Lighthouse

My personal favourite is women who take selfies from arms length, two feet above their head; breathing in and leaning forwards. I know every time I see them I think, "wow, there's a normal sized/slim women with big boobs, she must have an amazing body!"

It depends how you define worse. I doubt we'll be losing 1-5 at home every week in the Championship, like we are now but I'd imagine we'd be solidly in the bottom half. I wouldn't get your hopes up about signing anyone particularly exciting either. Again with the buzzwords though. What does 'back to basics mean'? Play 4-4-2, with Big Sam in charge? What are you actually, specifically suggesting we should do, which is both feasible and affordable.

That depends on who you mean by me. Me the average fan - Nothing I can do. It's a simple choice of pay your money and watch or don't. Personally, I choose not to at the moment as attending is such an utterly joyless waste of money. Neither choice will have any bearing on how the club is run as even a drop in attendance of a few of thousand is like a pea in a Vindaloo compared to the TV money. Me if I was the manager - There are things we can do differently to Ralph but none of them will make us all that better. At 2pm every Saturday I look at the line-up and think 'Christ that's terrible'. Then I think for a second and there really isn't that much I'd change with what's available. Me the DoF - I don't think there's much we can do short term and I wouldn't panic buy in January, wasting what money we might have in summer. The coaching team needs changing. Kelvin and Jaidi are the obvious scapegoats but it feels too much like jobs for the boys. We need to take our time and find the right people, even if it takes us until summer to find them. I don't care if they grew up in St Denys or St Petersburg, it's not relevant. Marcus, Adkins, Pelle, Tadic, Koeman (plural) ... all had no connection to the city and gave us some of our best years ever. As for the players, there is no way out of that. We're stuck with them until such time that their contracts expire or they get an equal or better offer elsewhere. 'Having a clear out', 'clear the deadwood', 'trimming down the squad' etc. are just football forum buzzwords. The best we can do is try and loan them out so that someone else can temporarily pay a percentage of their wages. Summer will largely depend on who has relegation clauses in their contract and who is willing to take a pay cut to pay abroad because they don't want to play tier two football. Me if I was Gao - Well, I can't invest if I haven't got a pot to p*ss in. The PL really shouldn't have sanctioned the takeover in the first place but I guess that horse has long bolted. I can either sell and probably make a significant loss but then maybe the money I do make will be away from China and free from state interference. Or I can hang on to the club, having to put what money I do have in to balance the books, or borrowing and running up debt, in the hope that I will again have a PL asset in a couple of years. In short, there is neither a good nor fast way out of this, things are going to get worse before they get better. My post wasn't meant as a personal attack but your friends post is too much of a romantic fantasy about football. PL football is purely business now, like it or not.

It all sounds nice but really it's just a bunch of football cliche's and easy answers which we're either doing already or just aren't feasible. Accept relegation - In what way? Forfeit every game for the rest of the season? Plan for the Championship - I'd be amazed if that hasn't been a contingency since the day we got promoted. Get rid of who we can - Already done that. Nobody will want to cancel a big, juicy contract; most of them are out on loan. Bring in experienced pros, with leadership - Easier said than done. We have no money for anyone good enough with those qualities. Hungry, local youth - We've done that with JWP and like it or not he's the best we've got from around here. Too many clipboards - I don't know what this actually means specifically. Sports science is a vital part of any squad. We are just a commodity to generate income - So is everyone in the PL. Some owners are just better/richer than others. The owners of Liverpool and City didn't buy them because they love the cities. Find an owner who knows the area - I think Rupert Lowe did that pretty well and look how all of that turned out.

Which other CB would you say is obviously better?

A boxing match between two of these Youtube/Vlogger types apparently being major sports news.

That’s what I was going with, their form/fitness in these particular years. For e.g. I’d have Mk.1 Bertrand in the side but not Bertrand 6S, which has a cracked screen and doesn’t support iOS3.5.2.4.1. For 2005 FF read 2019 Lemina Djenepo maybe but he’s not proven himself yet. Phillips/Ings/Camara is umpires call (I eventually went with Ings for his goals) and probably the only genuinely pleasant dilemma in that whole team. Redknapp and Oakley can take it in turns to be fit for 60 minutes. 2005 Claus was one of the worst displays I’ve seen over a season from any saints player, let alone captain. Full of mistakes, bottled it when the going got tough.

Go on then...

Sparta Prague at home, after that I thought we’d stroll that group, along with Inter. The second halves against Wolves and Spurs were decent last year.

When you say coaching, I do wonder if Ralph and the coaches are on the same page. I know it’s fashionable to pick on Kelvin right now but it would be an astonishing coincidence if Ralph’s ideal coaching team included a man who just happened to be our goalkeeper in 2006. I’d ask Ralph who he wants helping him, then go out and get them. Basic positioning, concentration and defensive drills has got to be worth as much to our squad as a £30m signing.

Combined team, assuming we’re trying to make it good. Niemi Telfer - Yoshida - Vest - Le Saux Oakley - Romeu - Prutton - - - - - Svensson - - - Crouch - - Ings Bench: McC, Higgy, Cédric, McQ, Redmond, Camara, Phillips Good grief was I struggling at CB.

At least we've signed a striker.

This IMO. Four managers have failed to get a tune out of this shower of sh*te, so will a fifth.

Whatever.

Wow, that good?

If he isn't directly responsible for at least three goals today, then yes. I don't mean partly at fault, I mean personally sticking pinpoint crosses in for Tosun responsible.

Yes, what we really need is the safety and reliability Valery provided in the last game.

Or better yet, stick your head into the water until everything goes black and you pass out.

Oh lovely.

Is it too much to ask to be something other than appalling? Lets find out.

All very philosophical and not wrong in itself but you're talking about long terms patterns over thousands, or tens of thousands of years. We're talking about the very real and immediate issues facing us in the next 50 years or less.

There seem to be two types of cyclists. The first go out looking like a Christmas tree and you get sunburn if you walk too close to them. The other have literally no lights or even reflectors and I swear they wear a black hoodie and dark trousers on purpose. How the latter survive more than a week without being scraped off the front of a lorry I have no idea.

The Norwich game shows why I’m not a fan of the back five. Despite the extra man, Norwich are finding acres of space for Buendia and getting plenty of shots away from the edge of the six yard box. Both sides are terrible defensively really.

Both these teams are crap. I know, glass houses.

Some dipsticks videoing the last post for some reason.