Lighthouse

I honestly can't think of anything worse than football for virus transmission. Some other sports, like a rugby scrum, sure but nothing you or I are going to do on the high street. Zero distancing, zero face protection, plenty of physical contact, maximum exhaling of aerosols into a confined area. You can't even compare this with hairdressers. For a start we're talking 160,000 jobs, which are mainly young women on minimum-ish wage. They need to go back to work to pay the rent, we don't need to finish this season, it's purely about broadcasters and shareholders keeping their nose in the trough. We can open hairdressers and minimise the risks. We can't eliminate them, people will die because someone went for a haircut. That's a fact of life we have to live with now. I think in another month or two we should be bringing SOME normality back. Open shops, hairdressers, banks etc. but with social distancing and masks, much like we have in supermarkets. Send kids back to school, let them see their friends and finish their exams. Things like this all need to be slowly introduced before football, then we need a few months of monitoring the rates of infections and deaths. It's never going to get to zero, Pandora's Box has been opened. What we need is to slowly open the tap at a rate the NHS can cope with for a sustained period. When I say 'cope with' I mean deal with the Covid 19 patients AND start carrying out some of the deferred operations who've been told to stay away the last couple of months. I am with you Fry, just not on the timing. We MIGHT be able to pull off an on time start to next season, with a lot of the precautions being discussed. I can't see many bars and restaurants being open before then either.

TBH I can't be arsed with that much patronising sarcasm. If you think we should be playing football tournaments in June then we've apparently reached a difference of opinion. Goodnight.

1. That doesn't stop you picking up the virus or or transmitting it to someone else before your next test. By the time you actually test positive, you could have given it to half the rest of the squad, the coach driver, officials, hotel and restaurant staff and a bunch of people who used the Tesco self checkout after you. 2. I can't believe this has to be repeated again but we're not trying to protect them as such. We're trying to protect those who are vulnerable, who the virus could be passed on to. 3. Their DIY may seem pointless to you but your football seems pointless to them. Nobody's hobby is any more or less valid than any other.

You can be flippant all you want but I’ve no idea what point you’re making. You’re the one in The Lounge criticising the governments response and pointing out that we’ve now overtaken the rest of Europe. Now you’re saying we should crack on with pretty much the highest risk activity there is, barely a month from now. Yes, eventually we will have to open business but this is a ludicrous way to start. You can open a hairdressers and reduce the risk of transmission with masks, disinfectant, distancing between customers etc.

Collectively, yes. The more people that come into contact with each other the more people are going to die. Shops won’t be anywhere near as bad as football but there will be transmissions. Eventually it will be a trade off between deaths and the economy but if you ask me June is too soon. After over a month of social distancing, hand sanitising, etc. we’ve managed to record nearly 5,000 new cases today and over 600 deaths, so magic or no magic, it’s finding a way to get around somehow.

Well which is it? You are way, way more likely to transmit the virus (heavily) breathing the same air as 15 other guys in an enclosed space than you are having a massage or spitting on the floor. What's the point? If they do that they're basically saying they know it's not safe but here's a token gesture which sort of looks like we're trying to mitigate risks. If they're going to play games then do it. Accept that you're eventually going to spread the virus around a few hundred people and probably kill a handful and admit it. I just can't stand the fact that they're doing this - basically saying a few deaths are okay so that Sky, the PL and a few Sheikhs don't lose money - whilst sticking their heads in the sand and pretending they've taken every precaution.

Second coldest game I've ever been to.

I'm sure that'll make the world of difference, when you get 10 corners per game and there're 16 players having a mosh in the 6 yard box, all panting over each other like a bunch of sex pests.

Death. Lots and lots of death.

I don't think anyone is doubting the ability of the PL to organise this, more the ethics and sensibility of doing it this soon. It all depends in what state we're in as a country come June. For example if non-urgent medical procedures are still being postponed, shops are still closed and we're not allowed to get together for a BBQ etc. it's really not going to look too good.

In his second season he beat every team except Everton and Leciester. The latter only got an injury time equaliser at St Mary's because of Kelvin's dodgy kicking. We put 4 past Arsenal and Man City, 3 past Liverpool and Chelsea, last team to win at WHL, won both trips to OT, there's also an 8-0 and a 6-1 in there... those were the days.

