Lighthouse

Yes, it will basically half.

Ben Mayes having a handy debut. Turned our innings around after Prest goes for single figures, yet again.

How can they be paying lip service to the fans if they haven't actually said anything?

As in - more than the £80m we received for Virgil? 😐 I'll believe that when I see it.

Is @elbobble the random Twitter account people weirdly think is ITK for no reason, this summer? Hardly seems like a credible journalist.

You’re just making up nonsense now. We won all three league games against West Brom and Leeds with Bazunu in goal. I’m not going to pretend that didn’t happen, or that the FA would have given us an 18 point deduction for playing him against Preston, just because I don’t like him.

WTF?! I’ve seen some nonsense written on here but after Bazunu got injured we lost three out of five games and still finished 17 points ahead of seventh place. I get that some people don’t rate Baz but when people start denying mathematical certainties (including those who believe 63 and 0 are the same number) it just gets weird. Those three games lost included getting thumped 5-0 at Leicester and losing at home to relegation threatened Stoke, via a goal which went straight through McCarthy. Hardly an end of season rocket up the form table. Whether some of you like it or not, Still would appear to be the fifth consecutive manager to prefer Bazunu to McCarthy, so unless we sign another keeper in the next three weeks, it looks like he’s going to be our keeper this season.

So were Liverpool with Trent, this isn’t unique to Saints.

I watched him with my own eyes two and I can remember one howler (Plymouth at home) and maybe half a dozen he should have done better with. That’s about par for a keeper over the course of a season and pointing out his save percentage statics were 4% lower than average isn’t enough to convince me that we were ‘promoted in spite of him’.

I wouldn't say that. We need a couple of decent attacking midfielders but I think we've got a pretty decent Championship squad. There will be a few teams in the mix but I can't see why we wouldn't be one of them.

Agree with who, exactly? Criticise Rasmus all you like on a variety of issues, but you can't deny he's done well getting good fees for players we have sold. We've already received a quite astonishing figure for Sully and managed to sell Onuachu for £6m, instead of £6. It seems like we're holding out for a decent price on Dibling too.

They didn't because they had much better players than us and were underperforming under Dyche, which obviously made them a much better prospect than Saints and the certainty of weekly defeats and relegation. This whole idea of 'big clubs' is just something people argue about in the comments of Sport Bible on Facebook, it means f**k all in real world terms. Dibling isn't going to Everton because they won the 1995 FA Cup. It's PL football and money.

F**k me, how many of these meaningless 'fantasy signings' threads do you need? If anyone else cared, they'd have posted in the last two you started this summer.

They're a much Premier Leaguier team than us. If Everton had gone down instead, players would be going the other direction.

Nah, you just need a 100 mile ethernet cable and a router in Cherbourg.

You're asking how we're a different team, if we have our best CB and two best CM available?

Personally, I still prefer the back four. I think looking better with a five today was something of a fluke in that it coincided with us bringing Robinson on, playing Archer more central and Brighton taking a few of their better players off. Whichever system we play, I still feel we're missing a bit of creativity and can't just rely on one of the kids to be our spark. If THB, Downes and Fernandes (or his replacement) were available, we're a different team.

Oscars won: Titanic - 11 Deadpool - 0

A few decent performances in there, decent pre-season game overall. Really like the look of Robinson, Edwards, Charles and Quarshie, although the latter seemed to stand off a bit too far at times IMO. Suga might be alright in a five, against weaker oposition. Baz had a solid game, as did Stephens for the most part. I think we looked more threatening with Archer central and AA in behind.

Stephens, Bazunu and Smallbone are not ‘crap’ Championship players and will play a significant part in this season, as they did two years ago when we were successfully promoted. Ramsdale would take up a disproportionate amount of our wage bill.

You say that like it’s an argument in favour of keeping Ramsdale. The fact that we could have three Championship players for his wages is literally the reason we’re loaning him out.

Linking JWP with a move back down here is about as lazy as fake ITKs get. Particularly since he started pretty much every game under Potter and even if he is suddenly frozen out, loads of PL teams will be after him.

Disagree. We’re highly unlikely to get anything near the £27m Everton have already offered (I’m not saying we should accept that) for a player with only a year left on his contract. In a worst case scenario, his head gets turned by someone like Levy and his agent gives us an ultimatum. We could end up in a scenario where he will only sign for Spurs, on the promise of a massive signing on fee, and we end up with turnips as a transfer fee. Basically what happened with Hojbjerg.

What is it you think that's 'too clever' about any of that? We're never signing established PL players, we're always going to have to take a gamble on someone.