Lighthouse

Seeing some of the videos on the BBC, words honnestly fail me. Literally dozens of people stood inside a burning with their smartphones out videoing the whole thing going on around them and not moving. It seems like it was only when the heat became unbearable that many of them were forced into a mad crush for the exits. It's genuinely scary what smartphones and socially media have actually done to the collective psyche of society. Teenagers passively burning to death for likes on their Instagram reel.

I will say with absolute certainty that our recent goalscoring struggles have absolutely nothing to do with our strikers being complacent, because they're banging them in against hapless goalkeepers in training. If you are going to try and argue that then two years ago we were the leagues third top scorers, so presumably you're going to insist that we were training against the leagues third best goalkeepers, to achieve such a high standard? No, thought not.

In other words we had a pressing need for a striker, we spent £7m and the one we got turned out to be worse than Archer. It’s really not as straight forward as some would like to believe. If it was, everyone would be doing it.

Look on the bright side, if we lose this and Brum beat Coventry at home, Lampard will properly sh*t the bed.

Clearly such a player wasn’t available at the time for the right price.

I can’t for the life of me understand what people’s problem with Long is. It’s like complaining that your space-saver spare wheel is useless because it can’t run as fast as a regular wheel. McC leaving would make sense. Out of contract in summer and (thankfully) unlikely to get first team football here, even less so with this new bloke.

I think a lot of people, myself included, were generally supportive and cautiously optimistic when he was appointed. It’s very easy to say that we should have gone for a more experienced option but Tonda had experience of this squad and got some cracking results out of them. The momentum was very much with him and we don’t know how any of the other possible candidates would have done. We could be sat here now, no better off and saying, "why didn’t we give the bloke who won four out of five a proper go FFS!"

At some point people might have to stop using the guy who got us promoted in fourth, with 87 points and as many goals scored, as an insult. It does look a little bit silly when you're in the bottom half.

Didn’t we basically do that with Jaidi?

I knew the points deduction was looking unlikely but I didn’t realise they were adding 11 points instead.

I haven’t finished with your old socks yet.

He wasn’t great first half but I’d have kept him on, unless he’s picked up a knock, obviously.

Hardly classic intercourse this but at least we’ve got the players on the bench to change things up a bit. Bragg and Matsuki have looked lively IMO but we’re not really carving out chances.

What is this ‘tator on about? It wasn’t Bragg booked, it was the Millwall defender.

Close from Leo and THB. Growing into this.

I think it's extremely naive to be expecting a formation change in the middle of the X-mas and NY fixtures. We've four fixtures in ten days, I've got sandwiches in the back of the fridge older than that. It seems especially ill-advised when you consider that players will need to be rotated, so you could be looking at a new formation, with four different players in and two days to prepare in between each game.

Interesting but okay, I'm on board with it. Lets not pretend Jander, Fellows, Armstrong and Azaz have been decent in recent games, so I've no issue with them being dropped, especially with four games in ten days. Hopefully the likes of Bragg, Matsuki and Archer take this as an audition and force their way into Tonda's long term plans. Excited to see more of Jelert too.

Why anyone wouldn't be supporting him I've no idea, unless being right is more important than seeing Saints succeed. Whether he's the right man remains to be seen. I approved of his appointment but I don't think anyone had blind faith that his initial form would carry on indefinitely.

TBH cows really aren't that great either. The one in the field behind my garden just has one, long udder and I barely got a cupful of milk out of it.

Two years ago people were saying that Luton gave the PL a right good go and they’d be one of the favourites to go straight back up. This year a lot of people said Wrexham and Birmingham were well set to ‘do an Ipswich’ and make the playoffs at the very least. It’s absolute folly to be making such definitive long term statements as, ‘Saints won’t be in the promotion hunt for years to come’, just because we’re currently mid-table. We’re not on the edge of financial solvency and we’ve got a lot of decent players on long contracts. Wolves, West Ham… I don’t fear them more than any other three clubs which might be relegated.

Games coming thick and fast. I'd like to think and hope that Leo not starting against Brum means he'll be in the team for this one.

A 1-1 draw away to a team with a decent home record is 'as bad as it gets'. Priceless. 😆

On the face of it a decent point away to a team with a decent home record. Given the results against Norwich and Oxford we really needed more. Taking the positives, the subs did seem to improve us. Jelert came back and looked decent and I thought Jay was one of the better players when given his chance. That goal though... three CBs and we just keep giving them away from set pieces.

That's at least the third manager who's faced some form of disciplinary action after throwing a tantrum against us, in barely half a season.

We’ve looked a bit better since the subs in all fairness.