Lighthouse

I see him as a decent enough player in the Stu Armstrong or Steven Davis role, albeit not as good as the latter. I say decent, he's West Ham or Brentford decent, not Chelsea or Arsenal decent. He has limitations and he'll have bad games.

14 conceded in their last 5. I do wonder how long RVN will last.

If you want to split hairs then fine, Ralph lost to Cardiff then immediately beat Arsenal and Huddersfield. Everyone who watched that Everton game could see what Poch was trying to implement and that he was taking us to the next level. You misunderstand my point. I'm not expecting Juric to match either of their results, it's about the principle. A decent manager should start to see improvement relative to his predecessor within the first 3-4 games. People are saying if Juric can't muster 6 points in 21 games, it's because we didn't sack Martin soon enough, which is just weird nonsense.

Not to mention an incredibly flimsy CM and almost nothing by way of creativity beyond an inconsistent 18 year old. Not sure I agree with the second sentence as such. We said that last time, it's all about who holds on to which players. In that regard, I think we'll see relatively few come in for our lot.

You're comparing games against Chelsea and Spurs with Palace and West Ham. Seems fair. Palace had 19 shots today, 10 on target and 6 blocked.

He did not link up well. He flicked on headers to nobody and our only goal had nothing to do with him.

That's weird because I remember managers like Poch and Ralph coming in and making an immediate improvement with literally their first game. Adkins took a couple of weeks, Hughes came in mid-March and did enough to just about keep us up with about 10 games left. So why does the man being appointed with more than half the season left have such a difficult task? Seems to me he's got the team doing his thing almost immediately, we're going direct, he's got TP starting, much less passing around the back. Which 'habits' have we got that are so impossible to shake?

He was sh*te.

We're 19 games in with 6 points. We need 6 points from our remaining 19 games to get above Derby. So the second half of the season would have to be worse to not break that record. So how would finishing below Derby prove that we should have made the switch sooner?

Right now I'd take BWP.

You don't think Chelsea will take into account the fact that he's been gone two weeks, we've had four games since then and maybe make a phonecall to Ivan?

A serious half time talk needed to turn that around and I’d bring off either Armstrong or Dibling for Les. Getting overrun through the middle, if Palace remember how to shoot we’ll be in trouble.

Christ, they’ve been all over us since we scored. As we feared, getting swamped in midfield.

Somewhat dubious that but it’s been coming, on the balance of play.

Bednarek starting to push his luck, booking can’t be long now.

We can’t see you sneaking out!

Oh yes, Dibling!

Like it or not, he’s our joint top league scorer, with two. I don’t like it either but there’re precious few goal in the rest of our team.

Like others, I’m surprised to see Les dropped, perhaps he has some sort of fitness issue. I’m guessing we’ll see Aribo and MF sitting deeper than usual although that wouldn’t exactly be playing to their strengths. If we’re going direct, I’d imagine they’ll have more of a defensive, covering role to play.

Why not? What was so incredible about Saints squad last season, which won’t be applicable next season and wasn’t under Burley or Redknapp? We’ll likely have Archer and BBD instead of Adams, they should do a decent job. THB and KWP will likely leave but we’ve still gained Wood, Edwards and Taylor and that’s before we’ve signed any more players. I’d say with a half decent fullback and central midfielder, next season’s squad will be better than last, so promotion should be pretty much guaranteed.

Has that actually been confirmed by someone at the club? I’m not saying it isn’t true, I’ve just no idea where it’s come from. Personally I’d use the fact that we’ve looked better (I’m not saying good) in a few second halves (Brighton, Bournemouth, Chelsea, Liverpool in the cup) to suggest we haven’t had a fitness issue this season.

Nah, I liked Steve.

Hoddle and Strachan took over underperforming teams and got them performing again. I don’t feel like this squad or any of the players in it are underperforming. This is as good as any of them have been in their career. They’re just sh*t. Im sorry, I can’t find a way to link this opinion to my ‘hero’, it’s kind of a stand alone thing.

You know what, I fully agree with that first sentence, those four are definitely what I would call ‘average’ PL players. Oh what I wouldn’t give for a team full of them now. I’m trying to make the point that the squad back then was much better because the squad back then was much better. The team Strachan took over was largely the one which had finished 15th and then 10th the preceding two seasons. We’re watching the one which finished fourth in the Championship, plus a handful of players from Swansea and Sheff Utd. Incidentally, is there a statute of limitations on Russell bloody Martin? I’m absolutely bored senseless of every single discussion point being brought back to him.