Lighthouse

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?

Another game I’d take a point from if offered it now. Late kick off on Saturday. The teams around us are away to Chelsea, Wolves and Arsenal, whilst Cardiff host Liverpool. Brighton have a further game, away to Spurs in midweek. A real chance to take a leap up the table.

Not his best performance today. Think James and Saints, as a unit, looked better when Rom came on and JWP moved further forwards.

Cracking results all around really, Brighton must be bricking it after their results against us and today. Excellent performances from Redmond, Sims, Valery and Yoshida. Romeu was also decent when he came on, I didn’t think Hoj and JWP were having a particularly good game until he came on. Three decent goals, three points. We could finish as high as 11th with our head to heads against BOU, WHU and NEW. Onwards and upwards.

Yep, another decent performance from him. More of the same please.

1 goal since Boxing Day 2016. He'd certainly fit in well.

If Leicester win we’ll be 2 points behind Newcastle with 2 games in hand. No reason to hope for nothing other than that.

Always wondered what James May would look like with a proper hair cut.

I believe Turkish is on it as we speak.

A 31 year old on big wages, who's already burned most of his bridges with the fans. Literally nothing, if he was on the wage bill now I'd be trying to offload him in the summer.

Outs are pretty easy - Forster, Hoedt, Stephens, Cédric, Targett, Clasie, Boufal, Davis, Long, Austin, Gallagher, Carrillo In reality, we’d do well to shift half of those but it’s worth trying. Ins I wouldn’t have the first clue when it comes to names but - GK, CB who can play RB, AM, 2x ST

I certainly hope that first sentence is correct. Money will always talk and to that extent we can pretty much outspend anyone in Europe, outside the Champions League clubs. We managed to attract some pretty highly rated players last summer, despite barely avoiding the drop. If we can finish 7th or 8th for the second half of this season and offload 5 or 6 mediocre players, we should be able to attract 2/3 pretty good ones.

Depends really. Everton’s owners have chucked an absolute boatload of cash at that squad and achieved bugger all, they now just have the highest wage bill in the fight for 7th. They might decide they’ve spent enough and want to tighten the wage bill a bit, which puts us back on a level playing field.

I think wins against BOU/HUD, a draw against WOL/WHU and a loss at NEW/WAT would be a reasonable prediction. 8 points which sees Cardiff needing 14.

Only 20 minutes? I was in block 10 and went down for a p*ss at half time, the food queue had doubled back on itself from the far wall. Looked like people would be there until FT.

I went along for a laugh, it was a pretty flat second half after the early red card TBH. Vokins and Johnson look decent.

Nobody is assuming anything and we are more than capable of losing any of those games. What would be unlikely is us making a mess of all six and Cardiff suddenly discovering the form of their lives when they've been awful all season. Never say never but Saints have far easier fixtures and are playing far better. With the points and GD as they are, we also effectively have a 2 game head start in a 6 game race.