Lighthouse

You talk as if people were wrong for wanting more than boring, sideways, risk-adverse, possession football at home to teams like Bompey, Hull, Stoke and Hapoel Be'er F**king Sheva. Puel's teams were invariably set out for a 0-0 and, to his credit, he regularly delivered on half of that score line, if not the other.

Yes, those two players who disappeared for 6 months when it was cold were apparently the be all and end all of Premier League football. Our problems over the last 2 seasons have largely come from how we play as a team, not who is up front. Pelle would make no difference to Puel or MoPe's teams at all. He would just stand there looking board, getting naff all service. It's not as if we've been putting pinpoint crosses into the 6 yard box and the strikers have been shanking them into the car park. We've just played badly and Pelle would look little better (dare I say it) than Carrillo this season. Mané would improve us, as he would 99% of teams in Europe. Everyone apart from Liverpool manages to make do without him, so it's hardly an excuse.

Apart from both games against Chelsea, Arsenal and Man Utd, plus our trip to City, and Spurs at home. Apart from those 8 games, I agree.

What, like Bednarek and Stephens, or are you hoping for a few players who are even worse?

The football under Puel was stagnant, boring and ultimately didn't produce results. Our football at St Mary's was particularly poor. We put 3 crap teams to the sword but in the other 16 games we failed to score more than one goal and scored a grand total of 3 goals from open play. 3 goals from open play in 16 home games. That's how slow, ponderous, turgid and lacking in intensity we were under Puel.

Here we go again. Leicester not really in very good form. A bit like Chelsea... and Arsenal... and West Ham. Same team for me but with Austin or Gabbi in for Long.

Clasie would be better as he has actually been away the whole season but I agree in principal.

Well, that's a 'must not lose' team if ever I saw one.

Travelers do tend to say that though, in their minds they can do no wrong and seemingly couldn't give the tiniest sh*t about others outside of their community. We had problems recently with them in Crawley, last year they broke through a school gate, cutting a padlock to get in, and set up camp on the sports field. When interviewed, one of them said they'd done nothing wrong and had every right to be there.

Not a chance, I know a few Latvians and some of them despise Russia. The Russian population now is only about 1/4 I believe, nowhere near enough to push for some sort of unification. The large majority of them prefer being in the EU and the opportunities for work and travel within the EU. As far as I'm aware, Latvia also lacks the concentrations of ethnic Russians that Ukraine has in the Crimea and Donbass regions.

Or we're in a daft situation where he's our only other available CB and don't really have much choice in the matter.

Thoughts on Sané's disallowed goal? Looked a fairly obvious mistake to me as it was Milner who played it back.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. There is far more potential in Tadic, Redmond, Jay Rod, Gabbi and Sims than either Puel or MoPe have managed to extract. Even Long is capable of 7/8 goals a season instead of just 2.

Last few meaningless matches? We only scored more than one goal in 3 home games all season.

Can't we just pretend we sold Virgil for £55m and signed this bloke on a free? I'd feel a lot happier about that.

The direction we were heading at the end of the season, we may well have been. Wasn't it 6 blanks in his last 7 home games or something?

I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt in spite of my reservations but Jesus, did we REALLY spend £19m on a bloke who has scored 5 goals against a bunch of 'équipe de pub'.

I don't get this borderline masochistic obsession with our rivals being responsible for our suffering. Pompey didn't send us down, we were out of the relegation zone with 2 games left. Pompey didn't stop us winning the League, Reading edged it and if anything we threw it away losing to them and throwing away a 1-0 lead at Boro. Bournemouth wont send us down. Highly likely we we still be in it (mathematically) whatever the result. We probably wont win, we will probably go down and they will probably gloat. C'est la vie.

It's only his sixth league goal, which is nothing really that spectacular for almost a full season of regular football. True, I'd rather have him than Long or Carrillo but I'd say that about 99% of strikers out there. He needed a fresh start and I'm glad to see he is having a respectable season at West Brom.

'99 was the Great Escape. What the current lot are doing is willfully digging into a POW camp and waving their kn*b and boll*cks at the guard with the machine gun.

I've always maintained that the war on drugs is unwinnable. If we legalise everything (for over 18s) we can at least control the source and quality of the drugs. We could also use the tax generated to fund a considerable number of Police, PCSO and rehab programmes for the worst affected. I've seen similar arguments shouted down before, normally by some hysterical mother who doesn't want her child taking drugs and is naive enough to think the law (barely enforced my a skeleton Police force) is enough to stop them.

I'd imagine Abbott is absolutely appalled by the 12,374 murders on the streets of London this week.

So the Russians want access to our evidence so that they can launch an investigation into themselves, which definitely wont be totally corrupt and find the Russian government completely innocent on all charges. Nothing at all to do with: a) Trying to save face by publicly giving the appearance of co-operation. b) Trying to find out the sources of our intelligence, which are probably more accurate and in depth than what some guy reckons on twitter.

It's odd how some of the things I would previously have considered satire are now transpiring in real life. A vegan terrorist going on a killing spree because her YouTube blogs keep getting taken down; it's like a Daily Mash article.

Agree. Let's stop sending our children to these namby pamby academy schools to learn 'emotional studies' and 'communication technology'. Get them off the breast milk and down the lead mines FFS!