Lighthouse

We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it, plus we’ve already got plenty of Championship standard players. Sell him.

They really need to stop smoking, all these careless discarded cigarettes.

We don’t speak of it around here.

No, they’re sticking to their game plan of letting Liverpool have possession and hitting them on the counter. It’s worked so far, they could yet nick it.

A++ Sh*thousery there.

Define ‘accountable’. Look at Man United, they held Moyes accountable, then LVG, Jose, Ole and Ragnik. When does ETH become accountable for their current results, or does there come a point when you accept the limitations of the players and the ceiling of what they will achieve? No formation or tactical tinkering will prevent Salisu’s howler at Spurs, or stop KWP losing his man for the equaliser and they’re two of our supposed better players who nobody was arguing shouldn’t be on the pitch.

I don’t want to be mean to Jack but I think 122 PL appearances is more of a reflection of how consistently poor our recruitment has been than anything else. A few less Hoedts, Dansos and Bednareks and you’d probably looking at a quarter of that number.

We didn’t get 6 points from 45 with Baz, ABK, Aribo, Lavia and Mara available. We got them with Forster, Bednarek, Romeu, Walcott and Redmond playing most of those games. How about we wait and see how they do over a consistent run of games before judging Ralph on them? As for the formation, didn’t we lose most of those games at the back of last season playing four at the back? I would also prefer four at the back, when the likes of Baz and ABK are ready and Perraud is fit, but let’s not pretend it’s some holy grail for which will solve all our problems. I don’t know why people are convinced a debut GK, playing behind a debut CB, an accident prone Salisu, Djenepo at LB and KWP (who was responsible for Spurs equaliser) was so obviously the best solution that you’d be a fool not to play away to Spurs.

If you’ve already made up your mind, after one game away to Spurs, that clueless Ralph can’t possibly be the man to take us forward then you will look for confirmation bias. Some were saying he was obviously going to be sticking with McCarthy this season. Complete conjecture, hasn’t happened. Others talk about Valery starting ahead of ABK at Spurs, as if Ralph hasn’t got a clue which is the better player and there are no other factors involved. That lasted one whole game, before the latter was in the team. Any positive changes to the team must be in spite of Ralph, not because of him. A change in formation or a good substitution must be because the coaches were stood screaming at him until he finally caved in. How many armchair experts were demanding we bring on Armstrong against Leeds? Hardly anyone but he did and it helped turn our performance around.

You guys sound like the theme tune for Fun House.

That one sits in between Steve Sidwell and Danny Drinkwater on Chelsea’s shelf of what the f**kery.

It’s quite astonishingly obvious that he didn’t mean women shouldn’t play football, but that’s never gotten in the way of people wilfully misinterpreting things, because they need to be offended.

A real nail-biting end to the game, from a position I didn’t think we’d win from, yet again. Great to see some decent performances from the young lads.

I don't know how Red Nev can accuse them of not spending money with a straight face. It doesn't matter if it comes from commercial revenue, the Glazers or selling old records at a car boot sale. In the last four or five years AWB - £50m Fred - £55m Lukaku - £80m Fernandes - £55m Maguire - £80m Sancho - £80m Pogba - £90m Whatever wages Ronaldo is on.

All the players you mentioned played anyway with the exception of Redmond and Romeu. The latter would mean completely changing the way we play, with the less mobile Romeu in the middle and JWP as a #10. So all you're really saying is you'd rather we played Redmond than Moi. Fair enough, I wouldn't say that's wrong but he's hardly night and day better than Moi. Both are substandard at this level.

It’s not about trust, it’s about cohesion and being ready as a team. The 2009 is all the proof you need that no matter how much talent you have things take time. It’s the same reason Newcastle can’t win the league this season, even if they’d bought Mbappe, Haaland, KDB and Virgil. Of course it’s a made up scenario, you literally just asked me how it could have been worse. Any answer to that will be a made up scenario. When we first got promoted we had to rebuild and the first ten games were awful. Under Poch we basically had 2.5 new players in the team and were top 4 after a couple of months. There’s a lot to be said for stability and steady integration. Even Koeman started with a defeat at Anfield and a pretty awful 0-0 at home to West Brom. Anyway, we’ll have to agree to disagree. Hopefully Ralph is proven right in his approach and our patience pays off.

But who else do you play instead of him?

Well, fairly obviously we could have lost by more than three goals. How would four new young players have felt about being on the wrong end of a 6-0 on debut? Without Salisu’s howler, 3-1 is basically a par score for a team like ours at a CL away game. Valery knows the squad, he knows the players, clearly it’s not a long term plan as ABK started in his place today. It’s not a nonsense argument. Look at our games from Pardew’s season. We had talent like Lambert, Lallana, Hammond, Morgan and Kelvin in the team and still didn’t win a league game until October. It took time for them to gel as a team. https://www.soccerbase.com/teams/team.sd?team_id=2471&teamTabs=results

I don't know how many times it needs repeating but throwing four young debutants into the same team, for a fixture like Spurs away, is just asking for trouble. Valery is nothing special at this level but at the very least he knows the rest of the players well and has appeared competent in a back three in the past. There's clearly something going on with Adams and potential transfers behind the scenes, for him to not even get on the pitch last week. Mo started because we're always going to have to make changes mid game with the new sub rule. I'd rather it was this way round than having to bring on Moi to try and change the game. His decisions today made sense. We've still got two first choice fullbacks with long term injuries and are missing anything resembling a decent striker or options in AM.

Whilst I agree with the sentiment, truth be told we have little choice in the matter. With the 5 subs rule, changes will become a necessity, rather than an option. If your opponents are bringing on three or four fresh faces, you will need to counter than in attack and defence. That's why I wasn't particularly shocked or surprised to see him start ahead of Aribo and it worked to an extent. It's the football equivalent of using the right bowlers at the right time in a cricket T20, not just using all your best players at the start. I think there's going to be a lot more of this kind of thing from everyone, not just Saints.

It was Pahars’ last goal for us, I remember that much.

I see what you did there.

Perhaps some of the wags have been for a boob job and they had a 2-4-1 offer.

Don’t all players? They have GPS trackers in for analysis, do they not?

No Aribo clearly isn’t true, he’s on the bench on a very hot day and we have five subs. The starting XI has never been less relevant as the one which plays the last 20 minutes could look completely different. As for Djenepo and a back five; as opposed to what? Who should be playing LB in your preferred back four?