a bit of a fight to try and stay up. They’ve both got good managers and are playing well but we’ve closed the gap to them, relatively speaking. Plus we’ve lost Lavia and JWP, who were 2/3 of the players to come out of last season with even a glimmer of credibility.

Don’t be so silly! Spanners are very useful and would be good for keeping everything tight.

Games like busses etc. What do we reckon, stick out the youth team just to p*ss off the top two? 😏