Lighthouse

Which was your favourite goal, from the ones he scored for previous Saints managers?

Why would you say it’s that way round though? One could equally argue that the first 30 minutes proved Russ can organise a team well and execute an effective game plan against superior players, despite a crap squad. The truth is that it’s probably six and half a dozen but to say that playing well for half an hour is proof that the manager is crap is something of a distortion.

The playoffs are there so that more teams have something to play for towards the end of the season. They also give teams motivation to finish second, rather than third. What that has to do with appointing a new manager I’m not sure.

So you think he’s an England quality, international goalkeeper but there’s a chance nobody will be willing to pay a loan fee for him?

You mean apart from Nathan Jones who was about as ugly, route one and ‘old school’ as a manager could be?

He’s been captain of my fantasy team since week one, it’s finally starting to pay dividends.

People keep saying this. Why? It's not as if he has to stay with us for the rest of his life.

And yet they're currently looking at one point from their first four, same GD as Saints and six conceded against Chelsea. I'm not sure their forum will share your optimism.

I don't think owner make judgements on such short term, volatile outcomes. They will have spent the money they did hoping we can stay up, knowing that the odds are ultimately against us.

It wasn't for us as such but we always wondered why Pelle never took them for Saints, then he took one in a shootout for Italy and the penny dropped.

Roughly where do you think the players we had then and now belong in the PL?

The full picture is that it’s been happening since we sold Virgil and blew the lot on terrible players, which not only contributed very little on the pitch but crippled us financially for years. Coupled with an owner who did absolutely nothing whilst most of our rivals were investing in their squad and you can see our slow decline. We did have one shining light who managed to make the team far greater than the sum of its parts - Ralph. He kept us in the PL year after year with a team built around McCarthy, Bednarek, Stephens and other Galacticos such as Jan Valery, Charlie Austin and Shane Long. Bizarrely, some fans thought that regularly fighting relegation and finishing 15th was an underachievement with that squad and that he should be sacked. Eventually the new owners agreed and since the day Ralph left we’ve been nothing other than a PL basket case or at best a solid Championship playoff team.

Weird to think this is the same Gloucestershire team we pulled off our only really convincing win against in this year’s Blast.

The atmosphere in the Northam was only ever generated by the proximity of the away fans. Without them, it’s just the old Chapel with everyone standing up.

I’ve decided to just become a professional Everton laugher atter.

If Everton can lose from 2-0 up again, that’ll be hilarious.

TBH our games so far have gone the way I expected. There're very, very few players in our squad who I'd hang my hat on being PL quality and one of the was THB. I like the look of Suga, whilst Fernandes and Dibling look promising but are a long way from being proven. KWP and Ramsdale are solid but that's about it.

They’re crap, get over it.

That’s not the point. You mentioned three players who you claimed could change a game against Man United, despite the fact that they did nothing in the Championship.

I can’t help but think that he and Archer were signed as very good players to have in the Championship, in the likely event that we go straight back down.

Two of those players were crap in the Championship. The other apparently couldn’t secure a move to Turkey. A classic example of players becoming better when they not playing.

Why? Even if we go down, he’ll have plenty of opportunities to go to other PL clubs and play regular football.

What a silly, drama Queen statements. We very obviously can score at least one goal; it won’t be easy but we’ve played well enough generally to still have a chance of getting something, however unlikely.

That would have been special.

Likewise, but I can see why he’s done it. Our fourth game back up, THB hasn’t been playing well and we’ve gone back to a back four. I think he wanted more known experience in there to start with, THB will get more chances.