Lighthouse

I've no idea what Yoshi has to do with this. I'm simply pointing out that we have at times been crap with Morgan in the team and excellent without him. 1/4 of our games last season no less. I'm not doubting he is an excellent player and a massive loss, I just think we can be as good without him if we bring in the right replacements. No doubt every poor performance next season will be followed by, "we really miss Morgan." I've no idea what this one is about. When did I say we should become less defensive?

Walcott, Bale, AOC, 5 last summer and 2 this, so 10 players. I wont include the likes of Jones and Surman who we'd have kept if we'd been in the Premier League and financially stable. More to the point, who have Everton kept in the same class as those players, or the ones we have sold?

Sold Rodwell, Fellaini, Lescott, Arteta, Pienaar, Gravesen and Rooney in the last 11 years.

I wonder if Michael Fialka ever did move out of his parents house.

Who said he was easily replaceable? I'm just saying we have played well without him on some occasions when he hasn't been available and that's without having his replacement in the squad. Most people thought Lambert would be difficult to replace as he was key to out attacking play (second only to Messi in terms of goals plus assists or some stat like that) but we did. Most of us thought Bertrand would be nowhere near Shaw's level and yet RB has had a far more consistent season. Most of us thought Lovren was our best CB since Killer, possibly better. Then we got Toby. Lallana vacuumed up pretty much every award going at the end of season awards a year ago but Tadic and Mane have pretty much covered his loss. Everyone is replaceable. I'm not sure what you mean by like for like. The incoming players may have different attributes and may not be quite as good individually but we can replace Morgan, just like we did with the others.

I'd be almost certain on it being Forster, without actually having the stats to back it up. After his injury we pretty much went from top 4 form to midtable form.

Au revoir Morgan. I can't bring myself to wish him the best of luck at Man Utd but I will thank him for all his good performances here.

So why did nobody come in with any sort of offer for him when we went into administration? Why didn't any Championship club come in and offer us £0.5m for him?

Because he was crap, he had an awful first season for us and nobody offered us half of what we paid for him. If it really was some sort of get rich quick scheme then Lowe is stupider than I thought. People have driven home from the pub steaming drunk and it "worked out well in the end." Doesn't mean it wasn't a dreadful idea.

Which clubs below us have got players as good as Morgan, Clyne, Lallana etc. and hung on to them?

Yes. We got relegated, went into administration and almost got liquidated. You don't think an extra £1m might have been handy?

We didn't try to get Clyne to sign a new contract then? We didn't force Morgan to stay for another season after he clearly wanted out?

So is Morgan. People talk as if he is the be all and end all of our team but he really isn't. Last summer everyone was talking about how much we depend on Lambert and the team can't cope without him. We replaced Rickie and will replace Morgan. Last year without Morgan we: Beat Villa 6-1 Beat Arsenal 2-0 Beat Everton 3-0 Beat Newcastle 2-1 With Morgan we Lost 1-0 to Sheff Utd Lost 1-0 to WBA Drew 0-0 with WBA Lost 2-1 to Stoke Lost 1-0 at Everton Yes I know I'm just cherry picking results but the point is we've had some great wins without him and some sh*t defeats with him. He will be missed but there is no reason our results will drop if we bring in a decent replacement.

Who haven't we given time to?

It was. As I posted above, we have been VERY lucky with the way this worked out.

Mané and Wanyama are probably our most saleable assets, although unfortunately they are the same person, according to that commentator. Our next big thing other than that will probably come from the academy as we seem to be making a shift in transfer policy towards cheaper options. I don't think it will be JWP. I know he is young but he's been in the first team 3 years now and not made that superstar impact that Bale, Walcott, AOC and Shaw did. Who knows he could be another slow burner like Lallana and be big time eventually.

I didn't wear my seatbelt driving to work today. I wasn't involved in a car accident which proves I was right not to wear it. My point is, just because something works out for the best eventually it doesn't mean it was the correct decision. There were so many things wrong with that deal which you can't ignore just because the sun is shining and all is rosy today. 1. We paid about £1.2m for him when we were bankrupt. Had things worked out differently the following summer that money could have been the difference between being liquidated and surviving a few more months to be taken over. 2. If we were indeed going to spend that much money a French teenager was completely the wrong choice. Schneiderlin was hopeless in his first season here. Spending that money on a reliable CB or proven goal scorer would probably have kept us up, before the -10 points. We would still have gone down but would have started League 1 on 0 instead of -10, which would have put off a lot of potential buyers planing on an immediate return to the Championship. 3. After we went into admin we were selling any player of any value to try and stay afloat for a few more months. Surman and DMG were pretty much our most valuable assets by then. If Morgan hadn't been so bad that season, we'd have sold him too. Probably for half what we paid. In the end everything worked out fine but there was a lot more luck than judgement involved. It was a ridiculous transfer from Lowe and part of his daft 'total football' experiment.

31 year old Pigclimber, 25 y/o Morgan, 25 y/o Darmian, 20 y/o Sterling. If anything it's comparable to them spending £30m on Shaw but I agree that much for Sterling is just mental.

To answer my own question, JWP.

What a sh*te team that was. Still strange to think of him lining up along side Michael Svensson. Think he also played in a preseason friendly with Jo Tessem. In terms of our longest serving players now, after Davis and Fonte... Yoshida?

Don't want him back. He made his choice to go and sit on the bench at Arsenal, if he doesn't like it he can p*ss off to someone like Norwich or Villa.

Depends how good Juanmi is. If he is decent it could be him, Tadic and Mané in behind J Rod.

Fair enough, I'll just get a kellkeeper shirt with Kevin Gazzinger's name on it.

Going to get Sané printed on the back of my shirt.

Thunderstorm kicking off now in Salzburg.