Lighthouse

If we don’t want to spend next spring anxiously putting Brighton and Villa scores into an online predictor, we’re going to need better players. Reed just isn’t better than Rom, Hoj or Lemina. If he moves to the Championship and smashes it then fair play to him.

I didn’t move it originally but I’ll move it back. Hazard basically confirming he’s off, wonder what Chelsea will be like without him next year.

Clearly nobody has done that yet, so this is just meaningless really. People do stuff like that all the time. I vaguely remember Carsten Janker's profile being edited to say he was hosting an all night rave with Rudi Skacel.

Probably just trying to put a positive spin on the fact that it will be very hard to shift him.

Whilst I've got no personal interest in the Monarchy, Will and Harry do seem to be relatively humble and likable, from the outside at least. That said, the crown's PR team aren't stupid and they know waving at your subjects from a golden carriage doesn't quite cut it in the 21st Century. The whole Cameron/WHam/Villa thing was pretty cringey and completely unnecessary. Your average Wetherspoon's punter isn't going to be fooled by some Eaton boy telling them he does, "rather like the soccer ball."

I like that 5% of UKIP supposedly want to remain.

I’ll rephrase, the remain voters who would usually vote Lab/Con but instead have backed the Libs and their ‘******** to Brexit.’ True but the fact that they’ve failed to do so and couldn’t come up with anything in the negotiation has simply pushed voters away. You only have to look at Trump to see how far brash promises can get you with voters.

I don’t think the results have proven anything other than voters are moving to the polarised ends of the spectrum. Hard Brexit have made massive gains, as have hard remain Lib/Green/SNP. It’s the squashy, middle ground, trying to please everyone parties who have lost out.

Can’t say he’s done anything particularly haunting so far; we need to be aiming much higher than Gallagher if we want to avoid a third straight season fighting the drop. Who was the last academy player we really dropped the ball by releasing? Probably Phillips 30 odd years ago.

Perhaps a similar system but with third automatically in the final. 5th plays 6th at home, then 4th plays the winner at home, then 3rd plays the winner at Wembley.

I wouldn’t say it’s motivation, so much as not having the time and patience to try and come up with three different meals a day, using houmous, falafel and courgette. I tried having the veg option at work a few times and gave up after a couple of weeks. I didn’t like the taste and it didn’t keep me going the rest of the day.

I wouldn’t say it’s motivation, so much as not having the time and patience to try and come up with three different meals a day, using houmous, falafel and courgette. I tried having the veg option at work a few times and gave up after a couple of weeks. I didn’t like the taste and it didn’t keep me going the rest of the day.

I like the playoffs, they basically give the whole top half something to play for, right up until the last month of the season. It also makes the battle for the top two more interesting; if it had just been Norwich, Utd and Leeds all going up, the Championship would have been all sorted with about 3 games still to play.

I think I will TBH.

A meal just doesn’t seem filling without meat to me. I don’t know how I could survive off 3 plates of hummus and veg per day. Morally I don’t object to meat, so long as the animals are reared and slaughtered humanely. The environment I am concerned about but like almost everything else, it comes down to overpopulation. If there are an extra billion Indians in 30 years time, me eating salad isn’t going to change much.

The best talent down there being the likes of Vydra and Sessegnon? There is no right or wrong place to look. You can go down to League 1 and find AOC or Gazzaniga, or look abroad and find Moi or Mane. Our scouting just needs to be a lot better. In Carrillo's case, 10 minutes on Google would have been a start.

We actually got one of our transfers organised nearly a year ago.

Not sure what you're getting at, these are the same players we had this season who were rarely demolished in midfield. I don't think he is suggesting an XI, just a squad of players to pick from. If we had a striker who was fit enough to play the games Ings missed, clinical enough to take the chances Long squandered or just wasn't Austin, we'd have another 10 points. If we didn't keep bottling it mentally, as a team and as individuals, we'd have another 15.

There will always be divided opinion over what is deliberate and accident and I'm okay with that as a matter of contention. Personally I think the ref. should have the authority to decide what he believes to be a deliberate act and what isn't, as there are too many variables to have a concrete rule. I'd much rather have that and some controversy, than the blatantly unfair situation of an attacker smashing a shot into a defenders arm, by his side, from a yard away and being given a pen.

Looks alright to me, Boufal aside. Depends how good Genepi is really, never seen him play. I don’t think we’re bad at creating chances. A decent striker would have scored 15 of the opportunities Long missed this season.

Again, borrowing from rugby but I think a penalty goal would be apt in some scenarios. If a ball is on its way in and gets blocked by a defenders hand, a goal is given instead of a penalty. I don’t mean for any old handball, I mean instances like Wan-Bisaka for that handball against us at Selhurst, or Suarez against Ghana at the WC. Any handball preventing 100% goal - penalty goal Deliberate handball otherwise - penalty Accident handball otherwise - nothing given Attacker hand balls in the box - Free kick

We do and probably will but Austin is worth nowhere near the wages we are paying him. At least it’s only for a year, unlike Carrillo or Forster.

Isn't it a legal requirement in the Portuguese leagues to have a release clause? Doesn't mean they can't sell him for less. Not sure I'm sold on a 27 y.o. striker who scored almost half his career goals in one season.

The ridiculous cost of sports tickets and merchandise and the knowledge that they wouldn't charge that much unless so many dimwits were willing to pay it. I remember Man City sending half their allocation back to Arsenal because they wanted £60 per ticket. They should have been sending the whole lot because there were no fans willing to pay it. Then there's replica shirts going for £55 each for something which costs less than £1 to mass produce (to a standard template). Other sports are just as bad; F1 perhaps the worst. I remember McLaren charging £45 for a souvenir T-shirt which didn't even have their logo on it. You were literally paying them to be a walking billboard for Vodafone and Mobile 1.

I know many footballers aren’t the brightest but I think even they can cope with that.