Lighthouse

I can’t help but believe that Lavia, Orsic, Alcaraz and the two we’re about to sign would have more than made up for the one point Ralph was from safety.

Nice try but I've never objected to us trying to sign a £25m player. I objected to spending over the odds (someone on here even suggested we pay litterally double) on a £6m player to, "just pay whatever they want and get it done FFS!"

Adkins was actually a league above us with Scunny.

Spending absolutely is the problem, we're still shopping in the £15m area we were when we first came up. That just doesn't buy decent players these days, it buys kids, Championship players and Elyounoussis, which is exactly what we've ended up with.

I’m not applauding anything. We’ll sign the players we can afford, who are willing to come to a team bottom of the league, from clubs who are willing to sell in January. I see no reason to be this rude and sarcastic about vacuous Twitter rumours regarding players we may never have even spoken to.

I never criticised anyone for being unhappy. You were adamant we hadn't signed a striker; we did, we signed Mara. He may be crap at this level right now but he is a striker. You're pre-empting the signing of Ayew because it's the lamest possible option you've seen us linked with on twitter, whilst silmultaneously seizing upon any rumour linking one of our supposed targets to another club. I'd say you're taking Twitter pretty seriously. We've signed Orsic who, whilst not a striker, is certainly an attacking player and a very good one according to many people on here (can't really say I've seen much of him personally) and we still have time to sign a striker tomorrow. Three, possibly four, players is a very active January by anyone's standard, so let's see how they get on.

We signed lots of players in summer and three more already in Janary. They were all linked to various other clubs but signed for us, whilst we were linked to many players who, as you say, signed for other clubs. It's bog standard transfer window stuff. Lets suppose you're the owner, manager, DoF, head of recruitment etc. at Hypo FC. Just down the road, Everton want to sign promising Spanish striker Dave Bloggs. The first thing Dave Bloggs' agent does is tell a bunch of journalists that Hypo FC are interested in him, to try and pressure Everton into a better deal. All the fans of Hypo FC get excited and then sure enough Dave Bloggs signs for Everton. Now you're public enemy number one in Hypo-Ville; the useless DoF who let another transfer target slip away to one of your rivals, when in reality you've never even spoken to the bloke or his agent. You're being called useless because of some twitter rumours about a player you never cared about signing for some other club.

But you have no idea what's really going on behind the scenes and who the serious bidders are. He might come here, we might never have been interested at all. This is just bog standard stuff. Like I said, every transfer which has ever happened has involved links to other clubs. Orsic was linked to other clubs, which had some fans hysterically demanding we just pay whatever Zagreb were asking to get it done, and yet here he is.

Just out of interest, does anyone know our best combined performance in the cups for a single season? If we do beat Luton, that'll be QF and SF as a minimum for this year.

There what goes? A player we are linked with is linked with other clubs, this is bog standard stuff. I doubt there has ever been a transfer of any player to any club in the history of world football, where they weren't also linked to someone else, and yet people act as if this is surprising and disappointing.

I don’t get it, why would the club be apologising/rationalising to some random people getting their hopes up for rumours they’ve seen on the internet?

I regret to inform you that the odds of most lotteries are longer than 15/1.

Decent draw, a shame all the decent sides have easy opponents.

The only reason we’d do something like that is to put pressure on one of our other targets, not to show that we have money.

I’m going to skip a few steps and just say that I’m disgusted that we sold him to Liverpool so cheaply.

They're fed by the club because that's what they want somebody out there to believe, not because it's necessarily the truth. It's pretty obvious we need a striker, this is just a generic message that we're not desparate.

I think a few people need to stop taking the rumours they read on Twitter as being the gospel of what every club is doing, and in live time. It’s only a few weeks since we were, "obviously going to miss out on the absolutely top class Orsic, because West Ham are going to knick him whilst we’re trying to be cheapskates." That Athletic article seems like a fairly obvious, "we won’t be held to random," message from the club to someone. Pretty sensible IMO.

Seems to be the way with an increasing number of people. If you think that’s bad, I saw a video of a light aircraft ditching in the sea, just off a crowded tourist beach in America. Everyone went running towards it but not one person swam out to try and help the occupants, instead it was smartphones drawn, "OMG this is amazing ‘content’ for my Instagram."

You’re losing your sh*t over conversations happening in your own head. It’s becoming tiresome, give it a rest.

Radio rental...

He does love a bit of claret doesn’t he. Summer 2024, he’ll be off to Scunthorpe.

Wood signs for Saints!

Pathway? When you only need to be better than Adams, Armstrong or Mara to get on the pitch, it’s less of a pathway and more of a heated, indoor moving walkway like they have in airports, with a pop up Costa halfway along and a personal valet to carry your suitcase. We could sign Haaland and still have more than enough opportunities for Ballard and Morgan.

They’re level with us on points after exactly half the season and finished last season with one win in nine games, so what exactly constitutes a ‘run’ in your eyes? FWIW I do believe that both they and Everton are more likely to stay up than saints, via a sudden 11 points in five games out of nowhere in April. Actually I have to admire West Ham for regularly being as s**t as we are, whilst spending twice as much money.

He might score 4-6 goals if he can stay fit, that’s still a massive gamble. Villa have already given him a contract well beyond anything we were able to offer, which we’d have to match or better for him to come here. He’ll be 31 in summer, if he has fitness issues and big wages we’ll struggle to shift him. Why would he agree to that when he’s earning top whack at Villa? We’re bottom of the league, relegation is more likely than not, why would you sign up to a probable massive pay cut in six months, for no reason?