Lighthouse

We tried to do a Danny Ings again. It worked then, it didn't this time, there was always going to be an element of risk and luck with this signing.

They aren't, I've no idea why people are pretending they might be otherwise. BBD and CA are 10 goal a season Championship strikers, PO scored in Turkey and Belgium but has yet to register a goal for us under three different managers. Diaz would be better up front but that means better than abysmal, as opposed to actually being good. He scored fewer goals in four seasons at Blackburn than Adam Armstrong did in three.

Clearly. I’m not sure who you think is worse than last season’s fourth best Championship team, combined with the attack from the worst PL team and a three or four other okay players.

He's changed his tactics many times, that's clearly not true. He went to a back five at the end of last season to accomodate McCarthy's limited distribution, then changed it back this season when we were struggling. We've played different formations, with different players in different positions. Some of them, like at Bournemouth, were shocking but other than his general passing philosophy, you can't really say he's wedded to any particular way of playing. As for, "set your team up to be hard to beat and capable of scoring on the counter," I'm sorry but that's just a cliche. We basically had that with Selles last season, every game he put out teams to hopefully not be embarassed, it didn't get us anywhere. Even the likes of Moyes and Dyche, who you'd generally associate that kind of sentiment with, have been on the end of a fair few thumpings and spent a lot of time in the bottom five, with better squads than ours.

It really isn't, it's quite obviously one of the three worst in the division, possibly the worst. Russ isn't holding this team back in quite the way that some people think he is. If you're waiting for another manager to come along and release the full attacking potential of Archer, BBD and Fraser, I fear it could be a long wait.

We’re not accepting anything as inevitable, we have an outside chance of avoiding relegation if he can get it right, same as we have with another manager. We have one of, if not the, worst squads in the league, it’s going to take a fairly special manager to keep us up.

I really don’t understand this eagerness for Russ to have an absolute stinker in the hope that the club will panic into firing him immediately. I don’t know manager people have in mind to replace him but when we binned off MoPe we got Mark Hughes. When we sacked Ralph we appointed Jones, then tried and failed to replace him with Marsch, then ended up with Selles. If and when Russ does get the chop, it’s highly unlikely to be some superb Emery-esq appointment which propels us into the top half.

It’s almost as if famous footballers and managers have media training and PR teams working for them and that not every word that comes out of their mouth is the gospel according to our lord. Who’d have thought.

Yes. Not to secular, liberal Westerners discussing the matter on the internet but in that region both sides actions are completely justified by their own religious dogma.

Where I would agree there is room for discussion is surrounding the grey area what constitutes quality of life and exactly where the boundary is. I don’t have anywhere near enough medical knowledge to sit here and say exactly which conditions fall either side of the line and how far they need to progress. Personally the idea of AD for someone with anorexia or PTSD seems uncomfortable but then I wasn’t the doctor who dealt with either of those cases (which are very much in the minority). 99.9% of the people affected by this bill will be in hospital beds, hooked up to painkillers with days to live, whatever they choose to do. What I don’t agree with at all is the separate point that this bill will turn us into some bizarre mix of Nazi Germany, where those too weak and feeble to work will be put to death, and that John Smiths advert where Peter Kay tries to get rid of his mother so he can out a snooker table in her bedroom. We’re not heading in that direction and the point being put forward by people like Carr and TGT is a non-sequitur. Nothing they are apparently afraid of is being proposed and one disgruntled employee in Canada sending sarcastic emails isn’t evidence of that.

So what do you think that’s proof of? 83,000 people died of cancer alone in Canada last year. Even ignoring every other terminal disease and chronic, debilitating condition out there, the idea that one in eight people dying of cancer choosing to end it humanely really isn’t an absurd or alarming one.

You’re making an absolute mountain of what is quite clearly a rogue employee, who clearly has a very sarcastic attitude problem, has been universally slammed by everyone else concerned up to and including the Canadian PM. That employee has now been suspended and the disabled veteran was never at any point under any actual danger of being euthanised. Clearly this person’s attitude was grossly inappropriate but it’s a very, very tenuous argument to stretch that to people in wheelchairs being basically executed by proxy. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/christine-gauthier-paralympian-euthanasia-canada-b2238319.html

They’re no more ridiculous than the idea of AD being approved for people who need a ramp to access a bus or have serial killer children. If there’s no medical case to put forward to a doctor, then they’re all equally non-starters. The idea of killing the disabled for being a burden on society is straight out of Mein Kampf, we’re absolutely nothing like that as a society and this bill isn’t going to move us in that direction. This is the exact opposite, it’s about showing compassion for those who are suffering the most and allowing them a dignified and merciful choice.

The problems with assisted dying are why we have doctors, the doctors have supervisors and they have second opinions. You have to go through a whole process just to get an organ transplant, hospitals have whole committees to make sure various standards and criteria are met when dealing with such matters. Matters such as AD will clearly have similar, even more stringent safety measures. The case for assisted dying will have to be put forward individually. If a relatively healthy senior citizen asks to be euthanised because their psychotic son wants their house/inheritance, that’s very, very obviously going to throw up a bunch of red flags. As is somebody in a wheelchair who feels self conscious about holding up a bus. Cases like that would never get through even the most basic of case analysis’, so this is a complete straw man argument from Carr.

