Lighthouse

What gives you guys that idea? We've signed players we can afford with what we make from selling our better players. I doubt Ralph's dream signings were Championship players, unproven kids and loans.

But that's football. You wouldn't expect to beat Arsenal, nor would you expect zero points from home games against Palace, Watford and Newcastle. You can't expect one but not the other and say that it's saved our bacon.

That’s exactly why I’ve never thought Everton would go down. They’ve always had the players to be much, much higher up the league than they are now. It just takes a couple of games where those players turn up and they’re safe. It’s Leeds for the drop IMO.

In an individual game or over a season? Let me put it this way, my combined XI from the Burnley game last week would have been 9 Burnley players and 2 Saints.

There is nothing to suggest. Why do so many people assume there must be some magic formula which gets one of the cheapest squads in the league into top half contention? Unless we find some money to recruit some much better players, this is where we are. Our defenders and ‘keepers are too error prone to play a resolute, defensive game; our attacking players are too blunt and toothless to go blood and thunder. Villa fans are talking about whether they can keep Philipe Coutinho next season, we’re talking about whether we’re going to keep Shane Long.

If you’re still talking about Puel’s team, being better defensively didn’t mean they were harder to beat. If you only need one goal to beat a team, they are definitively easy to beat. We really were no better then than we are now.

Watford have lost 7 of their last 8 games (I forget who it was who didn’t beat them) I think that’s a given. Brentford and Palace at Goodison, I just think they will do it with their backs to the wall and fans behind them.

Let me put it this way, everyone seems to rave about how good a job Dyche was doing and it was mad to sack him (at the time). Yet he was 15 points behind us when he was let go.

I think they will stay up, regardless of what happens today. They will beat Watford, Brentford and Palace, finish the season on 38 points. Leeds will, at best, beat Brighton and finish the season on 37.

I was talking about the 3-2 in December 2018 and 2-2 at Old Trafford a couple of years ago.

Are you disappointed with a few wins over City, Liverpool and outplaying Arsenal and United?

So not keeping us in the league for four seasons, despite being consistently in the bottom three of the net spend table?

Broja against West Ham in the cup. That was the only one of our last 12 goals scored by a striker.

We’ve lost 13 league games this season. Puel lost 16. If we can nick a draw at Brentford or Leicester, we will have lost fewer games than Puel… without the help of Fonte and Van Dijk for half a season.

AA would be a decent buy for anyone chasing promotion next season. We might have to subsidise a portion of his wages but at least we can recoup something.

I can’t see either Broja or AA being here next season and that doesn’t upset me either.

I received that too. It did smell nice.

No, my point was that the obvious solution of playing Perraud hasn’t improved us at all. Some people may well prefer it, I’m not saying they’re wrong, but it’s a long way from being the solution to our problems. When your attacking players are any four out of a truly hopeless bunch, playing a left footed left back isn’t going to make all that much difference.

How’ve you figured that out? We kept them because it was cheap, we sold Gabbi because he didn’t fit in with our system but was good enough to get reasonable money from Italy.

So your main gripe with him is that he didn’t bring on a player who has two goals this season and last scored 6 months ago?

Right, so you have no idea you just want somebody to come in and do better with Long, Moi, Bednarek, Redmond and co.?

People said that when he refused to drop Tino and play Perraud. Now he’s been forced into that, it still hasn’t helped. Honestly, this is 90% on the players. They’re substandard, mentally weak and make regular individual errors.

Who do you think is going to get a tune out of this bunch of no hopers? Half of our team wouldn’t get a game for anyone else in this league, bar maybe Norwich and Watford.

Ah, whatever.

Yes Burnley!