Lighthouse

Why? Since the middle of the January transfer window they’ve P14, W10, D1, L3. That form over a full season would give them 84 points, title winning results for over 1/3 of a season.

Sad really, there’s not one CB, striker or AM who’s earned their place in the team for this. Pick the two least s**t in each position.

But that’s literally it, they have two things in common. They were driven by completely different issues, Gazza has very bad OCD, bipolar disorder and unresolved childhood trauma. Best was a party animal and drank to excess, Gazza uses it as a coping mechanism.

Isn't that what we're getting from Ralph? We won at Spurs, beat West Ham twice, unbeaten against United and City, even beat Arsenal when we're playing crap. Isn't that the kind of excitement we can reasonably expect from Saints? If we were doing that AND consistently beating the lower teams in and around us, we'd be a Champions League team. If you can suggest a manager who'd be willing to come here and do that, for a modest wage with basically zero transfer budget for a sustained number of years, I'd be interested to hear who.

I get the impression they were completely different personally. Best was your typical playboy, living the life of booze, women and gambling, because he was rich and famous. Gazza is a person with mental health and alcohol problems who happened to play football.

For a while now he’s looked a good 10-15 years older than he really is. Such a shame.

They are representing Russia. Imagine something like this happening to the UK, if Lewis Hamilton was still out winning F1 races, we wouldn’t all suddenly pretend he was a completely different person, from Turkmenistan. Everything you’ve said could also apply to Russian soldiers. Should we have a rule not to shoot them, in case we kill a non-rapey, forced conscript who doesn’t support Putin? It’s war, there will be innocent casualties.

Yes. We've gained because we've had a better player in our team; a team which many people were tipping for a relegation fight at the start of the season. You've answered your own point with the BIB; he gave us some important goals and points earlier in the season, so undeniably we've gained that from him being here. None of your downsides are really downsides. Those players aren't playing because they quite simply aren't good enough. With Broja's recent form they've had a golden opportunity to get back into the side and none of them have. Armstrong is a modern day Rasiak or Rob Earnshaw, Long couldn't get a game in the Championship last season and Tella is well on the way to being the next Josh Sims.

Without getting bogged down with every squad below us, my combined XI from tonight’s game would feature JWP and KWP and the rest Burnley. Perraud and Romeu would be maybes.

Since you and Dman are incapable of not turning every thread into a petulant squabble that the rest of us have to read. You’ve both made your point 100 times over, give it a rest.

He’s been good in patches but overall I’m not convinced. When you’re selling your best striker and only spending half of it on a replacement from the championship, because you need the money to plug holes elsewhere… I said championship budget but really we don’t have one as such. We’ve just been spending what we can sell for 5 years.

Give it a rest with the Broja stuff, Jesus. 🙄

So…. None of our goalkeepers are really up to it. All of our centre halves are at best limited and at worst substandard. We have nothing to mix it up in central midfield, beyond playing JWP and Romeu every game Armstrong aside, our creative players are all, TBH, sh*te. None of our strikers have scored since Adams got one goal against bottom club Norwich 2 months ago. Despite all of that, Ralph has us comfortably midtable on a Championship budget. I’ll keep him thanks, despite his faults.

Do you feel as though we haven't gained from having Broja here?

We are, this is all about trying to pressure Russia into ending the war. If enough people suffer enough hardship, they may start to question whether Putin's narrative really has their best interests at heart. Just for context, Russian suffering is not playing at Wimbledon or flying to Ibiza on holiday. Ukrainian suffering is being raped and killed.

It's been done already with this Olympic Athletes of Russia doping bullsh*t. It's an absolute non-punishment and utterly meaningless, as you say they just carry on like nothing happened.

But that puts you in a position where you don’t impose any sanctions on anyone except Putin. The athletes get to compete, the oligarchs keep their yachts and the average Russian on the street gets to go to McDonald’s. You can’t separate those supporting the war and those opposing it so you need a blanket policy on the whole country until they change their ways. Every single Russian needs to know they are international pariahs.

Capped by a truly absurd challenge from Azpilicueta for the pen.

No. Partly because I’d never want saints to lose and partly because Everton aren’t going to go down anyway.

If you could choose one; Liverpool not winning anything else or Everton relegated, which would it be?

It would be absolute peak Arsenal to win this after their last three.

😆

This thread was more fun when it was about the ducks.

And I had such high hopes for a website which calls itself 'newcoldwar.org'.

What I said was… Yes there will be fees involved, the point is we’re paying FF a massive wage which is disproportionate to what he delivers on the pitch. It will take some investment from our new owners to actually buy the player but if they’re not willing to do that then I don’t know why they’re here. We’re not talking about building a team of Galacticos, we just need someone decent enough to stay comfortably midtable.