Lighthouse

As I recall he was rolling around on the floor near our right hand corner flag but the ref gave either a FK our way or a goal kick. Bart took it long, there was a bit of pinball in their box and Waigo stabbed it in. Had Holt been back in the box defending, rather than rolling around on the floor 70 yards away, he’d have probably got his massive swede on the initial ball in and we’d never have made it to Wembley.

If we’re going that simplistic then yes, I agree. However, that’s as generic as saying if we’d collected all our best players from recent history into one squad we’d be a better team, which is obvious. You are right in a literal sense but it’s still a moot point. Rather like saying we’d have won the league in 2016 if we had Pelle, Mané, Tadic, Pahars, Niemi and Lallana.

The point is that if we hadn’t sold Ings, we wouldn’t have signed the players to create those chances, so it’s a moot point. That and the fact we’d have likely conceded enough goals that a couple of extra from Ings wouldn’t have helped. In these fixtures last season we either conceded 3+ goals or failed to score ourselves.

Because we can only afford those other players thanks to selling Ings and Vest to raise funds. We did have Ings last season and we didn’t win any of these fixtures.

I’m pretty sure we also beat Torquay on penalties. Pretty sure that was the game when I thought Waigo would get booked for time wasting if he was offside one more time.

What about Ings and Valery instead of Armstrong and Perraud/Liv?

You couldn't afford me, princess.

It quite clearly wasn’t a conspiracy against Saints. If that’d been the penultimate game of the season and a draw/win for City would have kept them two points behind Liverpool and United for a glorious, three way title scrap on the last day of the season, I might have feigned belief in this nonsense. As it is, what do refs favouring City ACTUALLY achieve for the PL? Ensuring they run away with the title and TV viewing drops off a cliff for the final month of the season?

How many times did you ask her?

Live on Sky Sports for this one. Time to make good on our promising play and turn it into a decent win, for a change.

The demons of 2014 just about exorcised.

Since I mentioned Hooiveld earlier, he did have an absolute mare on his debut and Celtic fans were indifferent previously. Maybe that’s an optimistic take on it but who knows. Many have come good before.

As I’ve alluded to before, I’d be happy with another Gardos. If he can be a cut above the lower league teams we play in the cups and acquit himself respectably for short periods when the first three are injured, that’ll do me. I just hope he’s a bit better than Danso, Hooiveld or Caulker.

Which is completely the wrong attitude to have towards the whole issue. If you want to kneel, do it. If you want others to join in, put forward your case and let them make up their own minds. To say that we all have to do it unless we can put forward a reasonable case for exemption isn’t acceptable. It’s like asking someone to explain in 1,000 words or less why they aren’t a Sikh.

No. I think overall Ralph has done a decent job, keeping us in the League with an extremely limited squad due to years of awful recruitment. We just now look like we’ve turned a corner with our squad and are able to recruit genuine talent and have genuine depth. I want to see what Ralph can do.

Thiago Silva? He got one.

Yeah but none of our defenders scored so he has to make room for, I’m guessing, Cash and Rudiger.

Anybody want a bin bag filled with my exhaled breath? Yours for just £5.

The only thing I can imagine is that Ronaldo was going down before the contact, although obviously being a United player he didn’t get booked.

A few players it’d be good to see more of here, Broja and Tella in particular.

It was never brought in to remove controversy. It was brought in to remove the clear and obvious howlers, the absolute injustices which are obviously wrong. There will always be debatable decisions but hopefully now less of the Henry vs Ireland incidents.

Kaboom! Chin up, you just know a goal against ten men would have jolted them into life for a 2-1 defeat.

With Bertrand and Vest we might well be losing 4-0. Swings and roundabouts.

People will say this was just appalling goalkeeping, but what they fail to realise is that it was also an absolutely dreadful cross, following some completely hopeless marking from the LB.