Lighthouse

I do remember someone saying McGuire was twice the player Stephens was, so I’d probably take £45m.

I don't have a problem with Valery being first choice but he is still young, inexperienced and 38 PL games is asking a lot physically and mentally. He will have injuries and patches of poor form, we need the option of resting and rotating him when needed. Ramsay is completely unproven and Stephens is awful as cover options. I just don't want to find us with a knock to Valery, playing a back four of Targett, Bednarek, Vestegaard and Ramsay. That's weak, inexperienced and we'd probably end up changing the whole system to enable a back five to cover our frailties.

In his appearances last season he generally looked decent when on the pitch. The problem I think is that as a team we looked lightweight in midfield when he was on the pitch and conceded a fair few goals. Watford and Newcastle away we just looked hopelessly overrun, which I'm not saying was 100% his fault but it wasn't a coincidence either.

I’d much rather have a sh*tty start with those home games than do what we did under MoPe, p*ss away all our easy home fixtures early on and claim we were doing well because we were 8th in October. Not that I think Ralph would have us playing that badly but I always prefer to get the bad news first.

I flippin' well hope we do. If we don't it leaves us with Valery and Targett as two inexperienced and not all that fantastic full backs with basically nothing in reserve except Vokins and Stephens.

Not a bad start, tough but winnable away games mixed with unlikely but you never know home games. Good to get Utd at home early, before they sack OGS and get someone decent in. Liverpool will come immediately after a midweek European Super Cup game against Chelsea, which might be a small distraction. Decent looking end to the season, although April looks a bit rough.

Middle of June and I've got the heating on.

Better than millions and millions and millions of pounds? Fonte wanted a big juicy contract and ended up at West Ham. Had he wanted to stay he wouldn't have given that nonsense interview about wanting to be nearer to his wife's family in London.

When comedy starts to believe it’s own hype and ends up parodying itself. A good example being Top Gear, which was funny in its early days but after a while you got the impression the script was just; Jeremy shouts, "power!!!" And breaks something, Hammond has a hissy fit and shouts, "oh Jeremy, you blithering idiot!" Whilst May just drives around going, "oh I’m captain slow, I got lost again, ha ha!" I think the Inbetweeners second movie was probably the worst example. They went from being misfits to being borderline mentally handicapped.

Basically my thinking, I don't really want any promoted sides in the first month. Wouldn't mind a game against post-Hazard Chelsea or even Arsenal, who are prone to the odd opening day howler.

He was never the backup to Pellè, he was the replacement and we got him in a few months early. Being our top scorer is no real boast either, not when he failed to make double figures in either of those seasons. 18 League goals in 3.5 seasons is pretty poor. He didn’t keep us up, we just wouldn’t have been fighting relegation if he’d been any good. At £4m he was worth a punt but he has been massively disappointing.

Redmond lacked confidence, under Puel and MoPe he looked like he didn't want to take a man on and often drifted around the sides, waiting for Bertrand or Cedric to overlap. Boufal has never lacked confidence, if anything he is guilty of trying to take on an entire team, or charge blindly into a disappearing space, only to lose the ball.

Largely agree, although I thought Jackass: The Movie was better than the original 1953 musical.

More to the point, he’s 30 years old and managed 7 goals in his last PL campaign.

Is the guy from Art Attack still dead?

After the way we threw away twenty-something points from winning positions last season, usually by completely bottling it in the last five minutes, I wouldn’t mind a dirty, ruthless c**t of a defender in our squad. No idea if Jansson is that kind of player all the time but we could use someone who might give the likes of Ashley Barnes and Glenn Murray something to think about.

Sounds similar to Wayne Thomas, who Burnley we’re looking to sell for around £400k and we came in and offered £1.2m.

Just over 12 months before Luke Shaw was a first team regular for Poch, he was being kept out of the starting line up by Danny Fox.

If he does play this formation, it’s probably going to be JWP and/or Lemina in behind Redmond and Adams/Ings

If he has pace and nothing else then he's one up on Moi already. I'll hold back on the excitement but we badly need some pace up front (from someone who's not Shane Long).

That's not how a release fee works, not that I want him anyway.

That’s not really news TBH. Stuff like this happens all the time, the media have just picked up on it because it effects the 737. It’ll probably just end up in an airworthiness directive, requiring more frequent inspections until the parts are replaced.

That's the problem with what he's saying; a large number of Spurs fans aren't Jewish and the ones that are don't necessarily support Israel. Its a bit like when Bradford lost the League Cup final, saying, "oh good, we don't want Pakistan flags on the trophy because of the conflict in Kashmir." Neither accurate nor appropriate.

Galloway stirring controversy just for a change. Sacked from talk radio for a tweet about ‘Israel flags’ on the CL trophy.

True but I'd want more from a £20m, £110kpw player than 5 league goals this season.