Lighthouse

Barnard wasn't okay in League 1, he was very good. He scored 15 goals and worked very hard up front, scoring some absolutely vital goals along the way (MK Dons and Wednesday stick out in my mind). He outscored Guly and was more consistent. Last year we only lost 1 game under Adkins when Barnard started. How you can call that 'fair to middling' whilst describing Guly's 11 goals and inconsistency as 'good' and 'above average' I don't know.

Based on...

Thinking back to the last World Cup and how we really struggled to beat USA, Algeria and Slovenia, I think we could at least hold our own in the group stages. We probably wouldn't get through to the knockouts, but there are a few teams in the Euro's we could beat on our day. There's a lot to be said for team spirit, confidence and good communication, as opposed to a collection of all-stars bodged together from around Europe. If it was all about good players, Real Madrid would have won the Champions League for the last 10 years running.

Sometimes he will track back other times he just doesn't even try, that's what I find frustrating about him a lot of the time. If I had to compare him to another player it would be Rasiak. He is a decent championship striker, good in the air, knows where the net is and when he puts in a bit of effort he can create chances for others. However, I think we have better options up front, especially if we sign Rodriguez. I'd personally have him below Barnard in the pecking order, when the latter gets fit.

I could have told you that.

Everton will be fine for a couple of years yet. However if Moyes and Baines decide to move on, with players like Osman, Howard, Jagielka and Neville all getting on a bit that could change.

I mentioned Kranjcar at the beginning of this thread, he's just signed for Dynamo Kiev for £7m.

Don't get him started. Dalek's brand of 'humour' is about as original and funny as Rudi Skacel jokes.

Good move for Aaron. Can't imagine Seaborne sticking around for this season either as I'd have said Martin was the better player.

What about Pompey's first goal at St Mary's? Guly didn't even try and get back a challenge his man, he just jogged casually back towards the penalty area. This isn't the only time it's happened either.

There's a big difference between a drug being legalised and the entirely population going out and getting stoned. How many of you who don't use drugs would go out and buy a bag of weed if it was legalised tomorrow? Probably none of you. The thing about drug use is it's a victimless crime, in the sense that there is nobody to report it to the Police. A bloke in an alley behind a club sells a packet of something to a bloke and that's it. Nobody calls the Police so it's almost impossible to enforce drug laws most of the time.

So they have the internet in Burnley now?

Like anyone in China gives a flying f**k about Cardiff.

She is right.

The point is that the 'some criticism' is such a tiny percentage it's irrelevant in the context of such a massive group of people. These isolated knuckle draggers are out-liers, statistical anomalies. Stop saying things like, "a white player wouldn't get this kind of abuse." What you actually mean is, "a white player would only get this abuse from 99.9% of the people criticising him".

All that proves it that you once sat next to a mong in a crowd of 5,000 people. And why do people persist with the racism stuff despite indisputable evidence to the contrary. Prutton, Jackobsson, Davenport, Makin, Wotton, Nilsson, Molyneux, Forecast, Pulis, Gillett, McCann, Gasmi, Robertson, Pekart, Telfer, Kelvin, Bart, Oakley, Delap, Harding, Seaborne, Hammond, Higginbotham.... take your pick from the white players some fans loved to hate.

Unless Makin was playing, yes he pretty much was but that's a different thread. Football isn't exactly the Royal Ballet and will attract some of the lowest scum of society. This holds true for any football club in Britain, we've all got our share of brain dead, knuckle dragging neanderthals, not just Saints. For instance some Barnsley fans were heard singing abuse about Billy Sharp's dead baby. Do I think less of Barnsley and their fans? No, because it's the same at all clubs. A noisey minority shaming the entire fan base.

I think you're wide of the mark here Tim. To say 1 in 3 Saints fans is a cretin is nowhere near accurate. Without having counted I'd have said it's probably less than 1 in 10. It's not more difficult to be black and popular, that's just stupid. Jaidi, Antonio and Waigo have all been very popular recently but all had some pretty significant limitations and were far from perfect players. You're probably thinking of players like Wright and Euell getting a lot of stick. That isn't racism, they were just sh*te, same as Neil McCann or Mikel Nilsson.

Of course he did. Boro at home he practically ran the show, I was also at the Ricoh when scored one and set up a couple of others. They're the stand out games, but the fact is he's only scored one goal since boxing day. He's not really troubled any of the better teams in the Championship either. Millwall at home was probably the toughest game he has scored in.

I wish people would stop talking about the colour of his skin when trying to explain the criticisms of Guly. It's got f**k all to do with it. What has being black got to do with his none-performance at Fratton Park or failing to track back and defend when we lose the ball? My personal opinion is that he will get found out a bit in the Prem and struggle to make an impact. I just don't think he is Prem quality, like a lot of the white players we had last season.

Yeah, shame I crashed the old gal into those power lines. P*ssed my mum off a treat.

Been done before. We did it with my grandma years ago.

Bullsh*t. There are plenty of players who ran around a lot and were heavily criticised. Forte, Kenton, Ormerod, Viafara, Prutton, Gillett, Wotton There are plenty of players who don't do a lot of running and are greatly appreciated. Morgan, MLT, Lambert, Jaidi, Rasiak Sharp was never given stick here. Everyone knew he had the tallent, he just needed training and matches to get 'Saints fit'. Pointing out that he had a slow start and wasn't performing as well as Tadanari Lee isn't giving him stick.

Just to point out, most of the booing is done by a pretty small minority of idiots. It only takes a couple of hundred booing in a crowd of 30,000 and people come home, get behind their keyboards and start typing, "Saints fans are all such a bunch of ungreatful c**ts" etc. Sometimes a player is useless. Sometimes a player is so frequently useless that most of the fans realise he is useless and he becomes a 'boo boy'.

Since when did Villa have 2 pennies to rub together? Smells a lot like his agent trying to up the bidding to me.