Lighthouse

F**k me sideways!

He played up front with Jason Euell.

I’d be slightly cautious on making judgements after half an hour against a Liverpool team who’ve made eleven changes. Whilst their reserves are still far better than us on paper, they’ve looked disjointed as a unit, not dissimilar to our own performance against Pompey. That said I’d probably give Quarshie or Wood, Jelly and AA a start against Boro.

Actually playing him would probably be a good start. Every time I’ve seen us play a 4-2-3-1 well (and I know we aren’t tonight) one of the wide players has been a supporting striker. Lambert with Lallana one side and Tadic the other wouldn’t have worked, you need a J Rod, Mané or AA making the runs into the box. I think that’s why our strikers have looked isolated thus far. Let’s try a string of games with AA, Azaz and Fellows in behind Archer.

I’m fairly sure we’ve sent Fenerbache or Chievo out to play for us. Smart thinking Will!

Well we’re giving them a game at least.

Fortunate there Isak blasting it straight at the keeper. End to end start.

No, they can literally have him for nowt, he’s out of contract at the end of the season.

Agree, they’re massively overestimating us.

We’ve still got a significant number of players left over from last year’s campaign. Surely if we just play THB, Downes, Stephens etc. we’ll get promoted by default, in spite of Still?

The so-called ‘leader of the free world’ in 2025… utterly bewildering.

I’m not really sure what you’re getting at there. We are able to afford players like that for a couple of seasons thanks to the parachute payments but life beyond that isn’t pretty. We will find ourself in a position where we’re forced to sell our better players to recently relegated PL teams to balance the books and the replacements will be Smallbone levels of quality.

90% of this league would bite your hand off for Armstrong, Azaz, Fellows, Archer, Charles, Roeslev, THB, Downes and Stephens. A large number of other players would also be in demand at top half clubs. The fact that none of them are currently playing anywhere near the ceiling of their ability doesn’t mean nobody else would want them.

The aim always has to be promotion asap. People say they hate being in the PL, they don’t - they hate losing. Every year that goes by in this league, the more we have to offload our valuable assets and high earners and if you’re not careful, you end up leaving the Championship through the wrong door. When people say they’d rather be in this league, what they means is they want the Adkins season over and over again. The Poortvliet and final Burley seasons were no more fun than last year.

If you’re going to try and claim Sully, who has done f**k all at any point in his Saints career, is a better option than two of the Championship’s highest rated talents in Fellows and Azaz then I’m not sure what you’ve been drinking. What do you mean an ‘undamaged Downes and THB’? They haven’t been whacked with a wrench. I’d also take Dibling and Fernandes over JWP and Tella, any day, not that it counts for much, The fact that Edozie, Aribo and Smallbone, who were all regulars in our promotion team, can’t get a game now should tell you something about the players we’ve got now. KWP is a better than Roeslev, that’s about the only place I’d say we have a downgrade. The rest is as good or better.

We’ve just got rid of 21 players and the manager. If you don’t consider that a clear out, I don’t know what is. The squad is decent, easily as good if not better than it was two years ago, Still just needs to do his job.

People said this before half our games lat season, and half two years before that and it never was. It’ll probably be 3,4 or 5-0 but predicting double digit defeats all the time is becoming tiresome and cliched.

We must be remembering a different Rasiak, the one I watched was decent enough technically and an excellent finisher, just slow and lazy. Onuachu on the other hand is a donkey in English football, who had nothing going for him other than height. No we shouldn’t have kept him, we should be playing in a way which suits the massive amount of Championship fire power we have in the squad.

Promoted, via the playoffs? Wasn’t top of the table Boro’s manager last seen at relegated Luton? Let’s see how they get on as a management team before deciding he’s the new Eric Black.

We’ve had significant change in the squad towards the end of the transfer window, with the likes of Fellows, Azaz, Leo, Roeslev and Jelert all coming in very recently and players like Fernandes and Dibling leaving. There’s been enough recent change, in personnel and formation, for Still to need time to make it work. Nobody is promising it will happen eventually but it’d be foolish to sack him now.

To be talking about sacking anyone after six games, after the massive upheaval in players we’ve had is absolutely silly. It’s frustrating but Still needs time to get what is a superb collection of individuals playing as a team. If we sack him now, the new guy would just be having the same problems. Just for reference, this was our start to the season after building a new team in 2009, which is very much in line with two years ago, when it also seemed to click in early October.

One of those weekends where if I had a tenner on a horse, it’d get shot. I hate sport.

Having given the situation long and thoughtful deliberation, I have decided that I would like things to improve.

I’m starting to think that we might not be in a three horse promotion race by default.

A draw against Surrey should do it, with Yorks playing Durham, but it’d be squeaky bum time. Plus they’ll need to go balls out to overhaul Notts and win the Championship.