Lighthouse

He played most of the Stoke game, in which he made little impact and the team was awful. Came on at HT at Newcastle too and we never looked like getting back into the game. He's had numerous other sub appearances over the last couple of seasons and only did anything of note against a tired and underperforming Liverpool team.

Vest Yoshi Hoedt Bednarek Stephens

Clearly you don't have a teenage daughter but Jacob Rees-Mogg posters are flying off the shelves.

Basically this, it's not like he hasn't had chances. There have been plenty of games where he has had little impact.

He's a bit 'meh' for me. If you just want some bland, lowest common denominator comedy and don't want to do any thinking, he's alright in a Michael McIntyre kind of way. What I'm trying to say is, I don't find him actively irritating like I do Miranda or truly insufferable like Nish Kumar.

That's too simplistic a view on it. There are many formations which could work with the players we have, it's about how we play them. Poor finishing and defensive mistakes cost us against Everton, no formation in the world will get Austin's header on target, allow Cedric to win a header or make Hoedt and Stephens good players. Ings and Gabbi would give Leicester a lot of problems, if we play them correctly. I'd go with: - - - - - - - - McC - - - - - - - - Cedric - Yoshi - Vest - Bertrand - - - Lemina - - - Romeu - - - - - - - - - - Armstrong - - - - - Redmond - - - - - - - - - Gabbi - - - - - - - - - Ings - - - - - - -

Nope.

We've had the chances to win both games. I'm not saying we deserved to but we were in them and had Austins header gone in etc. we could have 6 points despite playing poorly. Our 2 games have been nowhere near as bad as a few other teams. If we'd gone to somewhere like Everton and lost 3-0 without a shot on target, as we have in the past, then I'd be more worried.

On the basis of what we’ve seen so far, there are definitely worse teams than Saints. West Ham continue to be a mess, Burnley have been crap, Huddersfield have lost 2 tough fixtures but 8 goals conceded will be a worry. Nothing from the promoted sides looks particularly special either.

Reasons to be positive.... None of Gabbi, Vest, Yoshi, Elmo or Armstrong stared and all 5 would have improved that team. Why Hughes sent Long on for Austin I don't know. If anything it's quite worrying, as if Hughes has completely run out of ideas and just sent someone on to run around. Oh well, we're always sh*te at Goodison.

Here please

Meanwhile West Ham...

Irrelevant. If players can't do the basics, no formation in the world is going to help. Nothing suits our silly fouls, unmarked hearders and missing sitters philosophy.

We did, he's on the bench.

I’d have Yoshi and Gabbi for Stephens and Austin but otherwise not a bad team IMO. Certainly feel better bout it than the last one, where it was just a bunch of defensive players behind Redmond and a statue.

You’d have thought we’d be happy to subsidise wages to get some of these players off our books, like we have with Carrillo and Boufal. Better to sell Forster, Long and Davis and pay half the wages of the reminder of their contracts, than have them sitting here doing sod all.

Needs an admin to do it, I've sent Baj a text.

Shame, we need more refs of his pedigree.

That's a specific opinion held only by a very small minority of football fans worldwide. UEFA aren't going to be making any decisions based on what Saints fans would like. The winners aren't kept out, they just get knocked out in the qualifiers every year. If they never beat Dinamo Zagreb or Grasshopper Zurich in a qualifying match, what's the point of having them in the group stage. It would be completely pointless watching any games up until the QF and half of them would be one-sided affairs like Man City vs Shakhtar Donetsk. As for the wealth, I've still yet to see any answer to my point about it destroying pretty much every league in Europe. All the smaller leagues would turn into the SPL, an absolute farce of a foregone conclusion where the winner is engraved on the trophy before the season starts because they have so much more resource than anyone else. They wont, they just wont. Teams like Barca and Real win comfortably against some of the teams which DO qualify for the CL. You will just end up with ridiculous games like Everton's 22-0 win in pre-season. Scoring records will just go out the window. Players like Di Stefano and Shevchenko will end up behind Rashford and Sterling in the record books, scoring 13 goals over 2 legs against Total Network Solutions.

Still not that keen on falling off it TBH. I was surprised to see a number of injuries reported. I'd have thought doing a 300ft base jump with 1,000 tonnes of concrete instead of a parachute would be game over for all involved.

How is that different? Europa is just ‘Champions League Tier 2’ with a different name. Also you’re saying you would rather see matches between Vojvodina and Flora Tallinn than last years finalists, because they happened to win their domestic leagues?

The problem is that you then get a load of crap qualifying, like the Champions from Slovenia, Malta and Montenegro. The group stages would end up just being a pointless walkover with 2 big teams and 2 minnows. It would also encourage reckless spending in a lot of the smaller leagues. You would get some Slovenian village teams throwing ridiculous, unsustainable wages at players because the money for being in the group stage would render all domestic finances completely meaningless. One team would succeed, the rest would go bankrupt over the summer. It would be a disaster.

Poll added (I went with McC)

Wages have never ever ever been about who works the hardest doing a ‘worthwhile’ job.

And there was me thinking the bloke is an absolute helmet.