Lighthouse

Well, maybe not conceding another 2 goals in 7 minutes because 0-3 is less embarrassing than 0-5. For a man whose, “experience and leadership blah blah… is invaluable,” we seemed to just down tool and lose all concentration at the end of that Brentford game. We’ve literally not ‘seen out’ a single point when Lallana has been brought on this season.

Like Brentford, when he came on in the 87th minute and we conceded twice in stoppage time?

What exactly is it you think Lallana is the ‘best of’?

He came on in the 87th minute against Brentford and we conceded twice. As a matter of fact, he’s not come on before the 85th minute since his injury against Liverpool. The bloke just isn’t fit and hasn’t been for years.

If you told me at the start of the season we’d be going into this pair of fixtures with United 15th and Forest 3rd, I’d have had a radon survey done on your house. It goes without saying they’re in scarily good form, 7 wins and a draw against Liverpool since the start of December, so Saints law dictates this is the game we go and win.

We lost 3-1 against the team in 15th. I don’t remember this level of optimism when we played well against Leicester and Liverpool for large periods and lost 3-2 but I guess there’s some difference I’m not seeing.

All the laughing emojis in the world aren’t going to change the fact that he’s been gone a month, we’re still losing every game and the players are still substandard. I don’t know when the penny drops, maybe it doesn’t, who knows.

After four defeats out of four games (against 16th, 15th, 13th and 11th) scoring two (one was an o.g.) and conceding eleven, I thought maybe we might be able to start to move on from Martin. I guess not.

So as per Liverpool, Leicester and the home game against United; we played well enough for parts of it but didn’t take our chances and when it came to crunch time and we needed to keep it tight, we conceded three goals.

We got £20m for a player who had only ever looked good on loan in the Championship. If someone offered that for Brereton Diaz, you’d bite their arm off. He wasn’t that young either, 24 when we sold him, so hardly an up and coming teenage wonder kid. How we spend our money is a separate conversation, it doesn’t change the fact that £20m for Tella was good business.

What’s your point? Neither has shown themselves to be anything beyond average Championship players so far.

We got £20m for a player who did pretty much nothing for us. Excellent business as far as I’m concerned.

No, it shows that anyone can be flavour of the month in any given season. Two years ago, everyone wanted to be West Ham when they were winning the Euro-JPT, nobody wanted to be Forrest or Bournemouth. A couple of months back everyone wanted to be Brighton, now they’re about eleventh.

That’s an awful lot of assumptions based on very little. History is littered with players who, "just need the right manager who can sort them out." The likes of Pogba, Mutu, Lemina, Cassano, Osvaldo etc. all undoubtedly had superb talent but ultimately never got near what they were capable of. ABK not being in the Swansea squad, unless there’s some unknown injury, doesn’t exactly scream ‘commitment to the club’.

Without knowing what Kraft really did, day to day, the dreadful recruitment and transfer strategy since last spring has to fall on someone. Ultimately the wrong people (or lack thereof) were making the wrong decisions in the footballing side of the club.

It was Swansea, and not even their best team. Archer for me is the least awful forward option, with Dibling and Fernandes behind.

I’ll take any kind of cup win if it comes to it, but that was fairly comfortable overall. Cant read too much into the performance, Swansea were goppin’.

Midweek trip to Old Trafford about a month after Christmas, I can’t see how this can end badly.

Oh good, Will Smallbone.

‘Tator says Bednarek has been ‘a colossus’ for us over the years. Good grief.

That'll do for a half. Nothing ridiculous second half please.

I think we've found our level of opposition.

I can barely contain my excitement. I have checked the kitchen, we don't have a Tupperware small enough.

If you like. Come August it'll most likely be Bazunu in goal and McCarthy on the bench, which clearly upsets a lot of people but I'm absolutely fine with. Just for reference regarding his 'never saves any shots' problem; If you took 20 shots at every keeper in the Championship last season, on average they'd save 14 whilst Bazunu would save 13. That's it, that's the difference.

He's been injured that long, I'd forgotten how much his very presence actually upset some people. Hopefully he plays all of next season and we can get promoted 'in spite of him' again.