Lighthouse

I wouldn’t have Ings back because he’s 30 and not especially good. Single figures for Villa, including a couple of pens.

Having seen some of the videos, I’m actually surprised deaths are that low.

I’ve drawn a Venn diagram of things in your post and things Ralph is actually responsible for. The other circle is on a different forum somewhere, try mumsnet.

TBH, if we’re offering him a contract, we might as well offer him a 12 year deal. If just running around for 10 minutes and falling over sporadically is deemed a worthy contribution to the team, he will never not be able to do that. I’ve played against Monday night fives players who were pushing 50 and avid cyclists/joggers, they could do that no problem.

Can we just call him Pete?

He was so forgettable that Saints never even bothered to mention that he’d left. As you say, never terrible just an inconsequential player all round. Useless Safri some called him.

Oh good, gobsh*te relatives mouthing off on social media. Not had much of that since J Rod left.

He doesn't this is a complete myth. The majority of the time he gives THEM the ball, either with his terrible touch and control or simply by being offside. He's as bad as Zaha when it comes to throwing himself on the ground with minimal contact, only without the talent. Most of the time he doesn't even win the foul doing that, the ref just waves at him to get up. He's a League 1 player and nobody has yet managed to explain this magical quality that only he can bring to the dressing room and what it actually translates to on the pitch.

I completely agree. We could have just not bought him, started Rasiak every game and he’d have done exactly the same.

I’ll go with Villa when we were 2-0 at half time and Jakobsson got injured. On came CD and… well we all know the rest.

You’re probably right but we did also get late winners against Norwich and Blackburn and equalisers against Palace and West Brom.

Why bother. They’re all accidentally falling down the stairs whilst carrying and axe and licking a toad, those poor careless chaps keep accidentally dying in accidents. Whoops.

Just got back, good performance that overall, especially from the bowlers. Fair play to the bowlers, they all acquitted themselves well tonight, skittled Essex for exactly the same score we fell to last time I went.

I’m lost now, nobody has tried to claim any of that. Charlie claimed that we only ever signed one or two players. That isn’t true, last summer we signed six. I made no comment on their quality and I’d say it was pretty obvious that if five out of six are crap, that’s not good.

The ‘wisdom’ of Ukraine doesn’t come into it. Russia will continue to recruit mercenaries from wherever they can find them, whilst simultaneously murdering any they capture fighting for Ukraine. Part of me is wondering if we should call Russia’s bluff on the grain exports and send in a coalition of NATO ships to protect it. You’d think they’d back down on that, rather than engaging and seeing their Black Sea fleet wiped out.

Well that’s nice but it’s got nothing to do with the original point I was responding to; that we only ever sign one or two players in a window, which isn’t true. P.S. It’s actually six if you include Walcott last summer.

They’re not endless though, we have to sell a player just to afford one in that price bracket. If you add up the total price we paid for every player in our squad, what does it come to? I can’t be arsed adding it all up but I’ll bet if you divided it by £30m you’d probably end up with about five players.

Last summer we signed five players, not including Small and Simeu.

That if you’re good enough you’re old enough, as has always been the case. You can’t just put a team of kids out but Baz will likely be playing behind ten players with over 1,000 top flight games between them, next year. Niemi, Cech, Oblak, Dida, Van see Sar, Akinfeev, Shovkovskiy. They’ve all been first team regulars and/or full internationals since they were 19-21.

The point is that even teenagers can perform at their best in big tournaments. It’s not confirmation bias, I’m not the one making definitive statements. What I’m saying is that plenty of young players have excelled despite their lack of experience. Raheem Sterling went straight into Liverpool’s team without going out on loan. John Stones was 19 and had only played 20-odd games for Barnsley when Everton signed him.

We’d all like to sign players with the calmness and consistency of Bednarek and Stephens, or the decision making and composure of Walcott and Long but what makes you think we can’t get this from Bazunu just because he’s young? Why will he fall apart at the first sign of adversity? Owen, Rooney, R9, Mbappe, Henry, Pele and countless other players have gone to a World Cup as teenagers, with a nation’s expectation on their shoulders, and been the star of the tournament. Why are you so convinced a 20 year old will be a quivering wreck for a Tuesday night trip to Brentford?

Any ‘keeper would look sh*t with a crap defence in front of them. Niemi 02-04 is night and day from Niemi 04-05. You could have Alisson or Ederson out there getting peppered with unchallenged shots from our own 6 yard box, they’d let in a bunch of goals too. We clearly need better players in front of whichever ‘keeper we put out but the window doesn’t even open until tomorrow. We’re all hoping we see the back of Bednarek as a bare minimum and get someone competent to play along side Salisu. Let’s wait a couple of months before making judgements on who we haven’t signed.

I’m a bit stumped, after everything we saw last season, as to why ‘experience’ is suddenly the go-to buzz word for our recruitment. It’s the one thing we’ve already got tonnes of in the squad, yet people are pulling their hair out over the idea of signing one inexperienced player. We could put out a front line of Walcott and Long, with Redmond and Moi in behind. Can’t get much more experienced than that and yet somehow I don’t fancy it.

Competent litter means good enough. That’s pretty much my point, decent players can pop up in all sorts of weird places with little or no previous experience in the PL. If our recruitment team have done their homework and think he’s good enough based on actual real world analysis of what he’s done on the pitch, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt until I have reason to think otherwise.

These are just internet rumours so far, the window isn’t even open. Let’s wait until we actually find out who signs who and how they play before getting too dramatic. Wherever Pope goes, he’ll be double the price being mooted for Baz, and then some. IF we’ve done our homework properly we could be getting a competent ‘keeper at a decent price and have more money to strengthen where it’s badly needed, I.e. everywhere.