Lighthouse

It wont live long in my memory; I'm sure it would with Palace fans but we aren't them. Fact is we were 3 points away from the Champions League last season. Those Europa League games were fairly disruptive for our preseason and we started our League campaign with 2 draws against pretty poor Newcastle and Watford teams, with a spanking by Everton in their for good measure. If the first half of this season had been as good as 2014, we'd have earned an extra 9 points by halfway. All things being equal in the second half, we could have finished with 72 points and in second place. Palace have a fun day out and a Cup final, like we did in 2003, but I'm not going to sit here and hope they win it and compromise next season for us before it's even begun.

It would be if we were in it but we aren't. As much as I love an underdog story, Saints always come first. This reminds me of the "Would you like to lose to Leicester if it helps them win the title?" Thread. Any other day I would want the underdog to win but I don't want us to be compromised, just so Palace and Foxes fans can have a bit of glory.

I'll take a Utd win on penalties after 2 hours of Palace kicking the living sh*te out of them, please.

Soares isn't even in our team of the season.

Because fewer people want to buy a Man City shirt. Whether they like to admit it or not, they've only been big time for about 5 years, not long enough to acquire the depth in fan base of the other clubs above them. We don't, "need to step up," commercially, that's just where we are as a club. We don't have tens of millions of fans wanting to buy our shirt in China and South East Asia, hence nobody is going to pay us £30m for the right to sell them.

George Michael was probably in there.

Typical West Ham transfer window tactics. Chuck wild transfer bids around at all sorts of players to give potential targets the impression that you have money and mean business. They did something similar with Lambert a couple of years back, mainly to try and destabilise us in January.

He's only 29?!? I'd have thought he was late 30s by now, he's been around forever.

Quite...

Fox is at Fratton Park. He meant to be at the game, he's just a long way out of position.

I'd have to agree that Everton's current problems stem from more than just RM. Look at the team which played their most recent game against Norwich: Howard - Off Pennington - Unproven Jagielka - Turns 34 over the summer Stones - Might be off Baines - 31 Barry - 35 Dowell - Unproven Davies - Unproven Lukaku - Might be off There is obvious quality in the squad with Stones, Rom and Barkley. Mirallas and Delefo... Duffel... Deuleo... Spanish matey have their moments but that squad is well behind where I consider Saints to be at the moment. There are a fair few aging players who need replacing to add to the ones mentioned above; Hibbert, Kone, Pienaar, Osman.

Agree, racing incident re: the two Mercedes'. As good as Verstappen is, he was rather fortuitous in that Vettel and Ricciardo both had the wrong strategy calls from their respective teams. Also, Barcelona being so hard to pass on made it almost impossible for Kimi to get past. On a normal weekend, with better overtaking, Max would probably have been sixth in that race. Still a highly impressive drive though, he has a massive future. Hoping to go to Spa again this year, I can bet the place will be flooded with the Dutch.

Good grief, you're aiming low. Hoolahan turns 34 this week, Redmond doesn't even start for Norwich half the time. Carles Gil...

It's not like he's keeping Totti, Vieri, Del Piero, Baggio, Inzaghi and Montella out of the team though. To me this is more akin to picking Lambert as an example of how far England had fallen a couple of years ago.

At the risk of making things needlessly complicated, isn't it 8 and 9 group, 4 qualy and 5 nothing in that scenario? Obviously not relevant to this season but hypothetically speaking.

Who could forget... Followed 2 hours later by... Truth be told though, I would have quiet liked them to come up. Same as Bompey, a nice bit of pseudo-rivalry in the absence of our fishy friends.

Your starting XI? This would be mine http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/36163625?ns_mchannel=social&ns_campaign=bbc_sport&ns_source=facebook&ns_linkname=sport#england-xi-08a120532e9c55bbf072211fd87e7217

Does anyone know if the river is integral to the operation of the cement works? A waterside location near the city centre is usually prime territory for property developers. I'd have thought relocating the cement works to the outskirts of town, near to the motorway would have made sense. This is based on nothing more than A-level geography.

Why would he want to move to one of these smaller clubs who are beneath us? I'm banking on Bertie to start chatting up Lallana, Clyne and Rashford.

Goalkeepers: Hart, Forster, Heaton Defenders: Bertrand, Cahill, Clyne, Rose, Smalling, Stones, Walker Midfielders: Alli, Barkley, Delph, Dier, Drinkwater, Henderson, Lallana, Milner, Sterling, Townsend, Wilshere Forwards: Kane, Rashford, Rooney, Sturridge, Vardy From that lot I'd cut Wilshere, Delph and Rooney. Obviously it wont be Rooney, probably Rashford.

Always fun to look back at what we were saying in August. I didn't post anything on this thread but at the time I think I was predicting 8-10th, behind West Ham, Stoke and the usual suspects at the top.

Why would him being a free agent make it harder for us to match his wages? It means there's no transfer fee involved and no current wages we'd have to match. Not saying it's likely to happen but players being free agents is normally quite helpful.

Possible departures - Juanmi, Pelle, Yoshi, Gardos, Cedric, Kelvin, Mane, Wanyama I doubt it will be all of them but depending on who comes in I could see any of them leaving.

Martina top 3 but Alli takes it.

I'm indifferent as to whether he stays TBH. He's a quality player and has produced some fantastic goals. On the other hand he is one dimensional and a player I do think we can improve upon. I think if we get an £8-10m offer from Italy, he could leave with our blessing and we can invest that pretty nicely in a replacement.