Lighthouse

Tella will be 23 in summer. I’d give him another year but wouldn’t be in the least bit sad to see him go. This certainly isn’t a game I’d be sending him out in.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russian-oil-official-toad-poisoning-b2074829.html Another oligarch has croaked.

No, it’s nonsense. Leeds had a, "style which suits and was sustainable across 38 games," last season. Everyone figured it out and now they’re most likely getting relegated. Managers have to be flexible and adaptable to the opposition they’re playing, otherwise their teams are predictable to play against.

Luckily as in; just imagine if Forster hadn’t pulled off those great saves? So all those great saves Pickford made to earn Everton their most recent 6 points, were they lucky?

I agree with Tim, f**k them. Not just for historical reasons but it's pretty hard to respect the fallen soldiers of any nation when, at that very moment, they're gunning and raping their way through the innocent civilians of Eastern Ukraine.

Somebody in this video but I’m not sure who.

Ralph set us up to counter the way Watford played. It didn’t work, so he changed it. Having said that we didn’t exactly set the pitch on fire when we brought on Broja in the second half either.

That’s just about top half points, which you expect on a bottom three, non-existent budget. We played one up front at Burnley because they have better players than us.

One of the promoted clubs might take a punt on him and pay a bigger chunk of his wages, although probably not all. I can see someone, somewhere convincing themselves he’s a very experienced model professional, as opposed to frequently injured and useless.

I have no agenda other than to say I don’t believe Ralph to be the main problem and I think that to call Puel better because he scored 6 more points is a fallacy. As dreadful as many of Ralph’s teams have been, I’ve never had the impression he was trying to play for a 0-0 at home to Stoke, Bournemouth, Hull or Be’er Sheva. I have no idea how well Claude or Ralph would do with Koeman’s team, or how the latter would get on managing this shower of sh*te. All I can say really is that Ralph has done what we asked him to do for four seasons, given our non-existent budget and that I was bored stupid watching the majority of Puel’s teams, as were Leicester and probably St Etienne.

Excellent, I’m glad you guys agree with me; if you take away vastly superior players you will score fewer points irrespective of the manager.

Schmeichel, Tielemans, Vardy, Maddison, Ndidi, KDH, Soyuncu and Daka are two points above us in the table and you’d take their manager?

That's not really an answer but personally I'd have said a solid 12-15 points, so 6-8 over half a season. Knock that off and Puel is on 38-40 points.

Hypothetically, how many points is a CB pairing of Fonte and VVD worth to any given team, relative to Salisu and Bednarek, over the course of a season? No, the biggest European NAME we've ever beaten (If you ignore all the British ones).

We’ve closed the gap to Man United and Newcastle, a great weekend for us all things considered.

Everton were never going to go down, they’re too good.

I'd have taken Raphinha off instead, before they end up with 9 men.

That has got to be a red on VAR, surely.

Yes. After the disastrous spending of Les and Ross four-five years ago and with an owner unwilling to put his hand is his pocket at all, I expected nothing other than relegation fights over the last four seasons. Ralph has exceeded my expectations, I honestly thought we'd go down at some point and we haven't. If there's a manager, willing to come here, who can get this squad into the top half without spending any money, then great, get him in. However I doubt such a person exists.

So which half decent* player would he be working with here? *For half decent read 'world class'.

If I gave you £500 and said you've got three and a half years to go and buy a second hand car, what would you buy?

And especially not having spent half a billion quid on their squad (plus Ronaldo on a free).

Most of our opponents win by around twenty past three.

Glory glory Man…. 🤣

You’re right, that could well happen. So why would you want to swap that manager for one who has avoided relegation for four consecutive years?