Lighthouse

Hoedt, Austin, Gabbiadini, Stephens, Cedric?

Being massively generous to Cardiff, let’s suppose they beat Palace and Fulham and we choke at home to Huddersfield (draw). That puts us level but ahead on GD. Cardiff aren’t getting a point of Liverpool, they just aren’t. That leaves Cardiff needing more points from one visit to Old Trafford than we get against West Ham, Bournemouth, Newcastle and Watford combined.

Well, whatever you call his little turns and shimmies to create a yard of space to blindly charge into. He can't be all that amazing because he's spent most of the season in and out of the team, either on the bench or being subbed off when they can't score. Anyway, whilst I finish my dinner check out this video from some other bloke we're going to sign in summer. I can't wait!

How does paying off his contract up front cut our losses? At least if we keep him and loan him out, somebody else can pay half. Better yet, sell him and subsidise his wages.

Put it this way, Cardiff had 4 ‘winnable’ games. They’ve used up half of them and are no closer to us than they were before the weekend. We’ve even improved our advantage in GD.

One of Brighton or Cardiff will still be down there. Bournemouth could struggle when the vultures come circling for King, Wilson and Fraser. Rafa could leave Newcastle and leave them in a mess. The promoted sides are always a lottery and then there’s the enigma of Palace.

Not quite Taibi but...

I wouldn't want to tempt fate by hoping for Cardiff to win but I can't see them getting to where we are now, let alone 39/40 points. Winning tonight and against Palace and Fulham would only put them on 37. For us to need 4 points, they would have to win those 3 and beat Liverpool or Man Utd.

No, I see him getting a couple of yards on his man with some fancy tricks and a decent burst of acceleration. After that it's head down and charge until a defender catches up and gets a tackle in or he hits a poor cross at nobody in particular.

Didn’t see anything exciting in that lot, just a whole bunch of dribbles that ended up being either tackled, blocked or just a wayward shot or pass.

Pictures from French firemen on twitter would suggest that window has survived.

It's got nothing to do with being a 'Ralph player' or his attitude. He just isn't a good footballer. Carrillo will not be playing for us next season.

I'm going to call it now - Cardiff lose the next two, we draw at Newcastle on Saturday and are mathematically safe, bar a 25 goal swing in the last 3 games.

My first away game. The area around GP is er... cultural but it's a proper good old fashioned, tin lid ground.

That's a bit of a false comparison as up until none of those three players has been good enough. We needed to spend that money and strengthen in those positions, we just signed the wrong players. He's been decent in the last 2 goals but by the same yardstick Shane Long is a goal machine. Let's hope he can learn some composure and push on from here, before we start talking about him being the solution to our problems.

I do listen and I don't doubt the credibility of any of those reports you listed. I'm not bringing Smollett into this, if Hypo wants to debate that topic I'll leave it to you two. In reply to your other post, that doesn't necessarily make him a NA/BNP supporter. My opinions are based on maths more than anything. If there is someone shouting foul racist abuse in literally every block in St Mary's, that's still only 40 odd out of 32,000 or just over 0.1% of the crowd. If 99.9% of a crowd is absolutely fine, that's not indicative of a problem with racism in football, in England at least. Other countries are a different matter. As a football fan I object to being constantly smeared with this brush by the media when in reality we are no worse than any other segment of society. I could take a group of young black men to Newark Antiques Fayre and there would be people muttering, "quick, hide your money tins with that lot around." It's never going to completely go away. I don't doubt any of the media stories you've shared, I'm just saying there is a threshold of unpleasantness you just have to live with.

I've no idea what point this is supposed to be making. Again, these are isolated incidents; individuals or small groups of 3 or 4 in a crowd of 40,000. I could post a bunch of stories about Southampton as a city in order to paint it as a violent hell hole but it wouldn't be true either. 'Man hits wife in Eastleigh', 'Four men start fight in Yates', 'pensioner mugged in Shirely', etc. You're using outliers to try and prove a hypothesis. This is the equivalent of those winners on the People's Postcode Lottery adverts. "£50,000!" "£12,000!" "Derek we're off to Benidorm!" As if that's somehow the norm.

None of them are good enough. Desperately clinging on to them in the hope that they will suddenly improve isn’t going to bring that money back, just waste more on wages whilst blocking us from bringing someone else in.

We won’t be top half but we do have a game against West Ham, Newcastle and Bournemouth who are all within striking distance. Where we end up will be largely down to the head to head in those ‘mid table obscurity’ 6 pointers.

I’m genuinely convinced Liverpool will win the title, I just can’t see them dropping another point.

Maybe he just wants to find the continuum transfunctioner.

I can sort of see why people think Boufal might produce something under Ralph, even if I disagree personally. The rest of those players though have shown absolutely no sign of anything close to being a Premier League footballer. The last two aren't even youth players any more, Hesketh is 23 and come next season Reed will be nearly 25.

If we win this and Cardiff lose and draw against Brighton/Liverpool then we're mathematically safe. If we get a draw and Cardiff lose then we're all but safe, baring a 21+ swing in GD I think. Not that I'm worried about them any more, we're closer to 11th than 18th and I'd still be 90% confident of safety if we scored no points in our last 5 games.

TBF though, Hoedt would have been slated on here if he had played like Bednarek in the last two games. Not that I’m saying Bednarek has played badly but people would have seized on the fact that two goals were his fault and slated him for it.

The trip on Gunarsson was probably the best shout, never the two ‘handballs’. I really hope VAR isn’t used in super slow-mo like they do on MOTD, it gives an entirely false impression of the incident. The first shout where the ball was blasted at Mee from two yards away and his arm was down by his side... do me a favour. Wright made himself sound a proper melon too, saying "it’s right at goal, that was going in." Is that relevant? Do you get a penalty if it’s a shot on target, even if it’s not deliberate?