Lighthouse

Fair play, you can’t say this game lacks quality.

SAA a bit Walcott there. We’re mostly looking decent though.

That’ll do Fabrice!

I like it. Thankfully the club have realised it’s a thousand times better with white shorts.

If selling Alcaraz for £16m allows us to buy Ramsdale for £18m then it’s an absolute no-brainer of a decision.

Grow up. We’ve got decent money for a player who struggled in the Championship last season.

I know a couple of guys who lived in Trapani for a while and couldn’t wait to leave. Drug addicts would come up to them in the street and threaten them for cash with dirty syringes, when they parked their car some guy would come up to them and basically say, "give me €20 to not slash your tyres whilst you’re gone," that kind of thing. I’ve heard from quite a few people that places like Bari, Brindisi and Pescara are really not much better. Don’t believe everything you see in picture postcards. Large parts of Italy are a lot worse than the U.K.

Why are you moving the goalposts around like that? You asked how much we were getting. Any deal for players we sign will also likely be structured and not all up front, so what’s your point?

So why has nobody else in the PL, or even Europe, come in for him? If it’s just the tired old trope of ‘oh Russ hates him because he once dared to pass forwards and more than ten yards’, why is no other manager ripping our hand off?

Not unexpected but good luck to him. Cheers for that list Weston, you’d expect Weatherly and Brown to stick around, they both get enough cricket at the moment.

Tommy Forecast and Anthony Pulis never played a minute for us but we clearly saw enough from them in training to come to a conclusion. Russ has been nothing if not fair in giving our squad opportunities, even when players like SAA have then shown themselves not to be ready. If he isn’t playing TP at all I can only assume that, for whatever reason, he just isn’t on the radar.

I think some people tend to underestimate PL defences quite considerably. Similar sentiments were often expressed about Shane Long, "you want him in the team to trouble defences, he’s a nightmare to play against," etc. it’s the same with TP. A pace merchant with no end product is of very little threat and neither is a lanky beanpole. He’s clearly not shown enough for Russ to think he can be an asset.

Maybe he said, ‘I don’t want to be a loan’. Or was that the Bee Gees, I forget which?

Who on earth is loaning out reliable, experienced PL goal scorers?

This isn’t the case though. Russ hasn’t dropped him because he’s risk averse, he’s dropped in because he consistently puts in substandard performances. If the problem was Russ and his tactics, why has nobody else come in and snapped him away from us for such a bargain price? Why aren’t West Ham, Brighton and Palace all over him for that price?

Er… when did that happen?

KDB loses the ball being perhaps the greatest creative midfielder the PL has ever seen. He makes perhaps the greatest team the PL has ever seen tick, trying all sorts of audacious passes that most players, even at this level, wouldn’t even see. Alcaraz just loses the ball hesitating in possession and making poor choices with his distribution. Everyone talks about him not suiting Russball, that’s not true. Getting mugged in possession on the halfway line doesn’t suit any bodies philosophy.

It worked against the All Blacks.

Nothing much left to play for now but it's going to be an interesting off season. Does anybody have a list of who's out of contract this year? I think the big question marks are over the overseas players in the Blast and the bowling in the County team. Are we planning to get another season out of AAB I wonder.

What are you flying, a Global Express?

If the NHC was the FA Cup final, people would be horrified.

There’s nothing wrong with VAR. Like any system, it’s only as good as the idiot using it.

For me he didn’t, he was just playing against much worse defences and keepers who gave him more time, space and opportunities. He messed up far too many chances that he just won’t get at this level. Great Championship player to have not not PL capable IMO.

But just moving players back into defence isn't a solution to that, you just end up short in midfield and attack, like we are now.

People keep saying this sarcastically but did you actually what him play last season? He was just a passenger in too many games and gets caught in possession far too much. Russ has many faults as a manager but Alcaraz’s shortcomings are not something we should be pinning on him.