Lighthouse

We aren't reliant on any of those three, they get try outs in friendlies but ultimately are unlikely to be in the team come the Euros. We should have done an awful lot better in the 2004-2008 period with the players we had but that doesn't change the fact that Southgate has underachieved with this lot. Beaten by the first decent team we face in every tournament.

Nutty Tiss chat can be found in the Lounge, should anyone want to discuss the Martian salamander people and pidgeon surveillance units.

Previous managers have been reliant on the likes of Trevor Sinclair, Emile Heskey and Darius Vassell. Southgate is getting similar results despite having Kane, Palmer, Grealish, Saka, Foden, Bellingham, Maddison, Eze, Watkins and Toney to choose from.

He's only ever done that once, his second best goal return in a PL season is 12. He's had form and fitness issues his whole career, that's why he was in and out of the side at West Ham and Villa. Since we sold him his scoring return has been 7-6-2-1, if he hadn't played for us before nobody would want him here.

He wanted to go back to Spain and ended up at the newly promoted playoff winners, in a league which is much warmer and less intense than the PL. He did well enough there to get a move to Barca where he mostly plays as a second half sub, good for him. He left us and did well abroad, much like Tadic, Fonte and Juanmi. 30 games for Girona doesn't prove anything in the context of his Saints career. Elyounoussi scored 14 goals from midfield last season, were we wrong to let him go? None of which is relevant to Stu who looked well past his best in the PL last time and struggles to play 90 minutes a league below. We're going to need to be a bit ruthless this summer.

We nearly lost that on a fair play decision 😆 What a game though, I thought we’d never do it when we were just knocking singles in those middle overs. Obviously playing Gubbo was a necessity but I can’t see Organ really doing a lot more in a T20. Good to see Wood having a decent game for a change, some very suspect bowling from Turner and Neser at the start though.

Nothing you can say will change what I saw from him on the pitch in his last season here. He was a spent force in the PL, he moved to Barcelona to make 20 mins sub appearances in the sunshine. As for Stu, I’m adding him to the list of players everyone seems to have forgotten was substandard when we got relegated, with 20-odd points, a year ago.

Where he is almost always a sub, brought on with 20 minutes left of games Barca are winning 90% of the time. He’s the Iberian Johnny Evans.

Disagree, he looked spent last time out in the PL and hasn’t been the same player since he got Covid in early 2021.

You don’t. That has never been said but IF you do choose to only express your outrage at one side of one conflict, persistently, people will correctly assume you have an ulterior motive. Fantastic argument. The children of Ukraine having their guts blown across a play park, deliberately by Russia, for no other reason than to inflict maximum civilian casualties on a country which doesn’t want to be an obedient faction of their empire, will be relieved to hear that it’s not as bad as Gaza because they represent a lower proportion of the overall population. Nobody is suppressing you, I haven’t made any slurs, stop trying to engineer yourself towards being the victim. You’re free to express any opinion you like but nobody else is obliged to blindly believe that it must be out of some greater sense of altruism and not question your motives.

Yeah, no it's not though. Show me the thread where everyone is up in arms about what the Saudi's have done in Sana'a or the persecution of Muslims in Myanmar. The situation in Ukraine is FAR more one sided, disgusting and more innocent people have been killed over a much larger area. Last week Russia deliberately bombed a shopping centre in Kharkhiv, on a Saturday so as to kill the maximum number of civilians. Israel has never attempted to do anything like that, nor has Ukraine been firing rockets at civilians in Rostov on Don for the last few years. People are up in arms about Israel because either: A) They're Muslims and this is a centuries old religious war. B) They're left wing Westerners and Israel = Jews = American solical/political elite, conservative, Ben Shapiro types = Establishment.

We can't afford to fritter away this transfer window.

Wood was poor last season too, I’d like to hope young Eddie Jack is being seen as a replacement in the not too distant future. Good to see Turner back in action, he bowled an absolute cracker to dismiss Roy. In other news, Orr has apparently broken his arm, so it would seem we’re going to need Gubbo for the rest of the Blast at least.

It takes a bit more than six goals from a striker to make me moist, personally. If Broja had done that on loan at Bournemouth or Everton, three years ago, I don’t think anyone would be particularly thrilled by this suggestion.

No they weren’t. There were a few questions over his attitude, after he fell out with Howe and refused to play for Bournemouth during Covid but he wasn’t written off. He was a proven PL quality player when his head was in the right place, so nobody was doubting he had the talent to tear the Championship apart. Broja is completely different. We’re now playing at the same level that he did very little at last season, I think most people would be right to be concerned as to how much he could deliver on the pitch. TBH this forum’s been a bit weird this last week. I was expecting people to be posting a bunch of YouTube videos of £20-30m players who are great on Football Manager. Instead there seems to be an overwhelming desire to set up some sort of charity home for all of our has been players from years gone by.

We aren’t going to get three players who can all play the deep lying role, who are all better than Charles. You’re talking about spending £60m on one position to do that and like I said, I don’t think Romeu is any better than Charles these days anyway.

Supposing we have the three that finished the season, Charles and a new bloke (in theory a replacement for Stu) I’d say that’s a reasonable number of midfield options, given how much investment is needed in areas like striker, full back and keeper. Romeu I’m not sure adds anything to that, Charles I’d wager is much more mobile these days if nothing else. If anything I’d hope for some versatile in the AMN mould, but obviously much, much better.

It's quite clearly a nonsense argument. 14 full games is completely different from adding up all of his appearances to make 14 games worth of time. Many of those appearances were sub appearances when he had a huge fitness advantage against the players he was up against. Then there's the fact that he's had two years of training in and around that '14 games' to try and improve his game play and he hasn't. 14 full games is quite a lot anyway. If a new signing did play every minute of the first three months of the season and contributed as little as Mara, yes I would want him dropped.

Teams like Saints and those two are only ever one bad transfer window or managerial appointment from a relegation fight. We went from sixth and three points of CL football to needing a win at Swansea to survive in two years.

Okey dokey.

He hasn’t had a ridiculously small amount of time, he’s had more than enough opportunities in both leagues and looked nowhere near being up to standard in either. The fact that he can’t get in the team, even with Stewart injured all season is his own fault. I can’t believe I’m reading a sentence like, "what benefit is £10m to us," either.

A lot of promising signs in that game but ultimately we lost it in the first five overs. You can’t chew up 1/4 of your deliveries and be 23/3.

Assuming that we do sign Downes and keep the same system in midfield next season, I still think we need to be bringing in another starter. An upgrade on either Aribo or Smallbone should be a priority, with one of them on the bench with Charles. I think a few people are underestimating the task we face this summer. The same team that only made the playoffs, plus the likes of Ings, Broja, Romeu and Lallana as some people are suggesting is going to get absolutely thumped in the PL. Last time we only just stayed up after bringing in J Rod, Davis, Clyne, Yoshida and Boruc to be first team starters. Half a dosen Mayukas and Gazzanigas and we'd have gone straight back down.

We don't need to bring in any back up. We need to bring in first team players who are better than the ones which only finished fourth in last years Championship.

Romeu is gone, and he looked just about spent in his last three months here anyway. That was two years ago and he’ll be 33 in September. We need to move on.