Lighthouse

It's not so much 'the Don can do no wrong' as 'the Don ISN'T doing anything wrong'. If we had were offering 3 year £60kpw contracts to players like Bosingwa (and many would have us doing that because he is 'Premier League experience' then I would be worried. As it is we are buying £12m young players who we can sell for £12m if needed. We are buying £200k houses, whilst QPR are buying £200k Ferraris and Reading have a 2 man tent. Who is going to have the most valuable assets in 3 years time?

TBF, this guy's youtube video makes Steve De Ridder's youtube video look like Rudi Skacel's youtube video. He's the mutt's nuts.

On the subject of out of favour Manure players, Alex Buttner has hardly set the world alight. I know being not good enough for Utd doesn't nescessarily make you a bad player but he hasn't made a Prem appearance since matchday 4. I'm not suggesting HCDAJFU, just something to remember next time we don't sign a target and people are outraged when he signs for someone else.

All true. We must always be vigilant with regards to our club and the chairmen, however I trust Cortese more than I ever trusted Lowe or Wilde. I know he does some weird stuff to p*ss people off, like the programme sellers and an apparent spat with MLT but relatively speaking that's all minor stuff. He's chosen the right manager for the job and backed him with his cheque book. I don't think we will end up like the Skates because we know where the money is coming from. This club is a long term investment by a very sucessful business family. The Skates were different. Nobody knew where the money was really coming from and why people like Gaydamak were apparently willing to p*ss money up the wall with no prospect of future proffits. All this money is needed to turn Saints from League 1 relegation fodder to Premier League European contenders. If we are a stable midtable Premier League club I believe we can be run profitably. Lets say we stay up and sign these 2 Carlos Kickaballs from Italy. Next season we would have a pretty strong Premier League team and wouldn't have to spend another £30 to stay up. Pompey were different. They HAD the success, winning the cup, top half of the League, UEFA Cup run and they STILL Made a loss of about £25m for the year. We wont be like that.

It makes perfect sense to me. IF we go down and IF we have to sell players to balance the books, I doubt players like Rod and Ram would go for less than we bought them for. Both are good young players who will only get better. Astori and Coutinho are in a very similar boat. It wont be like last time when Crouch was the only player in the squad worth more than £1m.

If you can't trust a Swiss Banker to look after your money then you can't trust anyone. Cortese knows what he's doing.

If we do go down I can't really see Rod or Lambert leaving, meaning he would still be 3rd choice striker. I'd love to see him here as those three would be a huge step towards getting promoted again. I'd prefer he stayed but I suspect Billy will want first team football. Anyway, is there anything at all behind this rumour other thanthe OP saying, 'rumours flying around'. Or is this just a bunch of nobodies on twitter retweeting a load of nonesense.

I very much doubt it. You don't spend 12m euro to cover an injured player for 3 or 4 months. That's the kind of money Saints would pump into a player only if he was a long term investment. If we had loaned someone like Benayoun, that would have been more of an indication that Lallana has a bad injury.

A lot of people seem to think Jos would be a complete disaster in defence, based on the results earlier on in the season but I tend to think this is a bit harsh. There is more to it than that, for example. 1. In the games Jos played we had Davis in midfield, not Cork. I'm yet to be convinced by Davis, we look a lot weaker as a team defensively with him in the midfield instead of JC. Cork's return from injury 'magically' coincided with our improved form and much tighter defensive displays and Jos never got the benefit of this to make him look better. 2. He played in defence with Fonte and Fox but never got to play along side Shaw and Yoshi, who I would argue are better players. Yoshi reads the game better and makes interceptions which keep his partner out of trouble. Shaw is just better than Fox full stop. 3. The Arsenal game which many will point to as one of our worst displays this season. He scored a very unfortunate o.g. he could do little about but went off injured when we were only 1-0 down. The complete collapse happened after he had gone off. I'm not saying he played well but we were absolutely dreadful when he went off. 4. Other defenders looked much worse than him and have since improved and looked very good, whilst Jos didn't get the chance. I'm thinking specifically of Fonte and Clyne who were both a liability at times earlier in the season. Both made a lot of crucial errors which lead to goals. I think if we had to rely on Hooiveld in defence for a while it wouldn't be the end of the world. Next to Yoshi and behind Cork and Morgan I think he would do much better than we've seen so far. Last season I had him down as one of our best players and better than Fonte, in a defence which was better than any except Reading. He didn't become a bad players overnight. We need a new CB but surely JH has done enough in the past to deserve a decent second chance.

I'm quite happy with the complete lack of interest in Saints from ITV. With any luck half the people watching wont realise it was us getting spanked and think Chelsea have just battered Spurs or something.

