Lighthouse

He did some good things, granted. He also went way over budget on the training ground and wasted even more money on what I regard as a personal vanity project Dani Osvaldo. That said, p*ssing The Sun off to the extent that they posted a double page spread on how they were going to ignore 'South Coast Team' was quite funny.

I would guess it makes sense to not risk him in a fairly low importance match, if we are considering offers.

I think many of you are grossly overestimating the calibre of player who is willing to be backup goalkeeper at Championship Southampton. They're the same pair we had last time, McC is fine as cover in the Championship and signing someone better would just be a waste of money on a player who many well not play a minute of league football. I've still yet to read an explanation as to how our Wembley hero and 'the reason we got promoted' is now suddenly so bad he's incapable of playing at the same level.

It’s barely a year since everyone was declaring McCarthy as ‘the only reason we got promoted’. Now, apparently he’s not fit to be back up to back up to Bazunu. He’s absolutely fine as cover for any hypothetical injury to Bazunu, up to January if nothing else.

Walcott was 16, had played half a season of Championship football and was competing with Henry, Pires and Wiltord for a place. Dibling is 19, has a full season at the top level and only needs to oust Dwight McNeil from the team. I think he’ll do okay.

So when you said, "at the time of Bazunu's achilles injury," you meant we should have literally signed Johansson during the warm up against Preston?

Wild that from Gordon, absolutely needless challenge.

Good luck to the lad, hope it works out for him. The fee seems reasonable, especially if there’s a sell on clause, he’s still got a lot to prove in order to justify it. Hopefully a modest chunk of it can go towards a decent creative midfielder. On a separate note, I think we can put to bed the discussion as to whether a young player is better off at a club like Saints or Chelsea. Jimmy Jay Morgan was last seen on loan at Gillingham.

The first choice player, in each position The second choice player, in each position The third choice goal keeper.

I know I'm just a quirky contrarian (apparently) but I am actually going to do that, rather than throwing a tantrum Veruca Salt would be proud of, because we signed George Long to be this year's Joe Lumley/Tommy Forecast/Michael Poke in the least important position in the squad.

Nobody is saying we can't 'block' Ramsdale's position. It's simply not a position we need to spend our (limited) transfer budget on and we're not going to. We need decent attacking players, I'll save my bile for SR until the window has closed and I've seen exactly who replaces Dibling and Edozie.

Because I don’t have a problem with Bazunu being our keeper, neither have the past five consecutive managers who chose him over McCarthy and I won’t be the least bit upset if we get, "promoted in spite of him," again. The people running the club don’t hate Bazunu half as much as a small contingent on this message board. So far this season he’s done nothing wrong and has had a large say in three of the four points we’ve scored.

So we’ve got a very cheap and experienced third choice keeper, who may well never play for us anyway, to replace Lumley. Can’t for the life of me understand why that would upset people. When we got promoted in 2012, this role was taken by Tommy Forecast.

If his positioning is anything to go by, he'll probably be landing in Hamburg shortly.

Literally every player we’ve ever signed has been on the back of what they’ve done for other clubs. There’s no doubt what our current players are capable of, it’s Still’s job to get the best out of them and replicate something close to their best. Onuachu couldn’t hold the ball up because he had breeze block feet and the coordination of a giraffe on crack. Our current strikers are far more refined and capable. If Still was to say, at a press conference, "I can’t get any of these five strikers to replicate anything close to their previous scoring rates at other clubs and I can’t get any of them to hold the ball up and bring others into play either." I’d be seriously worried and would worry what the point in more signings would be. Thankfully he hasn’t and I’m hoping he’s got something better up his sleeve than what we’ve seen so far.

Lovely afternoon in the sun that, great game of cricket in the end. Rain could yet decide the final three I fear. Fingers crossed.

That’s not really true though, is it. The ball was perfectly placed and hit the side netting just inside the right hand post. Bazunu did everything right, making the striker shoot across him, covering the near post and making sure he couldn’t just blast it over his head. If you’re going to allow players the space to shoot that accurately from that close, the chances are it’s going in.

You don’t seem to object to Tella being in that list and he played his third (and final) game for us on 19th August. I stand by my opinion, KWP is the only player I envy from last time. The goals I mentioned are not ‘ifs buts and maybes’ they are literal, actual goals that our strikers have all managed over a sustained period. I’d also like to believe that 6ft 2 Stewart and 6ft 1 BBD might be capable of holding the ball up and bringing others into play. Put it this way. If fans and/or Still think our current strikers aren’t good enough then Christ knows who you’re hoping to get instead.

MF is a very obviously PL player, who plays a high intensity CM role and covers a lot of ground. The fact that Stu played in a slight more advanced role doesn’t negate the fact that Matty is a class act in this league.

Archer had two half season loans in the Championship, scoring 7 and 11 goals respectively. As luck would have it, those 18 goals came in exactly the same number of appearances (40) as Adams made two years ago. Stewart scored 10 in 13 league games before his injury. I’m not expecting that now but he clearly knows how to score. Then there’s BBD, who’s averaged 18 goals a season in his last two full Championship campaigns. So given that all three of those players have individually outscored Che Adams’ rate of 16 goals a season, I am willing to indulge the ‘delusion’ that they might be capable of five goals each this campaign to put them in the same ballpark, collectively.

From a tight angle with no options only means it’s very hard for the striker to get it right, not necessarily that it’s easy for the keeper to save. If the strike is accurate, that goes in far more often than not. It was too far to his left to save with his feet and to close range to expect him to get down with his hand. If I could be bothered I could dig out a dozen similar goals that Ramsdale conceded last year.

We have Fernandes instead of Stu, Dibling and Robinson instead of Tella and BBD, Stewart AND Archer instead of Adams. So no, I don’t envy them.

KWP is the only player from that team that I envy.

The second one? No, it was struck low from about ten yards out, Ramsdale lets that in nine times out of ten.

Archer playing as a 10 off Stewart Armstrong playing wide off Downs BBD and Stewart as a forward pair Archer playing off the last man, with AA in the space behind Armstrong playing wide off Stewart Any number of combinations of the above players would be an improvement on playing our shortest striker alone as a #9 with everyone else on the bench.