Lighthouse

As Noodles says, define big. Yes they probably have more supporters than us but how does that actually translate on the pitch? Spurs can fit an extra 4,000 fans into their stadium and Eveton an extra 8,000. Even if all those extra seats equate to a die hard ST paying £500 a season, that only makes an extra £2m and £4m income each, per annum. When you take transfer fees, wages, agents fees, signing on fees etc, into account spurs could probably buy an extra Steve De Ridder every season, whilst Everton could buy an extra paulo Gazzaniga. Both teams have more exciting and colourful histories than Saints but no players (despite the cliched interviews they give when they join a club) give a flying f**k about it's history. Nobody signs for Everton because they won the League 30 years ago or they won the FA Cup once in the 90s. They want money and, if possible, Champions League football. Just look at Bale, allegedly saying he's off if Spuds don't qualify. "Big" means f**k all really. If Everton are bigger than we are because they won Division 1 a couple of times in the 80s then so be it, I really don't see why anyone should care.

Ridiculous challenge from Fox, just seen it again on MOTD. WTF was going through his head when he went leaping into that. Hooiveld for the third goal looked like an oil tanker trying to U-turn through treacle.

Baj's 'goal' was brilliant. I'd just gone lunging in on Rabbit and looked up to see Baj tripping over the ball and falling into the net with it stuck between his legs. Unbelievable tekkers! Definitely offside though.

Christ that was awful. The last 4 games I've been to were that one, Chelsea, QPR and Sunderland. I sure do pick 'em. I don't think I can remember three such abject displays of complete gash. They were just better than us all over the pitch TODAY. Haven't seen any replays of the sendings off but sounds like they were all justified. Makes you wonder if they did that deliberately with 3 games left, so they can f**k off to Barbados a month early. With Wigan drawing it scarcely matters now. I cant see them getting 2 wins and 2 draws from their last 4 games. West Brom came here with nothing to play for either really but they seemed far more interested in the game than we ever did. No movement, no ideas. Lambert looked a bit lonely, got no help from the ref and the crosses in to him were almost always dreadful. I'll put that down as a terrible day at the office and move on I think. We've done the business in the last 5 games so 1 duff performance isn't the end of the world. Let's hope we can get a couple of points from these 2 away games. Sunderland especially as I'm going and it is a looooooong drive home with no points to keep you warm. Mind you, we did Boro at the end of last season and Rochdale the year before and look how they panned out.

The best bit had to be 3 home players all going for the same header and landing in a head on the floor. I was the right sided CB for the away team in case anyone was wondering. The dodgy one in other words.

Don't know but some of the shooting for the home team was comical.

2-0 to the away team. Ave it! Cheers for the game everyone.

I think our aim will be largely illustrated by our net transfer spending. If we go for a couple of ambitious targets, like we did with JRod, GRam, PCou and DAst then it would suggest we're aiming to compete with the likes over Liverpool, Everton and possibly Spuds. On the other hand if we ended up selling Morgan and Shaw and brought in some relatively cheaper options, along the lines of Davis, Forren and Mayuka, it would suggest we're happy just to stay midtable. Personally I think it will be nearer the former option.

Not quite. What he (and Mr Fry) like to do is chose a post which is slightly controversial, edit it a bit in their minds to make it completely ridiculous, then argue against it as if it is the large majority. The point I am making, pre Turkish editing, was that we should be AIMING for a Champions League spot. We are unlikely to get it but if we sign a couple of players of that calibre, they might just get us into Europe. Newcastle did it last year, that should be our bench mark. If we finish 12th year and Cortese says to the media, "well done team, next year I want to finish 10th" I will be a bit disappointed. If we aim for Europe and finish somewhere in the top half I will still consider that a decent season. My point about Swansea is their aim was probably to achieve mid table safety, given that they lost Rodgers and haven't spent big money. They had it in the bag from pretty much Christmas, so they haven't really been competing for anything since then. That's fine but it's not something you'd want to aim for every season. It was only a couple of months back Turkish and Fry were telling me how stupid I was for believing we could finish top 10 and there was no way we were going to overtake Stoke, so you'll forgive me for ignoring what they say.

Any reference to Messi on the main board. "Some of our fans wont be happy unless we sign Messi" "If Messi had scored a goal like that, everyone would be talking about it" "That Messi bloke looks alright, HCDAJFU lolz!! Swiftly followed by "He's not as good as Puncheon FFS!" Repeat endlessly.

Not really. Since our dreadful start we've basically matched Liverpool and Everton's form. To be precise, we've dropped 4 points vs. Each of them in the last 5 and 1/2 months. http://www.premierleague.com/en-gb/matchday/league-table.html?season=2012-2013&month=NOVEMBER&timelineView=date&toDate=1352159999999&tableView=CURRENT_STANDINGS That's the league table after our game at West Brom on 5th November.

