Lighthouse

That’s massively skewed by selling three players for about £250m. £500m is a massive amount to spend, regardless of who you’ve sold. Let’s suppose we sold Jack Stephens for £1bn, then over the next three years spent £500m on our squad and finished 12th. Would we be doing an amazing job to avoid relegation despite a net spend of minus £500m?

I think some of you are getting a little to elaborate and sadistic with this. I quite simply don’t want Lallana, Lovren and Virgil to win anything after acting like helmets trying to force a move. I also don’t want to endure the nausea of Liverpool fans and media ‘personalities’ telling us how special this is for all football fans, for the next 20 years. All that being the case, a straightforward 3-0 City win and a 1-1 draw with Barca is fine by me. No trophies and a few agents twitching for moves to the properly big clubs.

That’s always been the case with young players though. For every Bale, Walcott and Lallana, there are 50 Ben Reeves, Josh Dutton-Black and Jamie Hatch. There’s no shame in it, Stephens has just ended up playing a lot more games than he should, out of necessity due to poor recruitment.

City definitely looking nervy here and will definitely be after a decent LB in summer.

They finished above us by about 5 seconds and without riding the crest of the promotion wave in the first two months, they’d have gone down. They’ve been terrible since about October in their first season.

Not sure where the idea that pre-season will get him fit comes from. I’d get that if he was overweight and had poor stamina but we’re not talking about that kind of fitness. An injury prone player is unlikely to change because of a couple weeks running around a field in the Swiss Alps.

One of the greatest enigma in the Prem. Never been more than a 5 goal a season man in the league yet many claim we’d be deluded not to want him because he bangs them in against Malta, Brentford and Vorskla Poltava.

Remember that well, singing, “that’s why we’re going down!” As we threw away a narrow lead to lose in the last 5 minutes. Thankfully those days are behind us and such sloppiness and mental fragility is now unheard of. Also remember Killer booting all the training balls into the crowd after the warm up. There was actually a weirdly cheerful atmosphere at the game. Decent weather and most people seemed genuinely excited to be going on a League 1 tour. The Forrest fans were pretty good too. Spoke to a few after, they wished us good luck and said it was a shame to see a club like ours in such a sorry state.

He would probably spend most of his life doing what Armstrong did for Bournemouth’s third goal. If anything I think he would be worse, at the moment his best play is when he has time and space at the back to play it forward. He won’t get that in midfield.

We’re nearly there, only one more of these to sit through before we can go and watch cricket or F1 for 3 months. Assuming no changes in injuries, I’d probably try something like: - - - - - - - - - - - - - Gunn - - - - - Stephens - Bednarek - Bertrand Valery - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Vokins - - - - - - - - Lemina - - - Hojbjerg - - - - - JWP - - - - - - - - - - - - - Redmond - - - - - - - - - - - - - Ings

Is 5 goals (which weren’t penalties) the best we could get for £20m? I doubt it.

I’m not sure I get your point. It makes who not want to bother trying what in future?

I think I’ll watch a system without Forster, Stephens, Long, Moi and a bunch of players in the beach, before I criticise it too harshly.

Incidentally, this afternoon will see the first ever women only motor race. Their stated aim is to try and give women a chance to get into F1. In reality they're just a bunch of drivers who have failed to make any impression in other lower formula. Still, it's on Channel 4 if anyone cares.

It’s almost funny, my expectations of our strikers have sunk so low in the last few years that signing both and having 2 decent options, plus a half fit Ings, seems greedy and luxurious. Haven’t seen much of either of them but if what you say is true, surely we have space for both.

Come on Everton, give us something to keep the last two games interesting.

There’s no right answer really. It’s not fair on Semenya that she can’t compete because of a natural advantage. It’s not fair on competitors to be competing in a sport they literally cannot win. As Shurlock says, dropping male/female events and just having testosterone classes is about the fairest way to do it but then sports just get weird. Imagine an Olympic 100m final for ‘girls who are a bit butch and blokes who are a bit camp’.

I always liked him in the Championship and thought he could have done more, had he played more frequently. Never really had a sustained run of starts, despite some early promise.

I wonder if and why we’d agree clauses dependant on them winning things. Numbers of appearances and goals I can understand but winning stuff is largely dependant on the performances of other players and even other clubs. Mind you, these deals were orchestrated by Les, so nothing would surprise me.

Just think of all those agents representing VVD, Mané and Salah, schmoozing away in the directors boxes. Maybe a few chaps from Madrid have popped by to watch the game as well. Gives me a lovely warm feeling inside.

Please keep Redmond stuff on the Redmond thread. There is little point comparing the two and it seems to be just the same polarised arguments when we do.

https://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?14620-Pompey-Takeover-Saga#.XMjPN4rTWfA

I see it the other way around, his stock is at its highest right now and he could just as easily revert to type next season. If Spurs are offering £30m+ for him I’d take it.

There’s only so many times I can watch Saints throw a game away in the 87th minute and still care TBH. I’m mighty relieved we’re staying up, from a financial point of view more than the football, but I won’t be gripping the edge of my seat if we’re clinging on to a 1-0 lead with 5 minutes to go.

I wouldn’t keep him for next season, let alone another two. Both him and Austin should have gone two years ago when we sold Jay Rod.