Lighthouse

Locked for now as there doesn't really seem to be much in this other than some vague second-hand rumour.

You believe Burnley will win 9 of their remaining 22, having won 3/16 so far? At the current rate, someone will stay up on about 30 points, which is something like 5 wins and 6 draws for us.

Not really, he is 30 and was under performing for a while before he left. He wanted to leave and nobody was going to come in with a big money offer. Supposing we had got another £5m for him, would you have trusted Les and Mark to spend it wisely?

I genuinely have no idea if this bit is supposed to be ironic or not. As for Tadic - Fair play. He needed to move on from this shower of sh*te for his own benefit and it looks like a breath of fresh air for him. Would love it if he went on to knock the Scousers out of the CL.

Fair enough. Looking at his stats for this season, he seems to have been brought on almost religiously on the 60 minute mark every game, the Leonardo Ulloa of the Bundesliga almost. Looks like Ibisevic has been banging them in, so perhaps not his fault he isn't playing/scoring.

Looking a bit more in depth, he hasn't played since October, so it's basically 7 apps in 2 months. A fair few of those were subs too. - Subbed on - 83 mins - Subbed on - 67 mins - Scored - Subbed on - h.t. - Started - subbed off - 76 mins - Started - 90 mins - Subbed on - 74 mins - Scored - Subbed on - h.t. 2 goals in 2 starts and 1.5 games in sub appearances. A bit better than Carrillo, although why he hasn't played more I don't know. (I'm not saying he's any good, especially with 0 last year)

Ralph's appointment and the Cardiff game reminded me of Adkins in a way. 2 days before a trip to MK Dons, which we subsequently lost 2-0 and were pretty abysmal. That was followed by a 0-0 bore draw at home to Colchester. Pearson took over the day before a 2-0 home defeat to Plymouth but then went on an unbeaten run of 5 games. Strachan I had to check but it was a 3-3 draw with Ipswich, followed by 3 straight defeats. We eventually ended up midtable. Poch obviously started with a 0-0 but his style of football was obvious almost immediately. Despite this we only won 1 of his first 7, although it was at home to Champions City, and weren't safe until a draw on the penultimate day against Sunderland. Which other mid-season appointments stand out (i.e. not the likes of Puel, Koeman etc.)?

I've never at any point thought that Stephens or Bednarek looked like a Premier League defender. The former once looked okay in an ultra defensive Puel set up but last season I generally felt that Hoedt looked better. For now I'd go with Yoshi and Hoedt. Not saying they're good but both would look alright if we can train the mistakes out of them.

Sounds a bit dubious to me, like a Daily Mail story. 'Precious overpaid footballers afraid to do work' etc. A little too much like someone saying what everyone wants to here (not pointing at the OP necessarily). I'd have thought the players would be more upset over the years of pathetic failure than having to work late in to the ungodly hours of er... 4pm.

Davenport - still have nightmares about the Villa game when he came on at HT. Lancashire - whenever someone says the youth players can’t possibly be worse, I think of Olly. Bennett - Jamie Scowcroft hat trick. Jamie Scowcroft.

No... He was crap and got dropped by Puel Then he was crap and got dropped by MoPe Then he was crap and got dropped by Hughes THEN he fell out with Hughes Then he was crap and got dropped by Celta.

So who was it who wanted the Skates in the cup?

Here please.

For Ings? We've already committed to that, makes little difference if it's now or summer.

He was more involved because he came on with 20 minutes left when we were 3-0 down and the game was already over. Just look at the goal he scored; he didn't sprint through their defence because he has suddenly acquired an extra 5 yards of pace. Spurs defenders were in the bar when he scored that goal and in second gear from 60th minute onward.

He did bugger all under Puel or MoPe either. He's a show off with a bad attitude.

It's his knees I was, am and all ways will be worried about.

I was. No matter how many goals he scores this season, that guaranteed £20m signing clause was a ridiculous thing to do.

Leave it with me.

Not going to get my hopes up too high too early but I'd like to think he can instill some basic organisation into our squad by the weekend. If nothing else I hope we can focus/motivate certain players and cut out some of the individual errors.

I think it's one of those ancient Chinese proverbs from that book Nigel Adkins had, so probably written before the invention of guns. Interesting thought though, what's the biggest animal you reckon you could take in a fight?

As the saying goes, I'd rather face 1000 lions lead by a sheep than 1000 sheep lead by a lion. A good manager will have this squad safe and a couple of decent signing could see us mid-table. Put it this way - I'd rather be in our shoes than any of the other bottom 6.

1. ... that actually he WAS 2. So he rarely scores because he's never fit. That's no defence of a player. 3. Gabbiadini has 13 in 2 years. Ings has 4 this season. Austin has only outscored the hopeless Shane Long.

A shouty post match interview doesn’t make him any more passionate than anyone else in our squad. If he is a goal scorer, why has he just scored his first League goal - in December? It’s his 3rd League goal in 2018, his 15th in 3 years since he signed. He is not a goal scorer.

Put me down as one of those idiots. He may have scored a meaningless goal in injury time, against a team who were already in the showers but it’s still like having 10 men the rest of the time.