Lighthouse

We’ve still got a significant number of players left over from last year’s campaign. Surely if we just play THB, Downes, Stephens etc. we’ll get promoted by default, in spite of Still?

The so-called ‘leader of the free world’ in 2025… utterly bewildering.

I’m not really sure what you’re getting at there. We are able to afford players like that for a couple of seasons thanks to the parachute payments but life beyond that isn’t pretty. We will find ourself in a position where we’re forced to sell our better players to recently relegated PL teams to balance the books and the replacements will be Smallbone levels of quality.

90% of this league would bite your hand off for Armstrong, Azaz, Fellows, Archer, Charles, Roeslev, THB, Downes and Stephens. A large number of other players would also be in demand at top half clubs. The fact that none of them are currently playing anywhere near the ceiling of their ability doesn’t mean nobody else would want them.

The aim always has to be promotion asap. People say they hate being in the PL, they don’t - they hate losing. Every year that goes by in this league, the more we have to offload our valuable assets and high earners and if you’re not careful, you end up leaving the Championship through the wrong door. When people say they’d rather be in this league, what they means is they want the Adkins season over and over again. The Poortvliet and final Burley seasons were no more fun than last year.

If you’re going to try and claim Sully, who has done f**k all at any point in his Saints career, is a better option than two of the Championship’s highest rated talents in Fellows and Azaz then I’m not sure what you’ve been drinking. What do you mean an ‘undamaged Downes and THB’? They haven’t been whacked with a wrench. I’d also take Dibling and Fernandes over JWP and Tella, any day, not that it counts for much, The fact that Edozie, Aribo and Smallbone, who were all regulars in our promotion team, can’t get a game now should tell you something about the players we’ve got now. KWP is a better than Roeslev, that’s about the only place I’d say we have a downgrade. The rest is as good or better.

We’ve just got rid of 21 players and the manager. If you don’t consider that a clear out, I don’t know what is. The squad is decent, easily as good if not better than it was two years ago, Still just needs to do his job.

People said this before half our games lat season, and half two years before that and it never was. It’ll probably be 3,4 or 5-0 but predicting double digit defeats all the time is becoming tiresome and cliched.

We must be remembering a different Rasiak, the one I watched was decent enough technically and an excellent finisher, just slow and lazy. Onuachu on the other hand is a donkey in English football, who had nothing going for him other than height. No we shouldn’t have kept him, we should be playing in a way which suits the massive amount of Championship fire power we have in the squad.

Promoted, via the playoffs? Wasn’t top of the table Boro’s manager last seen at relegated Luton? Let’s see how they get on as a management team before deciding he’s the new Eric Black.

We’ve had significant change in the squad towards the end of the transfer window, with the likes of Fellows, Azaz, Leo, Roeslev and Jelert all coming in very recently and players like Fernandes and Dibling leaving. There’s been enough recent change, in personnel and formation, for Still to need time to make it work. Nobody is promising it will happen eventually but it’d be foolish to sack him now.

To be talking about sacking anyone after six games, after the massive upheaval in players we’ve had is absolutely silly. It’s frustrating but Still needs time to get what is a superb collection of individuals playing as a team. If we sack him now, the new guy would just be having the same problems. Just for reference, this was our start to the season after building a new team in 2009, which is very much in line with two years ago, when it also seemed to click in early October.

One of those weekends where if I had a tenner on a horse, it’d get shot. I hate sport.

Having given the situation long and thoughtful deliberation, I have decided that I would like things to improve.

I’m starting to think that we might not be in a three horse promotion race by default.

A draw against Surrey should do it, with Yorks playing Durham, but it’d be squeaky bum time. Plus they’ll need to go balls out to overhaul Notts and win the Championship.

Charlie Austin seems to have been popping up on a few podcasts recently. Apparently every manager he’s ever played for, and half the players he’s played with, are all complete kn*bbers. Poor chap has had no luck at all.

Dibling and Livramento came here from Chelsea to play first team football and are now earning treble what JJM gets playing on loan in league 1. Youth players are better off here than being another one of Chelsea’s PSR assets who they have no intention of ever playing. If you’re struggling with that concept, I can’t explain it any clearer I’m afraid.

In other words he had to leave Chelsea to play first team football and get his big break.

Yes, he’d have played first team football here, same as Dibling because they were both very highly rated academy players, that’s the whole point of that comparison. I’ve no idea why people think a young player is better off going to Chelsea than Saints, just so they can be loaned out to a club below us in the league system. Sims, Hesketh, Vokins et.al. Didn’t make it here because they weren’t good enough, not because we badly managed them. They had plenty of opportunities to play first team football all, that they’d never have had at a place like Chelsea. They just didn’t do enough and ended up finding their levels at other clubs, usually in L1/L2. Chelsea signed him because it suits their business model and PSR rules. Hoover up all the best talent they can find, wi5 no intention of ever playing 90% of them and steadily sell them off to lower league clubs for modest profits.

I don't see anyone coming in and offering £40m and a massive wage increase to someone who's just had a decent loan in League 1. If people are going to keep pointing to JJM's wages as a reason he made a good decision, Dibling is the same age and probably earning treble that.

How is it daft, they're about as close and obvious a comparison as it's possible to make? They were born barely a month apart, poached by Chelsea within six months of each other. One has just made a £40m move to Everton, whilst the other is on loan in League 1, again. None of those other players have the talent that Dibling and JJM apparently do. They might have done well for our youth team but nobody like Chelsea ever rated them enough to come in and nick them. I'm going to flip that last question round and ask who it is you feel we've managed badly? Generally speaking, the players who've come through our academy have ended up at a level which suits them, we've not ruined their careers. Dibling was good enough for our first team, we never sent him on loan, so I don't understand the relevance anyway.

WTF, Have you literally just forgotten that Tyler Dibling exists? Even Livramento would be a reasonable comparison, for a player who left Chelsea's youth system for first team football and is now 22 and playing Champions League football and in the England team. We've developed our young players as well as we can. The problem, as has always been the case, is that the vast majority of them aren't, and will never be, PL standard. Those who are good enough will play for our first team, as has been shown by Robinson and Dibling.

Yes you can, it was a silly, short term decision that’s completely derailed his career. Despite clearly being very highly rated, he will most likely earn far less in his career than the likes of JWP, Targett and Dibling.

I think Downs, Stewart and Archer are more than capable of surpassing the 19 goals managed by Adams and Mara two years ago.