Lighthouse

Got an unexplained optimistic feel about this one. I'm going to say a backs to the wall 1-0 win, Archer to score. Yellows!

I like that yellow kit, shame we’ve lost every single league game we’ve played in it. Glad to see Archer back, TP seems to have fallen out of favour somewhat.

He's injured, he can't play football, the standard of league he's in is irrelevant. I've no idea what you think his motivation would be to do this, or what you think any lower league club's motivation would be to offer him a contract for anything more than a few buttons. He'll be doing anything he can to try and get fit here, because if he can there's a reasonable chance he'll play. If he can't, there no point in being injured at some L2 club on a much lower salary.

That conversation would basically be us saying, "hey Ross, I know your career is effectively over at the age of 28, but how do you fancy taking maybe 75% of your last ever decent pay cheque, instead of all of it?"

What on Earth are you talking about?

If we had anyone who was anywhere near good enough, they'd be in the team. What you're describing is basically what happened in the 9-0 at OT, except we were forced into that through injury. I don't really care if a loanee is 'invested' in the club at all, so long as he's better that what we already have and can improve us on the pitch.

I'd have thought there'd be a fair few up and coming players willing to come here on loan if nothing else. This season certainly wont harm the careers of Dibling and Fernandes, who have well and truly showcased their talents in this league and should have offers to stay in it, come summer. It's essentially what Alcaraz and Sully did two years ago, although obviously it didn't really work out as either intended.

Tell you what, since I CBA with this any more, I'll do you a deal. I promise not to make any reference, either directly or indirectly, to Russell Martin until after the Newcastle game next weekend. I'll do that and we'll see just how many negative references to a bloke who got sacked a month ago there are, without my provocation, during and after the next two games.

Not me you need to tell, I'm not the one watching Newcastle vs Bournemouth, then coming on here to complain about Martin. 🤷‍♂️

No, the bashing is quite literally that Brooks looks better and fitter now than he did for us last season and this must be 'Lego's fault' because apparently he just doesn't bother with fitness or whatever. It's not, he was recovering from lymphoma, that's why he came on loan to us in the first place, which bizarrely Clark seems to think is 'Lego's fault' too for being Bournemouth's rehab'. He came here on loan, did a decent enough job for us without being Earth shattering and now is doing well for himself at Bournemouth. Good luck to the lad, who I'm sure has been through an awful ordeal which took a lot of time and determination to come back from. Given all of that, I think using his cancer recovery to declare him, "another example of Martin not getting the best out of a player" is utterly classless, from any fans. Forget Martin, I'd defend Harry Redknapp against a bullsh*t argument like that. The fitness thing is tenuous at best. Jan Bednarek didn't seem to have any problem getting match fit after a month injured. Dibling seems to have played a lot of football for an 18 year old. Fernandes, Armstrong, KWP, THB and countless other players don't seem to have any issues getting around for 90 minutes. In fact it seems to me the players with 'fitness issues' are the likes of Onuachu and ABK, who Juric doesn't seem to have much interest in playing any more than Martin.

Premier League teams don’t loan out decent, first team players just for fun. We only got a player of Brooks’ quality because he wasn’t fit and needed matches at a lower level to get there. He was clearly a class above the Championship, scored a couple of goals and played in all three of our playoff games. He was an important part of our squad last season even with his fitness struggles but hey, if you, Duck and a handful of others need to use his lymphoma recovery to bash ‘Lego’ then crack on.

He came to us to try and rebuild his fitness and sharpness, after not playing for 18 months because he was being treated for cancer. But hey, feel free to use that to bash ‘Lego’, real class act you are. 👍

I'd say it's basically deliberate and a sign of a player who has no confidence in his ability. You're fresh out of ideas and don't want to be embarassed, so you just smash the ball at the defender and think 'oh no, it was blocked what a shame'. It's the same when players shoot straight at the keeper, rather than going either side of him and risk putting it wide.

Oh well, I guess we'll always have the orchestra puns to look back on.

He’ll have his work cut out, there’s not mush room for error.

Not a Scooby what that’s a reference to, sorry. Doesn’t work as an analogy I’m afraid. I’m literally talking about the exact same game unfolding but with a different name on the oppositions badge, hardly a leap in imagination. We lost to a team in the bottom third of the table, who generally played like they belonged there for 80 minutes of that match.

True and I also think the Man United badge flatters a lot of what we did last night. If we’d gone to Wolves or Palace, 15th in the league having lost their last three at home, and played the exact same game, I think there’d be much harsher criticism for the way we failed to take chances and capitalise. As good as some of our attacking play looked last night, ultimately none of them got it into the net and our only goal came from their defenders bundling a corner in by themselves.

Well, maybe not conceding another 2 goals in 7 minutes because 0-3 is less embarrassing than 0-5. For a man whose, “experience and leadership blah blah… is invaluable,” we seemed to just down tool and lose all concentration at the end of that Brentford game. We’ve literally not ‘seen out’ a single point when Lallana has been brought on this season.

Like Brentford, when he came on in the 87th minute and we conceded twice in stoppage time?

What exactly is it you think Lallana is the ‘best of’?

He came on in the 87th minute against Brentford and we conceded twice. As a matter of fact, he’s not come on before the 85th minute since his injury against Liverpool. The bloke just isn’t fit and hasn’t been for years.

If you told me at the start of the season we’d be going into this pair of fixtures with United 15th and Forest 3rd, I’d have had a radon survey done on your house. It goes without saying they’re in scarily good form, 7 wins and a draw against Liverpool since the start of December, so Saints law dictates this is the game we go and win.

We lost 3-1 against the team in 15th. I don’t remember this level of optimism when we played well against Leicester and Liverpool for large periods and lost 3-2 but I guess there’s some difference I’m not seeing.

All the laughing emojis in the world aren’t going to change the fact that he’s been gone a month, we’re still losing every game and the players are still substandard. I don’t know when the penny drops, maybe it doesn’t, who knows.

After four defeats out of four games (against 16th, 15th, 13th and 11th) scoring two (one was an o.g.) and conceding eleven, I thought maybe we might be able to start to move on from Martin. I guess not.