Lighthouse

No me neither, the problem is you’ve now got to spend half a billion just to be mid-table. You’ve got the ‘big six’ chucking money at their squads, then add Leicester, West Ham and Everton and you can easily spend the national debt of a small African country finishing ninth. Villa, Wolves and Leeds have had no small amount of investment either. Even Newcastle, for all their gripes about selling up and investment, managed to find £40m for Joelinton.

Correct. So many fans have been delighted to see their club signing fifty.... sixty... eighty million pound superstars, building £800m stadiums and winning trophies, as if it was all some sort of charitable cause. As if some random Chinese guy actually cares about the three Cup Winners Cups you won in the seventies or a human rights abusing Arab prince is genuinely moved by people standing with their scarves aloft singing some historic club anthem. All the phone ins with fans saying, "we need investment if we’re serious about winning the league," when what they really mean is they want a rich man to buy them nice things. Genuine investment means maximising your revenue stream and gaining a significant return in the long term and that’s what we’re seeing here on a truly grotesque scale

You can tell he clearly isn’t happy but he stopped short of actually criticising the proposals, saying he doesn’t want to lose the fight for the CL places and he understands why the fans are upset. Basically said as much as he could without being fired for criticising the owners.

Nev tearing a strip off them again on MNF. Klopp fairly non-comital and cautious with his words, which is understandable given that he’s employed by the perpetrators.

Apart from a truly gargantuan pile of cash?

They can do this but it will be of no consequence to any of the clubs involved. There will be still be plenty of fans willing to buy tickets to Anfield and any drop off will be inconsequential compared to the figures being talked about.

Yes but look how that turned out. They can still pack OT with fans, sell T-shirts around the globe and buy a team full of £80m players with only sporadic access to CL revenue. The Liverpool owners clearly knew they’d get this reaction, they can’t have been naive enough to believe otherwise, which can only lead me to the conclusion that they just don’t care.

If I were them, the best f**k you I could think of (without any legal ramifications) would be to rearrange all their PL fixtures so they're the day before their ESL games.

I can’t see anyone being kicked out of the PL for the simple reason that they’re every bit as greedy as the clubs involved. Without these six clubs, the PL TV rights will plummet, so they’ll have to cave in eventually. I think the end game is it’ll just be a sh*t Champions League replacement and the domestic leagues will become even more unbalanced.

I think we’re basically getting at the same thing. It’s like a soviet fighter pilot defecting to the US. It may be strictly against Kremlin rules but if the Americans don’t care about that, there’s naff all they can do about it. So basically this summer’s going to be more like an IPL auction than a transfer window.

I get the need to register players, what I’m saying is; is there any actual difference between what happens now and what would happen in the ESL. For example Real Madrid could buy out Shane Longs contract for €100m in summer, same as they could now under La Liga rules. An arbitrary transfer window would have to be open to allow registration to take place but that could still happen today if La Liga’s window was open and ours was closed.

I’m not certain on the legalities but is that not what a transfer basically is anyway? Club A pays Club B an agreed amount to effectively cancel his contract and they then offer him a new one. Providing the ESL gave permission to register these players (which they obviously would) I’m not entirely sure what would be blocking a transfer.

Would that even be feasible? I get how the other way around the PL could ban clubs from registering players who’ve played in the ESL but if the ESL actively want to poach these players what can realistically be done to stop them leaving?

Likewise. It skipped a generation but my grandparents were ST holders. I didn’t grow up in Southampton but supported them anyway because I wanted to support a club I had a genuine connection to, not just be another plastic tw*t in an Arsenal or Liverpool shirt. I’ve supported them through thick and thin, went to more games than ever in the Wotte/Poortvleit and League 1 seasons but there needs to be some vague hint towards the ‘thick and’ side of that bargain. Until the team actually look like they’ve got some sort of backbone and ambition, I’m really not bothered if I miss a game or two. If that makes me a sh*t fan then fine, I can live with that but I’m definitely not the kind of mug who’s going to run off and pay €90 for a ticket to see Arsenal against Man City.

If you say so.

Quite a lot wrong with that but I’ll give it a shot.... I wasn’t smugly crowing about anything, it was more of a statement on what a pathetic state our club is in that I didn’t even have the vaguest hope that they might put in a performance. No, you couldn’t pay me to watch this super league and the clubs involved can all p*ss off and disappear up their own a*ses as far as I’m concerned. The cards aren’t stacked in our favour, we’re playing with our own cards face up on the table whilst trying to bluff our opponents with a Jack high in every hand. There is no natural drama, or excitement. We turn up, completely bottle it, put in a none performance and lose against the 4th worst team in the division playing with 9 men to name but one performance. If you think I’m bad, I’ve seen the Emirates 1/4 full in Wengers last season in protest at home terrible being 6th in the league was. I’d laugh my tits off seeing that lot losing 12 out of 14 or whatever in some crappy European Super League.

It’s been the same sh*te for five years under four managers now, so that about sums it up for me too. Should Ralph be doing better? Absolutely, but I can’t imagine anyone within our budget would do an awful lot better. When you consider players like Redmond, Bednarek, Long and Stephens have been perennial for most of that time...

I did, that’s kind of my point. There’s no joy or entertainment in watching Saints at all. Until they aspire to something a bit better than 12 defeats in 14 or whatever it was before today I’m not going to go out of my way to tune in.

Managed to go the whole weekend without seeing a minute of either the Duke’s funeral or the semi-final. Laid a bit of decking with some beers in the sunshine and saw a cracking Grand Prix with another McLaren podium. It’s been lovely TBH.

I first thought that he’d knowingly posted that as a joke. Then it occurred to me that certain people would believe it’s a real poster. Then it occurred to me that it’s not actually any stupider than thinking Idris Elba isn’t black enough because he doesn’t listen to drum and bass whilst eating fried chicken. Anyway, back on topic: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56789454 Something something, freedoms, global reset, obedience etc.

Kane injured. Looks like it’ll be Son getting the hat trick on Wednesday instead.

I believe the home team are the Queen’s Royal Lancers, against the Provisional IRA in their usual camo.

Ahhh, but if you do goals per minute, against teams playing in white, in midweek games, against ‘keepers called Gustav; he actually scores 1 in 2.

Let's hope he doesn't spill margherita all over it.

The ultimate irony is that some of them probably don’t even subscribe to any particular racial theory. They’re just lonely, low self esteem, lacking purpose and craving attention and notoriety, which they know they can achieve just by sending a few tweets to the right people.