Lighthouse

None of those players mentioned strike me as having lacked confidence. They just have rather noticeable and regularly occurring flaws in their game. No amount of confidence will make JWP quicker, taller, harder in the tackle or more dynamic. Even under Poch and Koeman he never looked like grabbing a first team spot by the nads.

I hate when people feel the need to blame fans for something quite obviously not their fault. It’s not as if JWP has had any abuse direct at him from the stands. JWP has the cushiest job in the Premier League. He keeps getting big juicy contracts despite being an exceedingly limited footballer, who has never really fit into the side and secured a position under 7 Saints managers. Players like JWP (and 3 dodgy managers) are the reason we are where we are.

So we should keep him because he has a terrible fitness record?

With City losing, the title race is back on!

I think any achievement for Liverpool would be nauseating, unbeaten, Champions or otherwise. We'd never hear the end of it. If they have a miraculous streak of injury free games, like Leicester did, they can win the League. The difference with City is they can have 3 of their best players injured in Aguero, KDB and Silva and still spank 90% of this league. Take Salah and Virgil out of Liverpool's team, they're pretty average looking. Mane seems to have entered his usual winter hibernation recently and Firminho hasn't been up to much either.

Since we signed Gabbi he has scored 10 league goals (and 2 more in the Cup final). In the same period of time Austin has scored 9.

Good luck to him. He outstayed his usefulness here but to pretend he never did anything good is revisionist in the extreme.

Nobody deserves to start, it's the team most likely to win, which IMO includes certainly Bertrand and Lemina, probably Cedric too. I see no reason why those three (when Bertrand is fit again) wouldn't try as hard as the others.

This. Austin may have come off the bench to score against the only defender in the League less fit than he is but that doesn't suddenly make him good. Gabbi is better.

Don't forget Austin, Rasiak and Le Tissier. Oh and Speedie, Dixon and Hughes.

We'd be nuts selling our best player in January when we're in a relegation fight. I'd listen to offers over £40m next summer IF he stated his desire to leave.

Imagine my surprise that an electro-house DJ would ask a woman to do something vaguely sexualised. Getting Solveig to present an award for outstanding football achievement is just another of these hilarious mismatches which seem to be all the rage these days. Like having Danny Dyer hosting Have I got News For You and Elton John doing Formula 1 interviews.

There's nothing fickle about any of it. Fans don't go to football games to look at league tables, we want to be entertained by what's on the pitch. That didn't happen here under Puel and it looks like it's not happening at Leicester either.

You say that as if ‘glory years’ are a right for every club and we all get an equal allocation. Spurs don’t have a brighter future just because it’s there turn. As soon as bigger, richer clubs come in for their stars, they will be off. Spurs have recruited well thus far but all it takes is a couple more Sherwoods, Soldados and Janssens to replace Poch, Kane and Erikssen when they do leave and they’re back fighting for 6th and 7th with Everton and the rest. Utd on the other hand can spunk £90m on a single player. Poch won’t win the league or CL with Spurs but he could with Utd, that could decide it for him.

If Ralph did go to Spurs at the end of the season (no way on Earth he'd get the Utd job on the back of 6 months at Saints) he must have had a heck of a season here to get the job. As in, fighting for Europe by the end of the campaign. I'd have thought Spurs would be more interested in Howe, Wagner, Santo or Benitez before they came knocking on our door.

I'll go with, "T**t with stupid hair and earrings."

I can't decide. Torn between; Cedric has been awful and Valery has shown enough promise to deserve a go and; Cedric is vastly more experienced and Ralph will get the best out of him.

Yes. Any permanent signing of a player with his injury record is a bad deal. He has hardly played in the last 3 years. Total appearances in the last 3 years 14, 2, 10 Just to be clear, I'm not having a go at Ings here, he's by far our best striker when he's fit. This is all on Reed for agreeing to this deal. I can't believe that Liverpool wouldn't take a loan with a fee and an OPTION to buy for a player they clearly don't need. Turkish - I'm also well aware that this isn't £20m cash up front next summer. Just going with the widely reported figure for the overall deal.

I'm not doubting that's the case but a loan with an option to buy would seem the sensible option, given his terrible injury record. They didn't want him and nobody bought him with hours of the transfer window remaining. I'd have called their bluff on that, there's absolutely no reason they wouldn't have loaned him out. It's like if someone had come in and offered to loan Forster for the season. It's a no brainer, just a waste of wages otherwise.

It’s not in any way vague. Ings will sign permanently in summer. If there were caveats, it would say a ‘possible, potential, proposed or option to move’ etc. It doesn’t, it says permanent and i think some of our more reliable ITKs said he’s already signed a 4 year deal.

It is a must buy clause and as for odd and unusual... Carrillo. It's still our record signing and a massive amount for a Championship club. We did https://southamptonfc.com/news/2018-08-09/announcement-southampton-sign-danny-ings-liverpool-loan-deal I do enjoy watching him score and my opinion of him hasn't changed. Neither has my opinion of the transfer.

Which we could have done signing him on loan, without the guaranteed transfer at the end.

Again, people are missing the point. Nobody has said that he is sh*t or that he couldn't score when fit. The big picture hasn't changed off the back of one game. We could still get relegated and the first thing we'd be doing is handing Liverpool £20m for a player who's out injured for the next year.

Yarmolenko was just starting to look decent when he picked up his injury too. As you say though, they and Everton are just chucking lorryloads of cash at what is now the '7th place trophy'.