Good to see he is learning the language. I hate these knobbers like Tevez who just don't even try.

You can add Eastern Europe to that list, certainly if the Ukrainian lady I once stood next to at a game is anything to go by.

No it isn't. The great barrier reef is amazing Human DNA structure is amazing The Aura Borealis is amazing alpine is quite astonishly dull and boring. It's the same pointless routine being repeated out to the point of nausea.

Yes, alpine is a deluded muppet who posts nothing but complete nonesense. No sh*t guys, he's only been doing it for over 7 years and still you lot persist with actually talking to him. No matter how clever you feel point out he is wrong, it's not going to achieve anything. Ignore him, talk to the normal people about the game and if you can't do that, turn the computer off and do something else. I am soooooooo sick of having to trawl through these utterly utterly pointless arguments every time our resident mountain dwelling fruitcake checks in. Please please please just DON'T talk to him.

In much the same way the QPR game shattered Chelsea's confidence no doubt.

Having seen Spud's beard in real life I would probably say lose it. It looks alright but I'm not really sure it's job interview material. I've had a couple of attempts at a beard but generally just find it itchy after a week of growth and trim/shave it.

He's as mad as a march hare and Boruc has already got that role covered. I fully expect him to sign a new 4 year contract with a big pay rise at City because of this. Between him and Tevez they have probably fallen out with mancini and 'never played for City again' about 50 times.

That would be at best 'morally questionable' if you ask me I'd hope 99% of players would be above such an act. To brand an innocent group of fans as racists simply to get a game replayed would take some pretty low moral standards. You would need sufficient evidence to back up your claim, either from the referee, CCTV or microphones in the ground. I think any fraudulent claims would be (rightly) very harshly dealt with. Sour mash - You have a point. Half a dosen idiots in a crowd of 30,000 should probably be ignored and dealt with after the game. Behaviour like the Serbian U21 should absolutely not be tollerated. It's about where you draw the line and that's a massive grey area. Every player will react differently and have a certain threshhold of tollerance. One player might lose his rag because 2 muppets are making monkey noises, another might be able to play in front of 5,000 fans all throwing Nazi salutes and just think 'yeah, whatever'.

I don't think the signings were that bad. Higgy and Prutts weren't bad in their day, not world beaters but not bad either. Barnard, Fonte and Puncheon were excellent edditions, who'd have thought then they'd go on to be Premier League regulars with us. Even players like Otsemobor and Brennan did a job at the time in possitions we were completely lacking in quality. Even Ostlund wasn't bad, certainly better than Wright on the rare occasions he actually played. Unfortunately he ended up like Skacel and De Ridder. He developed a cult following, which instantly generated an opposing anti fan club. As a result all discussion about him ended up badly polarised.

I have faith too. We should have won the last 2 fixtures which were, on paper, very tough and I'd normally have expected 0 points. We didn't lose those leads through bad play, lack of confidence and bottling it like we did in 2005 a few times. 99 times out of 100 Jerome's shot would be setting off car alarms and Guly's deflection would spoon away for a corner or a throw in. With Yoshi's fairly concrete penalty appeal and Gaston's second wrongly disallowed, last night could well have been a 3-0 based on the performance and chances we had. We were to a large extent unlucky.

I think we should let Kelvin try and find another club and try to replace him with someone decent, regardless of Boruc's form. His contract is up at the end of the season anyway and I would be pretty disappointed if he ended up being a regular for the rest of this season. If I were him I'd try and find an 18 month contract in the Championship somewhere because I doubt he will get an extension here.

Not the point. When you can win at Anfield then lose your next 3 games 15-0 on aggregate one result isn't the be all and end all. If QPR had beaten West Brom 1-0 the other week and lost 2-1 tonight nobody would have given a flying f**k. Swap the results around and suddenly it's 'disaterous' even though the table is exactly the same. If they go and get 7 points from their next 3 games, THEN I will be concerned about them. Until then, meh.

Frazer, Jos, Fox, Davis and Mayuka are all better than Butters, Seaborne, Harding, Chaplow and Barnard respectively. We don't have better options than Lambert, Morgan and AOC but there are still suitable replacements available.

Yep. Just like when Villa spanked Liverpool in their own back yard, that kick started a run of 5 straight wins for Villa and moved them well clear of the relegation zone.

Just for reference this is the team that lost narrowly to Man Utd 2 years ago: Bart - Butters, Seaborne, Fonte, Harding - AOC, Morgan, Guly, Chaplow - Lambert, Barnard Putting out a weaker team doesn't necessarily mean a spanking. I'd wager an entirely reserve XI would still be as strong or stronger than that team which played Man Utd in the cup. I'm not in favour of whole sale changes but 4 or 5 fringe players would probably be sensible.