Lighthouse

On the basis of what we’ve seen so far, there are definitely worse teams than Saints. West Ham continue to be a mess, Burnley have been crap, Huddersfield have lost 2 tough fixtures but 8 goals conceded will be a worry. Nothing from the promoted sides looks particularly special either.

Reasons to be positive.... None of Gabbi, Vest, Yoshi, Elmo or Armstrong stared and all 5 would have improved that team. Why Hughes sent Long on for Austin I don't know. If anything it's quite worrying, as if Hughes has completely run out of ideas and just sent someone on to run around. Oh well, we're always sh*te at Goodison.

Here please

Meanwhile West Ham...

Irrelevant. If players can't do the basics, no formation in the world is going to help. Nothing suits our silly fouls, unmarked hearders and missing sitters philosophy.

We did, he's on the bench.

I’d have Yoshi and Gabbi for Stephens and Austin but otherwise not a bad team IMO. Certainly feel better bout it than the last one, where it was just a bunch of defensive players behind Redmond and a statue.

You’d have thought we’d be happy to subsidise wages to get some of these players off our books, like we have with Carrillo and Boufal. Better to sell Forster, Long and Davis and pay half the wages of the reminder of their contracts, than have them sitting here doing sod all.

Needs an admin to do it, I've sent Baj a text.

Shame, we need more refs of his pedigree.

That's a specific opinion held only by a very small minority of football fans worldwide. UEFA aren't going to be making any decisions based on what Saints fans would like. The winners aren't kept out, they just get knocked out in the qualifiers every year. If they never beat Dinamo Zagreb or Grasshopper Zurich in a qualifying match, what's the point of having them in the group stage. It would be completely pointless watching any games up until the QF and half of them would be one-sided affairs like Man City vs Shakhtar Donetsk. As for the wealth, I've still yet to see any answer to my point about it destroying pretty much every league in Europe. All the smaller leagues would turn into the SPL, an absolute farce of a foregone conclusion where the winner is engraved on the trophy before the season starts because they have so much more resource than anyone else. They wont, they just wont. Teams like Barca and Real win comfortably against some of the teams which DO qualify for the CL. You will just end up with ridiculous games like Everton's 22-0 win in pre-season. Scoring records will just go out the window. Players like Di Stefano and Shevchenko will end up behind Rashford and Sterling in the record books, scoring 13 goals over 2 legs against Total Network Solutions.

Still not that keen on falling off it TBH. I was surprised to see a number of injuries reported. I'd have thought doing a 300ft base jump with 1,000 tonnes of concrete instead of a parachute would be game over for all involved.

How is that different? Europa is just ‘Champions League Tier 2’ with a different name. Also you’re saying you would rather see matches between Vojvodina and Flora Tallinn than last years finalists, because they happened to win their domestic leagues?

The problem is that you then get a load of crap qualifying, like the Champions from Slovenia, Malta and Montenegro. The group stages would end up just being a pointless walkover with 2 big teams and 2 minnows. It would also encourage reckless spending in a lot of the smaller leagues. You would get some Slovenian village teams throwing ridiculous, unsustainable wages at players because the money for being in the group stage would render all domestic finances completely meaningless. One team would succeed, the rest would go bankrupt over the summer. It would be a disaster.

Poll added (I went with McC)

Wages have never ever ever been about who works the hardest doing a ‘worthwhile’ job.

And there was me thinking the bloke is an absolute helmet.

That's nasty. I don't like tall buildings and bridges at the best of times. Imagine driving over the Itchen, minding your own business, then that happens.

I’m not sure about that big circle and one up front formation, either.

It can work with a striker who isn’t as immobile as Austin. That was the problem first half, Redmond and Armstrong had pretty much nothing to work with.

Looked like a mix up between Hoedt and Vest to me, if it's the one I'm thinking of where they both went for it and Lennon nipped in.

I know it’s Liverpool but West Ham don’t half look crap on MOTD. That defending for the second goal.

Not necessarily. Someone with good feet and movement can hold the ball up as well as any big lump; City have just won at the Emirates with 4 attacking players no higher than 5'10. We didn't struggle to keep it in Burnley's half when Ings and Gabbi were on.

I didn’t think Hoedt did much wrong today, personally. Considering the mess of a formation we started with and the number of balls the defence had to deal with.

Everton away is a different prospect to a tired Burnley at home. We can always start with the more conservative option and bring on an extra striker if looks like it will improve our fortunes.