Lighthouse

This is our last home game before the 26th November. The significance being that if we fail to win it will be one win at St Mary’s in the last year. In that period, Leicester will have won more games at St Mary’s than we have. Going to this one but other than a couple of beers with my mates I have little interest.

On for who? I’d start with JWP.

I guess for professional tradesmen it might be different but they haven’t let me down so far with the DIY and gardening.

Just come in for a brew and a Cadbury mini roll, have I missed much? Hope it’s not another boring 0-0.

Off down the garden now the sun is poking out, so I’ll leave you lot to it. Incidentally, I’d recommend the Ryobi One+ reciprocating saw for minor tree surgery and pruning work*. *my views are my own, other power tools are available. Ryobi are not endorsed by SaintsWeb Ltd.

Burnley are pretty hopeless defensive, wouldn’t write them off yet.

Carrillo is nowhere near Premier League quality, however your statement is factually correct.

No, he looked alright playing under the ultra cautious Puel but is frequently found out when we try to attack or when he comes up against better opposition.

Delph who was comfortably Villa’s best player at the time but looks rather mediocre amongst City’s elites? JWP would struggle to get into their ladies team.

Doubt any of them would make the bench TBH.

JWP just isn’t good enough. He is neither quick, nor strong nor tall, nor is he an aggressive ball winner. He looks comfortable in possession and delivers a half decent set piece but that’s about all. A succession of managers from Adkins onwards have decided, over more than 6 years, that he doesn’t really fit into the team and has been a bit part, in/out sort of player. If he was named Antonio Romano and Cortese had signed him from Chievo, he’d have been gone years ago.

No, our usual game plan is to set up very defensively and play with no purpose or intensity, so that they can attack at will. We will be 2-0 down within half an hour, both sides will be content with this and just play gentle, possession football from then on. We completely switch off in both sets of injury time and concede another goal or two, for an ‘acceptable’ 3-0 defeat, after which Hughes talks about their obvious quality, the ref and our great resolve to keep things fairly even after we’re 2-0 down.

I’ve got some brambles which need shredding down the garden and an old shed which needs to come down. Anybody want to come around and give me a hand instead of watching the game? The only real question is who to make my fantasy captain. Aguero could grab a few but I’ve also got Laporte, who is guaranteed a clean sheet.

Virgil, Mané, Le Tiss, Beattie

If we signed a striker with 17 goals in 3 years playing in the championship, we’d all be fuming. He’s shown nothing to suggest he is a Premier League player at all. Plenty of excuse from some but a whole succession of coaching and management teams have decided he’s not even worth a place in the matchday squad. We’ve done the whole ‘the kids can’t be any worse’ argument before and got relegated from the Championship in 08/09.

They can be as p*ssed off as they like, neither have looked like PL players for any notable period in their careers. Gallagher was something like the 35th top scorer in the Championship, with his goals all coming in a 7 game purple patch.

I’d go with a 4-3-3 personally; Armstrong - Hojbjerg - Lemina Redmond - Ings - Gabbi Give SA and ML license to push forward when able and win the midfield battles when not in possession. Not saying it will be amazing but we can’t be much worse than the sludge of the last 2.5 years.

Is a helicopter crash any more likely than a bus driver having some sort of seizure or mental episode? The Nice terror attack showed just how dangerous that could be, much worse than a helicopter coming down, even in a busy area.

Not really, just my $0.02

We will be in a much worse financial position financially if we go down with the players we have on the wage bill. A team full of youth team players was crap in ‘08 and it’d be crap if it happened again.

I largely agree with this, especially the bit about Scousers. Lots of them seem to have some weird need to shoehorn Liverpool’s into this. I was upset when I heard Marcus had died, in a ‘put a downer on my evening’ kind of way but too distraught to come to work?

There’s a line somewhere between freedom of religion and offending people. A rather blurry line but Glenn was definitely the wrong side of it. Imagine being a young kid who dreams of playing for England but knowing you never will because you’re in a wheelchair. That must be horrible but then to top it off, the England manager says you are being punished for being a terrible person in a past life. Glenn has every right to his beliefs but airing such controversial beliefs publicly was naive.

Fairly obviously this game won’t go ahead and this thread isn’t especially pleasant either.

I wouldn’t say it’s much different to the helicopters which land at Canary Wharf everyday, or driving a vehicle around the stadium on a crowded match day really. Perhaps there should be a rule - no movements between an hour before kick off and half an hour after landing.

I agree, it’s an ancient concept. It has no place in modern society and saying others have done or said worse is no excuse for anything. I wish him well personally and hope he makes a full recovery but if he doesn’t then by his own beliefs that’s down to the will of God.