Lighthouse

A clean sheet and through into the next round without a replay, can’t argue with that. Hardly a dazzling spectacle but you can’t really expect to cobble 11 fringe players together and play beautiful flowing football. Vokins goal was superb though, worth £12 on its own. I don’t think many of the performances were as bad as some make out. JWP covered a lot of ground and played well, Yoshida was fine as far as I’m concerned and I actually thought Danso looked comfortable enough at RB. Not much going forward but he is a CB. Decent game and goal from Smallbone. Romeu broke up play well, Vest made a few errors. I wanted Adams to score but I don’t think he had any decent service all game. Long was Long, runs around, is offside, doesn’t do much else. Boufal - everything I don’t like about him. He’s got all the skills and no brain. He’ll beat a defender with a neat trick, then try and do exactly the same to the next two instead of playing the ball. Second half he just seemed to lose interest. Oh well, a day out and into the pot on Monday.

Can only recall seeing 20 minutes in a pre-season friendly. He was atrocious. Having said that, I think he did get an assist for Stoke against us by putting a corner in for Parkin.

I already take Buddhist new year, Jewish Halloween and Sikh pancake day off, he thinks I'm taking the p*ss.

Not that anyone had any choice in the first three. Also if my boss said I could have three days off over Eid and would pay me £1,000 'Islamic bonus', I'd go along with it TBH.

So the first one wasn't a lady (not that I have a problem with that)?

Spurs game aside, I always thought we looked weaker last season when he was on the pitch. Like that awful Newcastle game when he was dragged off at HT or against Watford and Liverpool when we were immediately overrun when he came on. Even the win over Wolves, which was decent, we played better as a team after he went off. He was in and out of a poor Reading team too. I just don’t see him being consistently close to the level we’re looking for.

Whatever he said, it was said in private and should never have been used against him. If he was daft enough to post it on social media or a work email account I’d get it but he didn’t, it was a private message to a mate. I assume the Premier League will be confiscating the phones of all players, checking the private messages of Salah, De Bruyne, Kane, Sterling etc. for any similar content and immediately banning them for life if they find any... no thought not. Hypocrisy and virtue signalling at its finest. P.s. that mate should sleep with one eye open. If you maliciously wreck someone’s life like that, that’s how murder-suicides happen.

I’d pretty much go with Dazza’s selection. Even our second choice XI should have enough to get past Udders. There’s a good mix of fringe players and promising youth in that line up. Adams to get off the mark, follow it up with consecutive hat tricks against Leicester and Liverpool, then be sold to the latter for £50m. All in the next three weeks.

Actually, Mané, Pellè and Tadič were, "not always perfect." The players you have listed were all consistently substandard for most of the season. If you can’t criticise the likes of Cédric and PEH for the performances they’ve put in until very recently, there’s little point in having a discussion forum. Also a ’clan’ just means large numbers of people are in agreement. Back in the day we had an ‘anti-Ollie Lancashire’ clan too.

So in a couple of weeks we’ll have played Liverpool, Leicester, Spurs and Chelsea twice and almost certainly be out of the drop zone? That’ll do.

Split thread, as I feel the supernatural in general is worthy of its own topic.

Slowly working his way through the alphabet. Tomorrow we get to see two echidnas going at it.

I just LOVE that a thread which started off as this... Has now moved on to this... I think this may have overtaken, “too much nonce-on-nonce violence,” as my favourite thread of the year. Please don’t ever change you lot.

Absolutely. The theological pantomime and subsequent existential conundrum being played out on here makes for a cracking 20 toilet read. Makes a debatable offside and Sofiane Boufal seem fairly trivial in comparison to our own impending mortality and the mystery of what lies beyond. The alternating replies between Turkish and MLG at 1am would have been a clue, had I actually been reading the forum that late.

Not been on this thread for a while as I thought a ‘Merry Christmas Saints fans’ thread couldn’t possibly need moderating but f**k me

Since the Boro goal, three years ago, what is the best thing Boufal has done in a game he has started for Saints?

That’s why I was proposing the 6 inch margin for error rule. Obviously this does just move the line back 6 inches but it does come with four massive benefits IMO: 1. An onside goal will never, ever get wrongfully disallowed and there will be no doubt that a player is clearly offside. 2. it saves time. If there’s any doubt at all if the player is over the six inch line - offside. You can make any decision in 10 seconds. 3. If we get one disallowed at 5.9" and Liverpool get one given at 6", I can live with that. It’s far better than living with nonsense like Watford’s handball or Silva’s offside. 4. It stops sceptics from moaning. No more, "his knee was 2mm offside FFS!"

I think the main issue is whether an offside can be accurately judged within millimetres. It would be like a policeman giving you a ticket for doing 30.01mph. He could say you are speeding, the law is the law and he would be right, however is his radar gun THAT accurate to be handing out penalties for such a fine exceedence?

That would be Redmond who, despite having a pretty poor season, has score one less goal in 4 months than Boufal has in his entire Saints career?

Based on what? I haven’t seen this number mentioned anywhere else.

The ball crossing the line is obviously key to whether a goal has been scored. I think a few people are annoyed by the fact that some offsides are so marginal as to be of no consequence. A kneecap being 2mm forward of the last defender isn’t giving a crucial advantage to the attacking side. The offside rule was never really intended for this, it was to stop teams from just sticking some fat lard in the opposing six yard box a goal hanging for 90 minutes. I think most fans would accept an inch here or there, just so long as we don’t have goals like that David Silva assist a few years ago.

I’ve posted this on the other thread but I’d say have a 6 inch margin for error on the current rule, whereby you are offside but you get the benefit of the doubt. If you’re so close to that 6 inch line that you can’t tell within 5 seconds, then you’re offside. Basically the question should be - is it immediately obvious that you’re less than 6 inches offside? It’s quick, simple and fair.

It needs improving but on the whole I think we’re better off with it than without it. A couple of changes I’d make are: 1. The bar for overturning a ref’s decision seems absurdly high, judging by some of the incidents which weren’t overturned. 2. The speed of use. If I can look at a five second replay and say, "that’s definitely come off his hand," why a professional referee needs to spend two minutes looking at it in slow mo. From 4 different angles I have no idea. 3. Introduce a margin or error for offsides of 6 inches. No more of this ‘his armpit is 1mm forward of the defenders knee’ BS. If you’re clearly within 6 inches, benefit of the doubt - onside. If you’re beyond that - offside. If you’re very close and it’s going to take 3 minute to analyse correctly - offside because you’re obviously at least 5 inches offside.

I liked the Inbetweeners first two TV series but the second movie was one of the most dreadful films I’ve ever seen. Like leftover Mr Bean footage with painful, nonsensical dialogue added in.