Lighthouse

Smith reckons you can feel the tension in the grandstand. No Alan, they’re just bored and fed up.

And this is why I don’t give two sh*ts about what Wolves or Bournemouth get up to. It’s irrelevant, we’re going down comfortably adrift of anyone else in this league.

Everton please, it’d be really, really funny.

For the avoidance of doubt, yes I would give penalties and free kicks every time someone pulls back a player or their shirt. I don't care if it ends up in 15 penalties a game to start with, they'd soon learn, stop doing it and the game would be that much better for it. The fact that you can get away with a certain amount at the moment is no defence of what DCC. It's basically the football equivalent of being pulled over doing 37 in a 30 and saying, "yeah but what about all those other cars doing 34!?"

They wouldn’t, it’s just a peculiarity of football fans that the players who aren’t playing must be the answer. The worse we play, the thicker the rose tinted glasses become. You can add Long, McC, Willy, Boufal and Stephens to the list of names people have wished were in the team at various points this season. The truth is they were all consistently poor and we’d be no better off now with the team which performed so badly at the end of last season.

Lucky me. It’s a non combat sport, not a non contact sport. There is nothing in the rule book about an acceptable number of Newtons you’re allowed to strike an opponent with, just your own subjective opinions of how hard you expect our opponents to be, in order to do Saints a favour.

You’ve missed the point, I said they will need every bit of luck and sh*thousery they can muster. Things like the keeper supposedly having cramp etc. we’re always going to happen. We gave them two absolute gifts. I never said he hit him hard but he did, quite unequivocally hit him. 90% of the penalties that have ever been given, the attacker could probably have stayed on their feet, if their child’s life depended on it. That doesn’t mean they weren’t fouled and should go down. Incorrect. You’re arbitrarily deciding how hard you think footballers should be allowed to hit each other and get away with it. You’re not allowed to, that’s the rules, end of discussion. It’s like when some player goes in with a tiny nod of a head butt and their opponent collapses in a big heap; you can bleat all you like about barely touching him but the fact remains he did strike another player.

They are a lower L2 side, playing at a PL ground. They were always going to need a bit of luck and sh*thousery to get a result and we gifted it to them on a silver platter. What you’re basically saying to their player is, “I know I just hit you but please can you act a bit tougher, so that you don’t get a penalty and we might win the cup tie, thanks.” This isn’t Rivaldo against Turkey. DCC hit him, he had every right to go down and take the penalty we basically spoon fed them. They’re in the QF and we aren’t.

TBH this is starting to sounds like those conspiracy theorists who think the media are keeping quiet about the Earth's flatness because it's part of 'the narrative'. There is no narrative, nobody other than a handful of Saints fans on the internet are talking about this because it was a foul. DCC lashed out and hit Orsi, in the penalty area, right in front of the ref. How hard is irrelevant, it was a ludicrous thing for a PL defender to do against a struggling L2 team.

I think you may have missed the sarcasm there. Good luck against Brighton.

White, Pekhart, Robertson, Patterson, Perricard and Bignall were all dreadful but at a lower level so they’d get the nod for me. Fuller, DMG, BWP and Madsen were nothing to write home about either.

That doesn’t prove anything at all. Maybe he has taken a step forward, maybe he hasn’t. Hopefully he will be useful next season in getting promoted. To have improved us this season, he’d have to have been here, which means he wouldn’t have been on loan at Burnley and have been able to score those goals against weaker opposition. In other words, nothing would have changed; he’d still have been the same substandard player he was last year. Balogun is of no relevance to anything. His technically decent finishes all came with more time, space and against weaker opponents than he will ever face in the Premier League. That’s where he difference lies, I could get a non league player to smash it into the top corner from 20 yards out, if he was stood there on his own with nobody around him.

What an absurd logic to take. Would you also say that the hand of God in ‘86 was a wonderful, thumping header, or that Lampard’s shot against Germany never crossed the line?

Yes, I genuinely thought there was going to be a red card in that too. He made a very deliberate movement to intercept the cross and hit the ball with his arm, which was raised at shoulder height. The fact that he was trying to head it is irrelevant, all that proves is that Lyanco is useless. He did hit him, it quite obviously, litterally did happen. I can't put it any more simply than that. Again, how hard is irrelevant, this isn't UFC. You aren't being graded on how hard you can whack someone. It's against the rules and it's a foul. Djenepo was outside the box and was not a red card offence, so VAR didn't look at it. Arguably a free kick and booking but that's all. He had his hand on his back at one point as they were both grabbing each others shirts and fighting for the ball. Orsi didn't hit him. The fact that DCC couldn't maintain his composure against a team fighting relegation in League 2 is pathetic. It's a foul in the penalty area. The fact that other referees might not have given it is irrelevant. It was a penalty, DCC was an absolute muppet.

Apart from the fact that it was clearly and obviously offside?

No he didn’t. They were wrong.

I genuinely don't know which one you mean as they were both very obviously fouls. Lyanco threw himself at the ball and hit it with his arm, never in a million years was that ball to hand. DCC hit someone, how hard is irrelevant. It reminds me a bit of when everyone was blaming Ronaldo for Rooney getting set off at the 2006 WC.

He isn’t. Most of our players would look decent playing in that team, at that level. Last year he was, if anything, worse than Redmond, Walcott and Moi.

There was a definite whiff of Bristol Rovers ‘08 about tonight’s performance, only much more pungent.

What exactly is it you think the likes of Moi, AA, Walcott, Aribo, Adams and Mara are capable of? What untapped potential are you waiting to see from these players?

Nope, he was finished and had to go, apparently. His last four games were a win at Bournemouth, a draw against Arsenal (who were smashing everyone back then), a 1-0 defeat at Palace and the Newcastle game which could have been 2-2 on another day.

Really? I just can’t begin to care about them. Just useless.

Even if that goal had been given, I’d have vehemently disagreed with that. Give me Lavia and ABK over Bednarek and Walcott any day.

I’d have brought bollards on ahead of Aribo.

He has one goal, a penalty, in 23 Championship appearances this season. No thanks, we clung to him for far too long.