Lighthouse

Mostly retired dentists called Gerald.

If that’s a foul then Sørensen has to walk, surely?

Never have I claimed it was. Adkins, Poch and Koeman all did an excellent job whilst they were here. Chelsea and Man United have just lost to a team in the bottom three. City and Liverpool lost to Palace and Leicester respectively. Spurs could get into the Champions League losing at home to Wolves, Saints and Brighton, plus their own trip to Burnley. Where does our divine right not to lose to these teams come from?

Yes. He has got it right, we’ve avoided relegation for four successive seasons.

What makes you think we should expect progress?

Fair enough, although that’s only marginally better.

No idea if that’s true but if it is he needs to ditch her. Dating a millionaire footballer, she’ll never have to do a day’s work in her life and she can’t cope with moving an hour down the M3? Surely not.

The manager discussion is now in the Ralph thread

Home games after Virgil was injured: Saints 0-5 Arsenal Saints 1-3 West Ham Saints 0-0 Bournemouth Saints 3-1 Palace Saints 0-3 Man City Saints 0-0 Hull Saints 0-2 Arsenal Saints 0-0 Man United Saints 0-1 Stoke To put it simply, I just didn't want to go to games by the end of that season.

I think if he went to Man United for around £70m it'd be a decent bit of business for all three parties. United would get someone with a much better attitude and fitness record than Pogba and we'd have some money we can spread around on some badly needed quality in the squad.

He's about the right level for a backup for a club like Saints. A weakness if called upon but hardly a liability; no better or worse than Blayney, Gazzanigga or Stekelenburg IMO. I don't think he was ever intended as anything other than backup when we signed him but obviously due to Forster's various issues he's played a lot more often than we perhaps envisioned. If the plan is indeed for him to be number two to someone much better, I'm alright with that.

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.