Lighthouse

I'd have Gabbi in for Redmond but otherwise that looks a decent team.

Actually, love, I answered the hypothetical question ages ago. There are three key differences between MoPe now and Puel in summer. 1) It was summer, we had 3 months to find a replacement and allow him to coach his squad before actually playing football. 2) Having already sacked one manager 6 months ago, the board don't want to look incompetent and trigger happy by sacking another. 3) There may not be any preferred targets available at the moment. It's all well and good the fans talking about Koeman and Silva, if the board don't want them there's no point sacking MoPe. Anyway, not for the first time you seem far more interested in being obtuse and patronising, so I'll leave it here. Have a nice weekend love.

Fact is that they did sack him, based on an entire season's performance. His job SHOULDN'T hinge on a badly marked Zlatan header or a wrongly given offside. If we'd kept him it would be because the board were too embarrassed to sack a manager who had won a cup and not because they thought he was the right man for this season.

Mourinho was sacked in December, 4 months into the season. Ranieri was sacked 6 months into the season after arguably the greatest upset in the history of English football. Puel was sacked 4 months after the Cup final. The point is fairly obvious; if results start to dip significantly, even after winning a trophy, Premier League chairmen are not adverse to sacking the manager. Being in Europe probably wouldn't change anything either, not after the tame and cowardly attempt we made at it last time.

Days? The cup final was in February, Puel was sacked in June. I guess 120-something days still counts as days. Like I said, it would depend on how we played after the final. If he had carried on playing for 0-0s at home to crap teams, would he still have been the best man for the job?

Depends, had we carried on playing as we did after losing the cup final he might well have been sacked. People were on about Conte being sacked after the Watford game, which would have made him the third consecutive manager to lose his job after winning the league. If they were making the decision based on what was best for the club then probably, as we were on a downward trajectory under Puel. If the club wanted to save face by not sacking a cup winning manager, they might have kept him.

Agree but I'd prefer that settled back five included Yoshida instead of Stephens.

Finally, a chance to get the petting zoo going. Seriously though, if anyone does end up going to one of these things, that sodding green bridge!

So he's going to go to one of those European giants, who's success depends on players who can do a few fancy tricks, give the ball away and not score?

Or we could stay up, get a new manager and win the cup next season. Pick any scenario you like, I'm simply giving my opinion on the straight forward choice posed in the original question. Winning a cup would be lovely but would only really put us on par with Wigan, Brum, Pompey, Swansea and Boro. Telling other fans about how great we are because we won the cup 2, 5 or 10 years ago holds little appeal to me personally. I (used to) go to games because I enjoyed watching Saints play football. I haven't enjoyed this season at all TBH, the West Ham game aside. Given that the teams relegated last season are currently 9th, 21st and 23rd, there's a fair chance I won't enjoy next season, if we go down.

I don't get how 'manning up' comes into this, when all you're actually saying is 'agree with my opinion'. Then start going on about how we could be relegated and don't win a cup, well that wasn't the question. You'd take relegation if offered it in exchange for a cup win, I wouldn't. That's all.

It’s fine if you’re Derby. What about Coventry, Bradford, Charlton, Pompey, Sunderland, Bolton, Blackburn or Blackpool? Would a couple of relegations, administration and being bought out by SISU in the bottom half of League 1 be worth it for a Cup win at Wembley? Don’t get me wrong, I’d love a cup win. I’d be over the moon for about a week.

A season or two in the Championship. Yeah, we said that last time too.

I don’t actually care about the PL either but we all said similar things last time we were relegated. ‘It’ll be great to be winning loads of games, blood some promising youngsters, etc.etc.’ .... then we ended up with Chris bloody Makin. It’s not the relegation that bothers me, it’s the fact that all our half decent players will leave, we’ll see minimal reinvestment and are as likely to go down to League 1 as come straight back up. Les will probably stick with MoPe because he doesn’t want to make any ‘rash decisions’. Each to their own but IMO a trophy isn’t worth years of dogsh*t football.

I'd cross check that with a few Wigan, Pompey and Birmingham fans.

Never been annoyed at any of the players being sold. They're all mercenaries as far as I'm concerned, if they want to p*ss off and earn more money elsewhere I couldn't care less. It's the Lowe-esq cheapskate replacements that really p*ssed me off. How did we go from Virgil and Fonte to this...

Well... a) I'm not talking about today, I'm talking about the last year and a half. b) This thread is titled, 'Boufal'.

He get's paid some £80k odd a week, he's given up and you don't blame him?! He gets forgotten about because he scores an absolute worldly, then does f**k all for months.

21st century version of, "this guy in a pub told me..."

Scored 3 League goals in his first 4 months here, everyone decided he was a flop. Boufal has 3 in a year and a half. Still, it's not just about goals. Pointless tricks, showing off and giving the ball away are just as important traits for a footballer.

He was doing just fine at Watford before the whole Everton thing and Hull had a far, far, far inferior squad to the one we have. I'm not saying he is the answer but it's almost at the point of having nothing to lose. We could be about to see one of the most talented and expensive squads ever to be relegated.

Couldn't be arsed watching, went paintballing instead. House mate who's a Bolton fan said it looked like we were trying to play counter attacking football with static players. Also Hoot was sh*t.

I don't see why older people should have any sort of weighting against them, as it's a vote on who runs the country for the next four years. So what you're basically saying is they wont live that long. There are plenty of old people much more capable of making an informed decision than many other members of society. Should people with a criminal record be allowed to vote? How about people with a low IQ? People who are mentally ill? Autistic? Have suffered from concussion or other brain injuries?

Each to their own really. I enjoy football, rugby, F1 and sometimes cricket but I can't be doing with tennis, darts, snooker or golf.

No, it really doesn't. Yes, there are times in the heat of the moment when you feel absolutely gutted but if you genuinely thought it was the worst thing in the world after you'd calmed down, you've lead a sheltered existence.