Lighthouse

Delph who was comfortably Villa’s best player at the time but looks rather mediocre amongst City’s elites? JWP would struggle to get into their ladies team.

Doubt any of them would make the bench TBH.

JWP just isn’t good enough. He is neither quick, nor strong nor tall, nor is he an aggressive ball winner. He looks comfortable in possession and delivers a half decent set piece but that’s about all. A succession of managers from Adkins onwards have decided, over more than 6 years, that he doesn’t really fit into the team and has been a bit part, in/out sort of player. If he was named Antonio Romano and Cortese had signed him from Chievo, he’d have been gone years ago.

No, our usual game plan is to set up very defensively and play with no purpose or intensity, so that they can attack at will. We will be 2-0 down within half an hour, both sides will be content with this and just play gentle, possession football from then on. We completely switch off in both sets of injury time and concede another goal or two, for an ‘acceptable’ 3-0 defeat, after which Hughes talks about their obvious quality, the ref and our great resolve to keep things fairly even after we’re 2-0 down.

I’ve got some brambles which need shredding down the garden and an old shed which needs to come down. Anybody want to come around and give me a hand instead of watching the game? The only real question is who to make my fantasy captain. Aguero could grab a few but I’ve also got Laporte, who is guaranteed a clean sheet.

Virgil, Mané, Le Tiss, Beattie

If we signed a striker with 17 goals in 3 years playing in the championship, we’d all be fuming. He’s shown nothing to suggest he is a Premier League player at all. Plenty of excuse from some but a whole succession of coaching and management teams have decided he’s not even worth a place in the matchday squad. We’ve done the whole ‘the kids can’t be any worse’ argument before and got relegated from the Championship in 08/09.

They can be as p*ssed off as they like, neither have looked like PL players for any notable period in their careers. Gallagher was something like the 35th top scorer in the Championship, with his goals all coming in a 7 game purple patch.

I’d go with a 4-3-3 personally; Armstrong - Hojbjerg - Lemina Redmond - Ings - Gabbi Give SA and ML license to push forward when able and win the midfield battles when not in possession. Not saying it will be amazing but we can’t be much worse than the sludge of the last 2.5 years.

Is a helicopter crash any more likely than a bus driver having some sort of seizure or mental episode? The Nice terror attack showed just how dangerous that could be, much worse than a helicopter coming down, even in a busy area.

Not really, just my $0.02

We will be in a much worse financial position financially if we go down with the players we have on the wage bill. A team full of youth team players was crap in ‘08 and it’d be crap if it happened again.

I largely agree with this, especially the bit about Scousers. Lots of them seem to have some weird need to shoehorn Liverpool’s into this. I was upset when I heard Marcus had died, in a ‘put a downer on my evening’ kind of way but too distraught to come to work?

There’s a line somewhere between freedom of religion and offending people. A rather blurry line but Glenn was definitely the wrong side of it. Imagine being a young kid who dreams of playing for England but knowing you never will because you’re in a wheelchair. That must be horrible but then to top it off, the England manager says you are being punished for being a terrible person in a past life. Glenn has every right to his beliefs but airing such controversial beliefs publicly was naive.

Fairly obviously this game won’t go ahead and this thread isn’t especially pleasant either.

I wouldn’t say it’s much different to the helicopters which land at Canary Wharf everyday, or driving a vehicle around the stadium on a crowded match day really. Perhaps there should be a rule - no movements between an hour before kick off and half an hour after landing.

I agree, it’s an ancient concept. It has no place in modern society and saying others have done or said worse is no excuse for anything. I wish him well personally and hope he makes a full recovery but if he doesn’t then by his own beliefs that’s down to the will of God.

Watching MOTD and I think our saving grace could be that Huddersfield, Fulham, Newcastle and Cardiff look consistently dreadful this season. Someone could stay up with 30 points at this rate.

Hundreds of people who were at the game probably have phones with flat batteries, on silent, left it in the car, didn’t hear it in the pub, no signal etc. Hopefully those reports are wide of the mark if nothing else.

People on Twitter know sod all, they just say dramatic stuff for likes and retweets. SSN reporting that the vice-chairman was NOT on board.

Long does not create problems. His running allows defenders a bit less time on the ball than they would like, which leads to us winning a few more throw ins. When you are defending a striker based on the number of throw ins he wins you are scraping the varnish off the bottom of the barrel. Long and Austin are both awful for different reasons. That’s all there is to it.

I disagree, drains are actually an important part of urban infrastructure. I’m struggling to think of bigger helmets in British football than Nile Ranger. I guess Joey Barton and Marlon King would run him close.

Long, Mayuka and N’Guessan gave us pace and running. Sims struggles to get into a team fighting relegation from the Championship. He’s not the answer.

I agree. If we’re going with 2 strikers, it’s got to be Ings and Gabbi by default really. Austin and Long are utterly, hoplelessly awful.

All gone down hill since they released ‘Too Shy’.