I’m not advocating for it to be expanded to include literally anyone. You can take Hypo’s argument as far as you want. If people on wheelchairs can be euthanised for annoying bus drivers, what about people on benefits, or illegal immigrants, people who sit in the middle lane doing 58mph or people who say, “can I get a…” in coffee shops. The fact that Canada has overstepped the mark doesn’t mean we have to. I’m talking about starting with the most obviously chronic and painful conditions first, then expanding it to reasonable parameters after a robust trial period. It’s like anything in life, if Airbus designs a new plane, they don’t cram it full of passengers and send it no stop to Sydney or its first flight.

Clearly there would need to be very strict regulation on what constitutes terminal illness and everyone offered the option of assisted dying would have to have at least a second, possibly third opinion from a qualified doctor. If Canada is offering AD for conditions like anorexia and PTSD, that’s clearly a step too far and not something we should be copying in the UK, but we’re miles away from anything like that. The whole idea that disabled or elderly people will be pressured into suicide by fed up bus passengers and greedy next of kin wanting inheritance is just hysterical fear mongering. I don’t know a single person who wasn’t devastated when their elderly parents passed away, having your healthy mother bumped off because you want a first class trip to the Maldives is the act of a psychotic serial killer. They do exist but that very, very small number of cases is why you have safeguards and independent medical diagnosis. We’re not even talking about people with six months to live either. We are literally talking about people at deaths door and/or in chronic, unbearable pain. Nobody diagnosed with cancer and given six months to live wants to be euthanised immediately, it just doesn’t happen. Most people want as long as they can to do what they can with the time available. If it transpires that there was a misdiagnosis and the patient actually has a benign cyst or whatever, then hurrah, he gets to live. Assisted dying doesn’t even enter the equation until he’s lying in a hospital/hospice with a few days, possibly a week left, being pumped full of morphine on a ventilator.

I said I watched the shorter interview she did and it was horse sh*t, not the documentary. I may give it a go later this week if I’ve time but she’ll have to do a lot better than she did in the interview. If she starts talking about bus drivers getting in a huff about running late, or teenagers making fun of her wheelchair, I’m switching off. Out of interest, what’s the best point you think she made against an assisted dying law?

I did listen to what she had to say and it was horse sh*t, nothing at all to do with the issue at hand, which as far as I can see isn’t one that affects her at all. Likewise Dame TGT, she was a Paralympic champion for crying out loud. How is she in any way an authority on being days/weeks away from death and in unbearable pain? More to the point, since neither of them are on Saintsweb, why do YOU think terminally ill people should be denied the option if it’s of their choosing? The fact that someone in Canada was offered the chance to kill themselves as an alternative to having a wheelchair ramp installed is at best a gross admin error, which would obviously never be followed through, or at worst a sinister manipulation of the facts by people with their own agenda. Either way, we’re not about to start euthanising people who broke their leg skiing. As for the last bit about the terms being widened to encompass more people; what’s wrong with that? They start off being ultra cautious in introducing the law, then gradually expand it to allow the option to more people after a proven trial period.

I’ve not seen that documentary but I did see an interview with her on iPlayer in which she came across as ignorant and self absorbed to the point of being insulting to people this bill affects. Basically when asked about it she told an anecdote about getting on the bus one day and how people tutted and rolled their eyes when she needed the ramp for her wheelchair, saying we needed to be more inclusive and respectful to people with disabilities. This issue is nothing to do with disability access or delaying a bus timetable, it’s about terminally ill people in so much pain that the most humane thing to do is end it peacefully and with dignity. Carr is in her fifties and has been living with disabilities since childhood, so it’s clearly nothing to do with her.

If you’re talking about the prospect of assisted suicide, I think that policy is long overdue and was dismayed it got voted against so strongly last time. I cannot think of a single reason why somebody would want to deny a terminally ill person that right.

Archer had two men on him, there’s another just right of that shot. His best bet in that scenario would have been playing it over the top to the left for KWP. The most likely outcome would have been either an Arsenal throw in, or one of their three defenders on that side comes across to cut him off. Either outcome is clearly better than passing it straight to Partey and conceding a goal. All of which is besides the original point. Trying to keep possession for a bit when you’ve just taken the lead at Arsenal is really not a stupid idea BUT no manager in the world would want a player to play the ball that Downes did. Downes made an error of judgement, that goal is on him.

Spurs have just thrown away a 2-0 lead and come away with nothing, against an inferior team that Chelsea ripped to pieces last weekend. They played ridiculous football in the second half, let in 3 in 17 minutes and didn't even have a goal of their own to show for it. Yes, it was great for us neutrals but to be holding that up as a way we should be playing is just absurd. Go and have a look at the Spurs forum and see what their fans make of their 'hammer and tongue' football.

We’ve not had a collapse this hapless against a team of obviously inferior players. I’m not saying we’re good but if we were playing like Spurs have second half, against much better teams than us, we’d be on the wrong end of double figures. There’s nothing to envy here, the game has come to life because Spurs are defending like clowns.

I know, if only that was us conceding three goals in 17 minutes, I wish we were Spurs.

Like any industry, football will gravitate towards what works. By definition it's not overpriced because people are willing to pay it and most games tend to sell out.