Lighthouse

One of my friends is a fairly regular instagrammer and every time I read something like this I go and have a quick peak at what she’s up to. This morning was a manicure and half an hour ago she was having what looked like a Maui Thai with her friend in a bar (the lights were on BTW) Unbearable stuff obviously. As for the missiles, the argument has always been that they’re running out of precision missiles, not just ammo in general. Any idiot can aim mortars and artillery at a target the size of Kherson or a power station. Firing ‘dumb’ munitions into car parks, playgrounds and shopping centres serves no other purpose than being a d*ck head for the sake of it and putting on a show of faux-masculinity.

They’re just another example of a team playing well and being better than the sum of their parts. They have familiarity, cohesion and were thumping most teams they played in the Championship. Tella is just one player, who looked useless last season and has dropped down and found his level. He’s another Rasiak, Vydra or Earnshaw.

I’m talking about this season. In the last 10-12 years can remember Man City losing 8-0, Wigan losing 9-1, Arsenal 8-2, Man U 6-1 at home, Sunderland 8-0, Norwich 7-0, Liverpool 7-2, Bournemouth 9-0, Villa 8-0, Hull 7-1 and Chelsea 6-0. In fact 6-0s are ten a penny. It is bog standard for a couple of teams every season, it’s not relevant to our effort this season.

No, he’s playing in a League where Burnley, minus their best players from last year, are a class above anyone else. He hasn’t suddenly become good enough.

I can’t be arsed going back over all that again. The original point was that the players should be booed because they lack effort. I disagree, I think they’ve always been trying and up until recently games have generally been tight affairs, decided generally against our favour by our lack of quality in both six yard boxes.

That’s bog standard for any club outside the big six, any season. Poch lost by three goals against Chelsea, Liverpool and Man City. Even Strachan, when we had the best defence outside the top four, lost 6-1, 3-0 and 3-1.

As many as you like. Obviously, but there’s no jeopardy in that, so it’s not much of a question.

Obviously anyone who picks 2 would also pick 3. Just curious as to how much people value a cup final relative to the league, even without a guaranteed win.

Which of these options would you take, if offered by a genie: Another 0-9 and safety Relegation and a cup final Relegation and a cup win Relegation and England win the next Euros. Relegation and a guaranteed playoff spot next season. Relegation but ABK, Lavia, KWP, Tino and JWP stay. Relegation but you get to choose ANY two PL teams to come with us. For me personally; 1, 3 and probably 6.

I was talking about this season, not that I particularly care about 2 out of 173 games.

The team has always looked like they were trying. All the games under Ralph were tight affairs which were decided one way or the other by the quality of our finishing and goal keeper, rather than the team strolling around the park whilst our opponents scored at will. I won’t be booing the team any time soon. They’re a group of players with very limited talent trying their best.

TBH I think most people have just got better things to do and more important issues in their life than a couple of hours of moon howling outside St Mary’s. It’s not like our owners are even in the country.

Even that is relatively insignificant compared to PL TV money. The idea that an impassioned protest with hundreds of fans storming the pitch and throwing their STs at the dugout will make any kind of difference is naive and futile. The owners care about money, not how happy we are.

He’s a Stoke fan.

Actually that is our clear plan and strategy. There is only so much you can do with basically the lowest budget in the league. Our strategy is to mix unproven kids with cheap foreigners who haven’t played in the PL before. There’s only so many rabbits you can pull out of that hat.

Does your keeper give you a biscuit every time you post about Romeu leaving?

TBH, as utterly bonkers as you have correctly identified this as being, I would actually like to see it. For no other reason than for people to see that Dyche has nothing to offer other than ugly football and won’t improve our results at all. Get Dyche in January, re-sign Romeu and maybe the penny will drop that neither of them is the answer.

Likewise. I thought it was an excellent window based on the assumption that he, Aribo and AMN we decent players and certainly an upgrade on Tella, McC and Diallo. Nope.

Thanks for another wonderfully constructed argument. The lure of parachute payments? They’re a safety net designed to stop clubs going out of business, after losing their share of $5.5bn, or whatever that TV deal was for international broadcasting rights.

He’s been consistently injured since he’s been there and that was his third goal in 2.5 years at Brighton. It’s easy to look good against our shower of sh*te.

You’re kidding right? Parachute payments are just there to try and mitigate the huge drop in revenue incurred from relegation and offset some of the disproportionately high wages. It’s not some bonus we get to cash in on, most of that will be gone on high earners we can’t offload. There is nothing financially good about going down and I can’t imagine it’s part of some long term strategy either. We were a point from safety when SR pulled the trigger, an absolutely bat sh*t time to throw in the towel and bring in a ‘long term prospect to hopefully get promoted’ manager.

Most of it has been spent staying in the Premier League. We do compete with those teams, we’ve been in around them for six years now. I don’t get your last question; literally ABK and Lavia six months ago. I don’t get all these, “what about Trossard/Brighton?” Posts. We’ve signed some perfectly decent players for the same price. What we can’t do is try and build a whole squad, cheaper than anyone else, year after year, and stay up.

Leicester, Villa and Fulham have all massively outspent us over the last few seasons. Brentford and Brighton are just the, “why can’t we be like them,” flavour of the month. Their best players will be poached and they will sink down again, same as everyone else. We had our four seasons in the sun, the only way to stay there consistently is to consistently spend big and we haven’t. Leicester did it for a while off the back of their league win, as soon as they stopped spending they dropped down.

Oh right, my apologies. How much did we spend?

He wasn’t done, he was a point off safety, with a reasonable GD, without anything resembling a competent goal scorer. Get one of those in and we’d have stayed up. Now though… we are hopeless, outclassed all over the park and will likely be spanked in most of our remaining games.