Lighthouse

You say that as if ‘glory years’ are a right for every club and we all get an equal allocation. Spurs don’t have a brighter future just because it’s there turn. As soon as bigger, richer clubs come in for their stars, they will be off. Spurs have recruited well thus far but all it takes is a couple more Sherwoods, Soldados and Janssens to replace Poch, Kane and Erikssen when they do leave and they’re back fighting for 6th and 7th with Everton and the rest. Utd on the other hand can spunk £90m on a single player. Poch won’t win the league or CL with Spurs but he could with Utd, that could decide it for him.

If Ralph did go to Spurs at the end of the season (no way on Earth he'd get the Utd job on the back of 6 months at Saints) he must have had a heck of a season here to get the job. As in, fighting for Europe by the end of the campaign. I'd have thought Spurs would be more interested in Howe, Wagner, Santo or Benitez before they came knocking on our door.

I'll go with, "T**t with stupid hair and earrings."

I can't decide. Torn between; Cedric has been awful and Valery has shown enough promise to deserve a go and; Cedric is vastly more experienced and Ralph will get the best out of him.

Yes. Any permanent signing of a player with his injury record is a bad deal. He has hardly played in the last 3 years. Total appearances in the last 3 years 14, 2, 10 Just to be clear, I'm not having a go at Ings here, he's by far our best striker when he's fit. This is all on Reed for agreeing to this deal. I can't believe that Liverpool wouldn't take a loan with a fee and an OPTION to buy for a player they clearly don't need. Turkish - I'm also well aware that this isn't £20m cash up front next summer. Just going with the widely reported figure for the overall deal.

I'm not doubting that's the case but a loan with an option to buy would seem the sensible option, given his terrible injury record. They didn't want him and nobody bought him with hours of the transfer window remaining. I'd have called their bluff on that, there's absolutely no reason they wouldn't have loaned him out. It's like if someone had come in and offered to loan Forster for the season. It's a no brainer, just a waste of wages otherwise.

It’s not in any way vague. Ings will sign permanently in summer. If there were caveats, it would say a ‘possible, potential, proposed or option to move’ etc. It doesn’t, it says permanent and i think some of our more reliable ITKs said he’s already signed a 4 year deal.

It is a must buy clause and as for odd and unusual... Carrillo. It's still our record signing and a massive amount for a Championship club. We did https://southamptonfc.com/news/2018-08-09/announcement-southampton-sign-danny-ings-liverpool-loan-deal I do enjoy watching him score and my opinion of him hasn't changed. Neither has my opinion of the transfer.

Which we could have done signing him on loan, without the guaranteed transfer at the end.

Again, people are missing the point. Nobody has said that he is sh*t or that he couldn't score when fit. The big picture hasn't changed off the back of one game. We could still get relegated and the first thing we'd be doing is handing Liverpool £20m for a player who's out injured for the next year.

Yarmolenko was just starting to look decent when he picked up his injury too. As you say though, they and Everton are just chucking lorryloads of cash at what is now the '7th place trophy'.

Locked for now as there doesn't really seem to be much in this other than some vague second-hand rumour.

You believe Burnley will win 9 of their remaining 22, having won 3/16 so far? At the current rate, someone will stay up on about 30 points, which is something like 5 wins and 6 draws for us.

Not really, he is 30 and was under performing for a while before he left. He wanted to leave and nobody was going to come in with a big money offer. Supposing we had got another £5m for him, would you have trusted Les and Mark to spend it wisely?

I genuinely have no idea if this bit is supposed to be ironic or not. As for Tadic - Fair play. He needed to move on from this shower of sh*te for his own benefit and it looks like a breath of fresh air for him. Would love it if he went on to knock the Scousers out of the CL.

Fair enough. Looking at his stats for this season, he seems to have been brought on almost religiously on the 60 minute mark every game, the Leonardo Ulloa of the Bundesliga almost. Looks like Ibisevic has been banging them in, so perhaps not his fault he isn't playing/scoring.

Looking a bit more in depth, he hasn't played since October, so it's basically 7 apps in 2 months. A fair few of those were subs too. - Subbed on - 83 mins - Subbed on - 67 mins - Scored - Subbed on - h.t. - Started - subbed off - 76 mins - Started - 90 mins - Subbed on - 74 mins - Scored - Subbed on - h.t. 2 goals in 2 starts and 1.5 games in sub appearances. A bit better than Carrillo, although why he hasn't played more I don't know. (I'm not saying he's any good, especially with 0 last year)

Ralph's appointment and the Cardiff game reminded me of Adkins in a way. 2 days before a trip to MK Dons, which we subsequently lost 2-0 and were pretty abysmal. That was followed by a 0-0 bore draw at home to Colchester. Pearson took over the day before a 2-0 home defeat to Plymouth but then went on an unbeaten run of 5 games. Strachan I had to check but it was a 3-3 draw with Ipswich, followed by 3 straight defeats. We eventually ended up midtable. Poch obviously started with a 0-0 but his style of football was obvious almost immediately. Despite this we only won 1 of his first 7, although it was at home to Champions City, and weren't safe until a draw on the penultimate day against Sunderland. Which other mid-season appointments stand out (i.e. not the likes of Puel, Koeman etc.)?

I've never at any point thought that Stephens or Bednarek looked like a Premier League defender. The former once looked okay in an ultra defensive Puel set up but last season I generally felt that Hoedt looked better. For now I'd go with Yoshi and Hoedt. Not saying they're good but both would look alright if we can train the mistakes out of them.

Sounds a bit dubious to me, like a Daily Mail story. 'Precious overpaid footballers afraid to do work' etc. A little too much like someone saying what everyone wants to here (not pointing at the OP necessarily). I'd have thought the players would be more upset over the years of pathetic failure than having to work late in to the ungodly hours of er... 4pm.

Davenport - still have nightmares about the Villa game when he came on at HT. Lancashire - whenever someone says the youth players can’t possibly be worse, I think of Olly. Bennett - Jamie Scowcroft hat trick. Jamie Scowcroft.

No... He was crap and got dropped by Puel Then he was crap and got dropped by MoPe Then he was crap and got dropped by Hughes THEN he fell out with Hughes Then he was crap and got dropped by Celta.

So who was it who wanted the Skates in the cup?

Here please.

For Ings? We've already committed to that, makes little difference if it's now or summer.