Lighthouse

I went with the free hit to get Lukaku and a few others in for this weekend. Made him captain, at home to Palace... 0-0 it is then. Long barely scored a hat-trick last season, let alone in one game.

Okay, so we're picking a convenient point in the long running conflict in that region to say, "this is where it started because it's the west at fault."?

TBF they do have the best collection of slow #10s in the league.

He can't get a game in the Championship, let alone at this level. It would be sad to watch really, he was past it 3 years ago.

Likewise, great player for us but he always struck me as being a little... dim to be honest.

A friend of mine once described the coffee at Stoke as tasting, "like first aid kits". I can't say I've ever eaten one as such, but I don't imagine he was far wrong.

If you're going to say the rise of ISIS in 2014 was a result of the war stared 11 years previously, then you have to also say that war was a result of the first gulf war 12 years previous, which was initiated wholly by Saddam and received almost worldwide condemnation.

To me it just highlights that half the teams in that competition are absolute dog sh*t.

I can't believe anybody who has played Premier League football for 2 years or more would ever have to work again.

You mean after the 2001 and 2003 invasions? Okay, I thought you were being more recent than that. Well, nobody has brought down any skyscrapers since then so that's something. Most attacks seem to be low key, low tech, (relatively) low impact, which is an improvement.

Yes. You only had to see the Ross Kemp documentary to hear about the horrific atrocities being committed in ISIS territory.

By definition, surely you have in fact seen all our goals, or did you leave early against Wham?

No he doesn't he chases them and forces them to run a bit more than they would perhaps have liked to. It would be worrying if all his running around actually lead to some goals. Mané worried defenders, Long does not.

No he did not. Aguero will scare the sh*t out of their defence, as will Ronaldo, Suarez, Lewandowski, Aubameyang, Neymar, Cavani, Morata, Kane, Messi, Higuain and a few others. Shane Long runs around a lot. I'm sure the Utd defence had to run a bit more than they might have against Rasiak or Le Tissier but I am fairly sure they weren't scared of 5 goals a season Shane Long.

Thoughts for this one? I'd be tempted to chuck Virgil back in if fit. If nothing else for his presence on set pieces. In search of goals, I'd be tempted to try something like this: Forster Cedric - VVD - Hoot - Bertrand Lemina - Romeu Davis - Tadic - Gabbi Austin

Well you'd know.

2017 Saturday afternoon At home Not playing West Ham Goals from open play... 0

Starting off well, high tempo, better team so far. Nicely set up for another 3-2 defeat. Usually there's a brace from RVP, Martial or Zlatan, so probably Lukaku today.

He has never come on as a sub and made a positive impact. As in, he has literally not ever come on and set up or scored a goal for Saints.

Surely there's got to be more to it than that. We play teams as good as Utd, City, Arsenal, Chelsea etc. 10+ times a season, it's not like we're some none league club having a day out at OT in a cup tie. Stephens is our 4th best centre half. Boufal just hasn't done anything of note since he joined. Seems fair enough to me.

Are you sure? When we signed Long, I distinctly remember Les saying his tomato space would be a huge bonus to the team.

There would still be stoppages, every time the ball goes out of play. The overall length of the game wouldn't be that much different, it would however stop things like fake injuries to waste time and players wasting an entire minute taking a throw in. You'd still be walking out of St Mary's between 4.45 and 5pm, it would just cut down on a lot of the gamesmanship in the game.

Would be a pretty daft place to put a bomb, chances are there wont be a car within 100 yards of it when it goes off. In such a wide open space, with a device not buried in the ground, it'd probably have to be right next to a car to kill someone.

I did mean every time the ball goes out of play, which would stop keepers taking half an hour to take a goal kick, etc. Maybe not 40 minutes, perhaps 30 or 35. I've never actually timed the in play time of a match but I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to work out a rough average and go from there.

The obvious solution to all of this is to change the rules to a certain amount of 'in play' time, perhaps 40 minutes, like in rugby. If the clocked stopped every time we had an injury or substitution, there wouldn't be this pointless contention at the end of the game.