Lighthouse

Fair play, that was a cracking individual goal. Let's hope he can follow it up with some more decent performances.

It's about so much more than where you finish. You could look at last years table and say we were 4 places from a Champions League places and 4 places ahead of 12th place, so we're halfway in-between in terms of quality. The difference being we were 30 points from one of those positions and 2 points from the other.

It is getting a bit 'Earth Song' out there.

There were high points, I'm not disputing that. Inter (2nd half) and Sparta at home, both cracking. EFL Cup semis - Excellent EFL Final - I'm undecided personally. We were the better team but not as clinical and lost it from sloppy defending. Overall though, looking at our league campaign - 17 goals in 19 games is pretty poor. Against Leicester, Palace and Burnley we looked good and scored nine goals, albeit against substandard opposition. Take those games away and we scored 3 goals from open play in the other 16 home games and that's just awful.

They're the football equivalent of a kid with ADHD and rich parents. Always buying the latest toy, ten minutes later 'I'm bored, next!'

Look forward to us losing 3-0 at Palace and 3-1 at home to West Ham. You can't just pick one game as an avatar for Puel's football.

Just a shame there hasn't been any Fonte hilarity.

Yes, I still can't believe we beat Henry, Vieira, Pires, Campb... oh no wait we were playing against Paulista, Holding, Jenkinson and some bloke called Jeff Reine Adelaide (whoever the frig he is). If Arsenal played that team every week, they'd be bottom half. 9 of our first team players beat Arsenal's reserves, that's all that happened there. Many of them were easily as bad, IMO. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that.

And? It’s like saying Leicester should have kept Ranieri or Chelsea, Mourinho because he won the league. You’re basically saying Puel was good because of 2 decent performances against Liverpool. Beating half-arsed Palace, Arsenal and Sunderland reserves really isn’t that special. I remember that Sunderland game as being absolute garbage.

Ah, like when Redknapp proved how wrong we were to sack Wigley. I don’t form my opinion on anything I read here, I was at most of those games. I’d say those threads were fairly indicative of our performances overall, unless you’re suggesting the home games against Hull, Bournemouth, Stoke, Man Utd, West Brom, West Ham, Be’er Sheva, Man City, Liverpool, Sunderland, Watford and Spurs were actually good?

I think the mods have left town and SWF is now lawless bandit country. I'm going to test this theory by posting increasingly risqué material, culminating with Tubgirl.

Fixed

I think some people need to go and re-read the match threads from last season for Puel's last 7 or 8 home games. We were properly awful. Worse than awful, boring.

Probably the last decent performance under Puel but apparently we were wrong to sack him.

I personally would give Pelle the hat trick on this one. I know it was Bridcutt's touch who technically knocked it back into the goal but only because it bounced back off his own leg to start with. For me the question should; would it have been a goal if the defender hadn't touched it at all? In that case it was a definite yes, so not an o.g. IMO. No disputing Virgini's goal though, quite tragic that Long, Tadic, Redmond and Davis couldn't do that if they tried these days.

About as simplistic an outlook on the situation as you can get. By any other measure of performance we dropped off big time last season. Goals, points, even just sitting there with the naked eye thinking, "Gordon Bennett, this ain't half boring." I think we were 10th at half time in the last game of the season and the score was 0-0. We ended up losing and finishing 8th, showing how awful the bottom 13 of the league really was.

Nothing in the first 45 minutes of tonight's game has done anything to curb my apathy for this match. Basically I just can't be arsed going.

Likewise, although I'd say that was more a reflection on Saints than the mental health of anyone who posts on here. If I wanted to watch a bunch of men jogging, I could do it at Netley Park free on a Sunday morning.

TBF that was mainly down to Levy’s trigger happy approach to managers and the fact that had he been midtable in November of his first season, he’d likely have had the chop. He could quite easily have become the next AVB, Jol or Ramos.

That's a pretty rose tinted view on things. Puel wasn't treated terribly, he was sacked (with a meaty payoff no doubt) because the results and quality of football were generally poor. He took us from 3 points off 4th the previous year to 6 points above 17th. We went out of Europe and the FA Cup pathetically on top. Sims and McQueen had some good moments last season but I don't think Puel should take any more credit than Redknapp deserves for Walcott.

I had similar thoughts when I saw that score so I went back and checked. 7 goals at home since beating Leicester 3-0 in January.

Bolton's first goal in just shy of 13 hours apparently. I thought we had it bad. Not looking forward to playing City.

Tiss already trolling Thomo on GSS saying Liverpool's title challenge is already over (he's pretty much right with their defence IMO). Be interesting to see how Liverpool play after their spanking by City.

OP says he runs a successful business. You don’t need to be a millionaire to go skiing for a week, some places like Andorra and Bulgaria are pretty cheap.

Perhaps the OP should give skiing or snowboarding a go. I don't suffer from depression but I certainly find a couple of trips to the Alps in late January and early March give me a boost in the post Xmas/NY period of the year.