Lighthouse

None of our history is of any relevance whatsoever to the fact that we have one of the bottom three worst squads in the league, particularly up front. When you’re bringing in players like Archer and BBD to ‘strengthen’ your striking options, you know they’re pretty dreadful. All of this talks about getting rid of Russ and getting someone who can keep us up; who and how exactly? What’s this obvious formula that gets BBD banging in the goals that everyone except Russ has figured out?

None of that is stubbornness. He’s tried plenty of new ideas, there’s no quick fix. He went to five at the back at the end of last season, which helped cover McCarthy’s distribution flaws. When it wasn’t working this season he switched back to a four. He’s dropped, changed and utilised a large number of different players. AA has very rarely played as a central striker and he didn’t today. We defended well enough today, certainly better than we have so far this season, and their only goal came from a badly marked set piece. As for your last sentence, those ARE the players we appear to be trying to build a team around.

Onuachu has never scored a goal in England. Russ has changed a lot of things during his time here, in terms of formation and player selection. He’s many things but not stubborn. Every manager is using us as a CV entry for a better job. Anyone who isn’t is crap, unmotivated and happy to pick up a pay cheque.

I’m just glad the cameraman got the Stone Island logos in the shot, got to keep the sponsors happy.

Dibling was quite clearly cramping up when he came off.

I didn't think Fraser was that great, personally. The others I agree with.

Probably a fair result in the end, we had the better clear cut chances but they had more of the ball in better areas, especially first half. I like the look of Fernandes, Suga and Dibling but f**k me BBD looks a right donkey. Clearly not a wide player and glacially slow. Today was a step in the right direction but we need more, longer strides if we’re going to stay up.

It’s a shame they aren’t playing Leeds.

Looks like there's plenty of life left in Abbott after all. There're plenty of ifs and buts but you're right, the weather hasn't been kind to us this season. We'll probably get four days of glorious sunshine for our trip to Somerset, only to get thrashed and lose our runners up spot.

It would if your concern was that his career is over because of some catastrophic heart condition.

Why is this all on Martin all of a sudden? You’ve no idea what goes on behind the scenes, nor do you have any evidence that it’s him that needs to grow up or what ‘differences’ need putting aside. I think a few people need to get over this fantasy that Russ has no idea his job is on the line and just wants to play Stephens ad nauseam because he’s his best friend. If ABK isn’t in the squad, there’s likely to be a pretty good reason for it.

He’s right. Mané only really resembled the player he became at Liverpool in his last ten games or so for us, before that there were a lot of at best inconsistent performances.

Seems fair enough to me, Worcs did get nearly 300 in their first innings so it’s not as though we had them polished off in a couple of hours. Looking like a good decision now, we just have to hope the weather gods are kinder than they were in Kent last week.

Commercial flights still operating in and out of Beirut, think my arse would be twitching on one of them.

In what way are you cutting your losses. You’d have to pay up his whole contract (unless he agrees to some sort of compromise) and you’d get zero transfer fee for him. It’d literally be maximum possible loss, we wouldn’t gain anything from it.

And yet he’s not even in the match day squad, which should tell you something about the ‘big if’. Martin knows his job is on the line, he wouldn’t have excluded our supposed best CB without good reason.

None of us know what’s gone on behind the scenes with ABK but he’s quite clearly not in our plans, for whatever reason. I’m not sure a generic social media post is really going to have all that impact on anything.

Just wait until Mossad detonate the next one, in Shamima Begum’s vibrator.

Great start with the ball. Abbas 3-7.

Lallana looked comfortable enough against a very poor Everton team in a cup game, for 45 minutes. I’m not sure I’d be starting him based on that. For me it’s two threes with: Les - Downes - Fernandes Cornet/BBD - Archer - Fraser With Dibling in and out of the mix, along with Lallana and Stewart.

There’s always an element of luck to any cup draw, we got to Cardiff largely thanks to being drawn at home to lower league clubs in every round (apart from Spurs but they were the worst of the lot). There’s a whole world of difference between that and the best teams just never being in it from the start.

We played in that competition twice and it was our first trip to the new Wembley. Would you care about it if you were in it every year? Do you even remember us playing in it the second League 1 season?

It’d be crap. Who’d care about winning a cup when the best team in it was someone like West Ham or Brighton. We’re well rid of extra time, especially for midweek games. Who wants a game like that dragging on until 2230, followed by a traffic jam and a four hour drive?

Christ, we’ve just won a penalty shoot out away to a PL team, at a ground we hate going to. It wasn’t an all time classic but if you can’t enjoy that result, Saints really aren’t the club for you. Them being ‘there for the taking’ was largely a result of our game plan being effective and nullifying theirs, that’s not something you can just take for granted. For all the snorting and sneering at our possession stats, when we get it right we go to places like Goodison, silence the crowd and get a result.