Lighthouse

It's not half looking grim for the Hammers after that. There will be massive pressure on them for our game, looking likely to be their only win in the next 8 if they pull it off.

Well, we're 11th and all the teams we've played twice are in the top half of the table; Liverpool, Leicester, Chelsea, Spurs, Wolves and Palace. With our run in and the way we're playing, a decent top half place is on the cards.

Not expecting anything, more interested in how other results go personally. Still, let's give it a go and see what happens. COYY/B!

Probably not helping matters but if we’d hung on against Wolves and Arsenal we’d be 4 points behind Chelsea with a game in hand.

Glenn Johnson on Soccer Saturday. We must never forget he stole a toilet seat from B&Q when he was at Pompey.

Except that nobody else has actually got a pony. All those teams down the bottom with problems and all these great players available at knock down prices. I mean Villa have the worst defence in the league and didn’t sign one of these top class centre halves they’re selling down Poundland. Bournemouth can’t score for toffee and they have gone and bought a 20 goal a season striker. It’s almost as if 2/3 of the league wants to get relegated. Such a shame there’s only 3 places.

I’m not sure how good you expect Southampton reserve CBs to be. Our first season up we finished 14th, our reserves were Hooiveld and Seaborne. Before that we finished 8th and got to a cup final with Higginbotham and Paul Williams. Our best season ever we had Yoshida and Gardos. Now I fully agree we need to be looking at a first choice CB in summer but there are precious few of them lying around in January.

We finished sixth in the League with Yoshi and Gardos as back up CBs and Cuco Martina as back-up RB. We’re no worse off than that now.

We won't need two CB. Four is enough, so one more in if Danso leaves, that makes six needed if those five leave. We signed eight when we first came up so hardly impossible.

How about an underwhelming window overall for pretty much everyone? https://www.theguardian.com/football/ng-interactive/2019/dec/30/football-january-transfer-window-latest-deals-premier-league-europe I count 8 signings of any serious financial outlay, two of which were Spurs replacing their best player they've just been forced to sell and signing a player who was already there on loan.

Seems like a model pro, genuinely nice guy and someone who always gave his all whenever he pulled the shirt on. More than good enough as back up during his time here. I'll miss him but at 32 I think we've seen the best of him. Good luck Yoshi!

I’ll pipe up; I still believe Stephens and Bednarek to be mediocre players at this level, albeit currently enjoying a period of good form. If they have a good season, rather than a good 8 games, I will likely change my mind.

He's 33 and averages about 3 goals a season. We need to be aiming a lot higher than Shane.

If we're playing 4-4-2 or 4-2-2-2 whatever, I'd say we need another personally. If Ings gets injured then it's down to Adams and Baffers, with nobody on the bench.

Don't care how much we spend, so long as they are the right players. After a couple of years of pain, we can at least start chipping away at the massive wage bill Les managed to construct, as contracts start to expire. Cedric out - Need a RB Yoshida and Danso out - Need a CB. Long out - Need a striker Then there's a whole bunch of question marks. Hoedt, Vest, Forster, Moi, Boufal, Adams, Carrillo, Bertrand, Lemina, Romeu, Hojbjerg all either wanting to leave or we want rid.

You're not supposed to shove it up your arse.

Basically it would seem we'd rather have KWP at RB than Cedric. Alright, fair enough. I've not seen much of the former but there must be some reason if we've gone to this much effort. Valery is apparently fit again. KWP can also cover LB and Vokins looked decent in the Cup. Okay it was only Huddersfield but he hardly looked like a downgrade on Targett. I don't see where the problem is at full back.

I'd say we've made par for this hole, along with most others who played this course. It wont put us top of the leader board but given that we were already 3 shots under, I can't see us dropping down the order on the back 9.

The NTAs are a public vote, aren't they? Basically just comes down to lowest common denominator stuff, so long as we don't run out of dinner ladies called Carol, Ant and Dec and MBB will continue to win awards. Having said that, I'm glad to see Chernobyl getting recognition, both here and at the Golden Globes. Possibly the best TV drama I've ever seen and all the more gripping because it's 99% true.

No different to when we came up. The first two years we spent big on Gaston, Jay Rod, Wanyama, Lovren, Osvaldo and half a dosen more in the £2-5m category.

Gallagher is a League 1 striker at best and has rarely troubled the net in the Championship. I have no idea why people think we should have stuck with him. If he’d never been at Saints and we signed him tomorrow with that record, everyone would be fuming.

Fair point however even crap like Tosun and Haller cost over £30m and £22m is only a little more than we spent on Carrillo. Plus what we spent on Mane in 2014 is probably more like £30m in 2020 money.

Even if we had £22m to spend, which striker would you buy who is better than Adams?

If it was just some wet lettuce on Twitter, I doubt anyone would have given it a second glance. The fact that the head of a large management consultancy firm came up with something so absurd is an irritating indication of the way things are going.

Playing devils advocate, have there been any studies into how safe they are overall (let’s say serious accidents per mile) compared to non-smart motorways? Saying there were 38 deaths is a great headline but you could probably say 38 people were killed in Volvos last year and they’re one of the safest manufacturers on the road. They’ve got very obvious faults which need to be addressed but nobody reports on accidents which haven’t happened. Perhaps a good start would be a maximum speed limit of 50mph if the hard shoulder is open to ease congestion.