I'll answer your post, it's a lot less tedious than CB Fry's attempt. Of course I'd take top 10 and a cup win next season but we will need to aim high to be in the top half. For a start a cup win isn't something you can really aim for. A lot of it is pure luck. In 2003 we got to the final being drawn at home to crap teams in every round. However you could just as easily get a trip to Old Trafford in the 3rd round and you will probably lose that even if you spent £100m. If we stay where we are and finish 12th this year, is finishing 10th really all that of a target? Your basically aiming for another couple of wins in a whole year, which isn't really much of an improvement. If we were like Wigan, battling at the bottom and somehow stayed up on the last day of the season then 10th would be a decent target. Saints should be aiming higher than that. Everton are up there without really spending megabucks. Fellaini cost a bit but they bought Jelavic, Baines, Jagielka and Mirallas for less than Liverpool spent on Stewart Downing.

Well you can't exactly retire off 5 years earning £100k p.a. He's probably spanked most of that on fast cars and fast women so look out for him behind the counter in McDonalds in the coming months.

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Is this another one of those posts where you pretend not to understand what someone else is saying in order to support your argument. Just in case you really don't understand; I was talking about their league form. They've never been haunted by any threat of relegation right from day 1. On the other hand they've never really looked like troubling the top 6 either. I'm sure they're delighted with that, given how difficult the second season often is and having lost Rodgers to Liverpool. I don't really think you'd want too many seasons like that, hovering in midtable obscurity. You'd be in danger of ending up like Stoke. For years now they've been getting to the middle of April with Pulis saying, "oh well we're safe now." They stagnated like we did in our last couple of season and started to fall back behind other more ambitious clubs.

Pitch invasion this season (assuming it doesn't come down to safety on the last game of the season) would be pretty naff and overall quite embarrassing when MOTD and Sky start showing jubilant scenes of Saints fans, who have just secured 12th in the League. A lap of honour please and we can show our appreciation from the stands. Let's not sing, "on the pitch," this year either, like we did after we beat Southend (I think) under Pardew.

To whoever plays RM for the away team, I apologise in advance for the drooling mess who will be stood behind you. Unless it's Mike, he can p*ss off.

Probably the continued development of a very young and talented squad, with some top class signings to take us up to the next level. Our form since that awful first 10 games has pretty much matched Liverpool's. It's unlikely we will finish above them but it's got to be the ambition.

Better to aim for the Champions League and miss out, rather than aim for safety, achieve it by Christmas and have a meaningless second half to the season like Swansea and West Brom pretty much done this year. With a couple of decent investments we can certainly compete with the likes of Everton for Europa League places. Newcastle came 5th last season, they beat Chelsea and both Scouse clubs and were only 4 points of Spuds in the 4th CL place. I don't see any reason we can't do something similar.

Looks like we wont have any problems getting the numbers together if we've got 2 teams for this one. We'll just have to get on other clubs message boards a good couple of weeks in advance so they've got long enough to get a team together.

They are right to be upset about the inconsistency of the FA. I've never understood how Prutton got a 10 game ban for a heat of the moment, small push on the ref, whilst Roy keane only got 5 for deliberately ending Haaland's career. The issue isn't that Suarez is being victimised here, it's that Defoe and Terry got off stupidly lightly. On the other hand players like Barton and Prutton, who are both English, received sizeable punishments for their misdemeanours. The Dutch FA gave Suarez 7 games for the first biting incident, so 10 games for a repeat offence would seem fairly consistent to me.

Northern Italy maybe. A pre season tour with a training camp in the alps and games against teams like Atalanta, Chievo, Udinese, Torino, Genoa and maybe one of the big clubs like Juve or one of the Milan teams.

I'm more worried about what Doris on the left is doing with black socks on. Also why are there 11 players but none of them is the goalie? They really didn't think this photo through.

Last I heard biting someone counted as assault. Possibly even ABH if it causes bleeding and/or bruising. The point is that if I did that to someone at work, I'd find myself without a job fairly quickly. I think Suarez can count himself relatively lucky in the grand scheme of things. A few Saturday afternoons off work (most likely still on full pay) really isn't that much of a punishment. Lord Duck - We may have sang songs about it but that was pretty much a p*ss take on the terraces. Very few people, other than a selection of small minded Muppets, actually supported what he did. A few even wanted him sacked from the club but apparently you can't sack a footballer either, even for gross misconduct. If Lambert did the same I would be hugely disappointed in him too. He wouldn't though because it takes a special kind of kn*bber to go around biting and racially abusing other players.

Got to be worth a candle lit vigil at least I'd have thought. I think the ban is perfectly reasonable. This wasn't just a reckless tackle he is deliberately trying to injure another player and it's not the first time he has done it. I can't have any sympathy for him, he is a racist, cheating, violent *****.