Lighthouse

I guess that covers the obligatory, managers favourite fullback signing that everyone seems to get when they come here.

On the face of it, looks to be an excellent potential signing. Bags of recent Championship experience, playing at a decent level.

We’re making a beef stroganoff, apples and oranges may be different but both are equally unnecessary.

Day 502 of the SMO. NATO now controls the entirety of the Baltic, aside from two tiny Russian enclaves.

He doesn’t have a great record with kit releases either.

Technically, they all are.

It’s not essential to have a couple of geriatrics in the squad, there are plenty of 25-30 year olds with 200 plus league appearances, who are in the prime of their career. I don’t know how and why people started telling themselves that having a Long/Theo/Willy/Fonte in the squad was necessary but it isn’t. As long as they’re not ALL 21 year olds, there shouldn’t be an issue.

No, they’ve paid us an enormous amount of money for our best players, which any club could have done if they’d been willing to stump up the cash. I don’t like Liverpool and all their gobby fans insisting they’re the most special club in Europe but as players go, I wouldn’t have cared whether we sold Virgil to them or Solihull Moors.

‘Putting up with’ wont come into it, unless there’s someone out there willing to match his wages. For a mediocre, Championship keeper I’d say that’s fairly unlikely.

Okay, let’s all just be careful not to get into potentially libellous territory here. Actually, now I’ve said that, I haven’t seen Shep for a few days…

Thiago Silva was 35 when he signed for Chelsea and is a year younger than Fonte. Fonte looked like he was struggling at West Ham when he was 34. If you’re going to make the comparison, you’ll have to wait to see how TS performs in 2024/25, when he’ll be 39 going on 40. How can you be honest about something you’re only guessing about? There’s no evidence at all that he’s better than Lyanco.

Neither did Rasiak, I wouldn't have either of them back though.

Awesome bowling, even if the wicket was a little dubious. Thought we’d skittle them for 50 at one point. 7 of their batsmen got 4 runs between them.

That’s like being England’s second best batsman. Walcott was awful for almost his entire three years back here. He scored two goals last season and none the year before. Between him and Long it astonishes me just how low Saints fans collective expectations have fallen. At any other club, 8-10 goals a season would be a reasonable return for an attacking player. For us, if you make a 20 minute sub appearance, look like you’re trying hard and make a couple of good runs into the box, people are clamouring to offer you another year contract extension. The fact that he’s ended up at Reading, a basket case in League 1, rather than another Prem club, should tell you everything you need to know about him.

This is going to be like what everyone was saying about Walcott for three years, even though it’s quite obviously not true. You can get players with valuable experience who are ten years younger and have played Championship football 11 weeks ago, rather than 11 years. We came up through the leagues last time with Dean Hammond, an experienced leader who was actually good enough and young enough to play for us every week, despite having never played for us before.

You wonder why the Aussies even bother playing Warner in an Ashes test. He needs a Romani gypsy to piss on a photo of Stuart Broad and burry it in a pet cemetery on a full moon, or something.

Mara was a striker and he signed. You insisted we hadn’t signed a striker; we did, he was sh*t. I’d have liked someone much, much better too but we did sign a striker. Yes, Romeu had been playing poorly for a while and needed a fresh start somewhere else. He chose to return to Spain and we are better off with Lavia in midfield. I don’t care if he does sign for Barcelona, score infinity gazillion goals and win the Ballon D’Or, he wasn’t doing it here.

I think it’s a bad idea and I hope it’s not true. If he hadn’t played for us before, nobody would be suggesting this would be a good move.

But Puel did play him, he pretty much started every league game, except for a couple over the congested Christmas period when you tend to get three games in a week. As far as I'm aware Fonte has never made any noises since about not being played enough. I might have missed something but I can't see anyone switching clubs over half a dozen Europa League games. No, with hindsight we shouldn't have bought in Wesley Hoedt as a replacement. For a club our size, giving a multiple year deal to a 33 year year old is not remotely sensible. We could have been relegated and stuck with a player nobody wanted to buy on enormous wages, like Leicester are with Vardy. Nobody ever says we shouldn't have sold Lovren, even though he was a better defender IMO, because we bought in Toby and then Virgil, that's the only hindsight here.

For all his faults, I can’t see it being Puel who chose to sell Fonte. That one was squarely on Reed and Fonte himself, who wanted to leave.

Why would you shower twice, before doing exercise? Complete waste of water and you’d pretty much just be smelly and sweaty again after you’ve walked the dog. If that was me it’d be dog - gym - shower.

It would seem that Wood is better than Tongue.

I don’t think we’ll be building our transfer policy around someone who’s played about 20 minutes for us so far. That said, I don’t see us bringing back Ings either.

Hate to say it but we’ve looked a lot better without Anderson this morning. I don’t see how he gets back in if Broad, Wood, Woakes and Tongue are all fit.

Absolute thunderbolt from Wood, seems to have broken the ball in the process.