If there're no fans it wouldn't even have to be a Championship ground. Places like Colchester and Bolton are literally right off the motorway junction and away from any residential areas. Edit: I still think it's a completely daft idea trying to finish this season.

No, I’m comparing Lincoln winning the league with us finishing 16th. They won, we didn’t. They clearly did better than us; except they didn’t, it’s a completely false and meaningless comparison. Just like comparing a cup final against Man Utd with a cup final against Bradford City. Swansea have a trophy and I’d much prefer we did as well but they didn’t ‘do better’. Anyway, I’m off to bed.

You're right, it is. That's pretty much the point I'm making.

In the same way that Lincoln City were better than us last season, then I suppose. It’s an utterly pointless debate/comparison so I’ll leave it there.

If by successful you mean ‘fortunate enough to play Bradford’ then you are correct.

This government? They’re doing the same as any other government, trying to resolve the situation as best they can, whilst trying to put a good public spin on their actions. I don’t know what people expect them to say? "Yeah, we’re a bit sh*t and we’ve made a dog’s dinner of the whole affair." Labour, the Libs or the Raving Loonies would all be doing the same thing, as is every government in Europe.

What, they were promoted and sold a couple of decent players? Apart from that I see very little in common. If anything I’d say we were a Primark West Ham.

Not fashionable, I think a lot of people were just fed up of the vulgar amounts of money being required to watch such joyless, substandard football. I miss good football certainly but there’s been precious little of that for four years now.

I’m torn between the first three years after Markus’ takeover and the Poch/Koeman seasons. Probably the latter as we absolutely mullered some of the best teams in England.

Why? The talent is still out there and they will be back playing before too long. What may well change is that clubs will stop offering utterly obscene amounts of money for mediocre players. It will probably transpire that nobody is willing or able to offer the likes of Charlie Austin £60kpw to waddle around the pitch, scoring five goals a season. Before all of this agent for players like Hojbjerg would be phoning up Spurs and Everton saying, "he’s Southamptons best player, give him £90kpw." I think if he tried that kind of thing right now, he’d get laughed out if town.

If that video is not of China then fair enough but the point still stands. There are markets in China very similar with dead snake, bat, owl, lizard, dog or whatever you want piled up on tables in the open air, spreading pathogens like wildfire. It’s not like comparing London to Libya at all. In distance maybe but in terms of hygiene it’s more like comparing Brixton to Croydon. I fully agree that we need to try and reduce habitat destruction and climate change, which is why many countries MUST get their population under control. China to be fair made a good go of that already with the one child policy. Now they’ve got the worlds second largest economy, there’s no excuse for these wet markets. This is a country with a space programme. They haven’t been to war since Vietnam and they’ve spent over $4bn on a new fighter jet programme. The money is there to build some chicken farms, inner city cold storage units and run a Chinese DEFRA if they wanted to. It’s not a case of pinning the blame on China and them holding some of the responsibility. They ARE responsible, they should take the blame and it is their fault. Like I said, I don’t call it the Chinese virus for the reasons you’ve just highlighted but neither will I pretend we’re all in this together and they were just the first, unfortunate victims. Aside from anything else, their attempts to keep everything quiet and arresting doctors for trying to warn them is nothing short of atrocious.

It really wasn’t all that great to a neutral. We beat Leicester and Wimbledon, who were hardly Galacticos, then just needed to match Charlton’s result in the last game.

Agree with a lot of the nominees so far. Slightly left field, I'll go with Jakobsson in the 3-2 home defeat to Villa. Simply because we were 2-0 up when he went off injured and completely collapsed thereafter.

I remember under Adkins I used to drive for two hours plus, just to go to games on my own - both home and away as I was living in Bristol at the time. These days I live in Southampton and I won’t go to a game unless my mates are all in the pub by noon at the latest and even then I don’t bother 75% of the time because of the hilarious ticket prices and appealing football. Of all the things I honestly feel I’m missing right now, watching Saints isn’t one of them.