Lighthouse

Rodgers is obviously a decent manager but personally I’d want to see how he copes with McCarthy, Long and Redmond instead of Schmeichel, Vardy and Maddison.

You can base something on the fact that Shane f**king Long is apparently a regular fixture in the squad again.

Upbeat and confident, I think he may have just re-tiled his bathroom really well.

The Premier League seems to have become this weird enigma where you can be absolute dog sh*t and still finish 12th or spend £200m and only end up 11th.

Just got back and have to say we were pretty poor. Long and Obafemi should be nowhere near a Premier League squad and Djenny is not a LB. positives were Livramento and seeing Romeu back fully fit but not much else. Perraud looked okay enough.

Reserve team or not, this’ll be my first game since we beat Villa 2-0 in February last year.

Gone with the never fail strategy of Richarlison, Pickford and DCL (c) in my fantasy team. Do your worst, Saints.

Please don't start this again. Personally I don't like being treated like a complete idiot and patronised by people who fundamentally don't understand the issue themselves. Worse than that, I believe some people responsible for the gesturing don't actually want racism to end. They want a cause to fight against, a racist bogeyman they can broadcast their moral superiority over. No there aren't. The message is out there and has been for decades. If it goes unheeded by some then you either need to accept it for what it is or try a different strategy. How is 'stirring them up' in any way conducive to reducing racism? When has that ever solved any problem?

I know you’re being sarcastic but I’m not sure that’s really the issue at hand. All but the most meat-headed EDL supporters would accept that racism A - Exists and B - is wrong and unpleasant. If there is any discussion to be had here then it’s more nuanced and involved. Obviously white people don’t know what it’s like to be BAME but then they don’t know what it’s like to be white, so that works both ways and makes it harder to be objective.

You do realise they tend to go for £40m plus as a starting price? I'm glad we're signing players who are untested at a higher level, they represent appalling value for money. We spent £12m on Shane Long, which is closer to £25-30m in today's money and he was thoroughly average at relegation fighting Hull.

Sam Gallagher isn't a Premier League player. You're going to have to get over that some day.

Never saw Shearer play for Saints but that would have been my shout too. Unfortunately my cardiologist insists that I put Niemi in behind Virgil, after the last few seasons.

On a serious note, it does put a bit of perspective on Ings leaving because he wouldn’t sign a new contract here. If it can happen to Barcelona it can happen to anyone.

Messi is set to leave Barca. It'd be funny if this lead to City pulling the plug on Grealish, with Villa having already spent the money. Not plausible but funny.

Good luck next season. Unfortunately for you guys, signings like Ings just put you in 5th-11th territory with West Ham, Everton, Arsenal, Spurs, Leeds and Leicester. Admittedly above where we’re likely to be scrapping but I can’t see you taking it to the next level.

The idea of a football club signing a player from another football club and none of it having anything to do with Saints is just… oh I’m sorry I can hardly breathe.

So, who fancies a trip to er…. *checks list* ….. Latvia?

Apart from Virgil being a world record fee for a defender, Shaw being a world record fee for a teenager and everyone thinking Ings would probably go for about £20m with only a year left?

Complete conjecture.

I’ve seen some non-sequiturs on here over the years but this one’s definitely up there. Because Villa didn’t post a flurry of enthusiastic tweets, it’s likely that we were the ones trying to sell him? I’d say it’s an awful lot more likely, if we’re reading anything into Villa’s Twitter activity, that they know their star player is off imminently and having a massive fanfare over a signing like Ings probably won’t be too well received.

So you wish we’d received less money?

Just to put things into perspective, this is the entire team we’ve been paying to play for someone else over the last year or two. Forster may have to come off his line for a change but you get the point. Any club in the league is going to struggle paying for that on top of their actual match day squad. Gunn Valery - Hoedt - Forster - Vokins Clasie - Lemina Boufal - Elyounoussi Austin - Carrillo

Those 'best assets' are ones we didn't even have under Puel, so we must have done something right. As far as I can see we signed Ings, got some 40-odd goals out of him in three years, then sold him for a £5m profit. Seems like a well run business to me.

Because it amounts to the same thing. Gao doesn't give a flying f**k what the fans think, nor does Ashley. You can round up a mob of 10,000 and stand outside the Itchen screaming for him to be beheaded if you want, he'll just be sat in his apartment in Guangzhou or Shanghai not giving a sh*t.

I thought you didn't like taking the knee because it was just empty gesturing which achieves nothing?