Lighthouse

We need to be offloading players who aren’t good enough, not filling the squad out with them. Why so many people are keen to collect all the has beens from seasons gone by I can’t fathom. If Lallana, Ings and Broja had never played for us before and we signed the three of them, most people would be furious. Thankfully Lallana is the only one we may have to tolerate.

Does seem to be one heck of a coincidence that the coach we need to take us up a level just so happens to be a player looking to retire into a nice cosy coaching role, somewhere his family would be happy to settle down. As far as I’m concerned he can go off and prove what an excellent coach he is at Swindon or Pompey. We’re not a charity.

PL goals over the last 7 years: 0 2 0 1 1 0 0 I can barely contain my excitement.

It’s worth pointing out that being a good player doesn’t necessarily make you a good coach, as Rooney, Gerrard and Lampard have all recently proven. It doesn’t even mean you can coach your own attributes into other players. Che Adams isn’t a crap finisher because we never hired a top class, retired striker to teach him some secret technique, that’s just his own personal limitation. I could spend a month at football boot camp with Del Piero, Shevchenko and Van Nistelrooy, I still wouldn’t get into a half decent Sunday league team.

I keep reading stuff like this but I’ve no idea what it actually translates to in literal, real world terms. I can just picture Lallana turning up at Staplewood for the first day of preseason saying, “hey guys, I’m Adam. I came through the academy here 17 years ago!” Whilst everyone just stares blankly at him like, “oh right… yeah, cheers mate.” Literally every player came through an academy somewhere, at some point in their career. There’s nothing interesting, useful or special about Lallana or any of his lived experiences.

Ironically, I think the gay frogs thing was the conspiracy theory which actually had some truth to it. I forget the details now but it wasn’t entirely unfounded.

I’d like to hope we’re aiming a lot higher than some of the names being touted so far. Lallana, Ings, Romeu, Brooks, Antonio… that’s the makings of a mid-table championship team, with a large wage bill and an even larger injury list.

Easy, just find an even catchier, more annoying song

A few things wrong with that: Firing rockets into civilian areas is not fighting back, it’s attempting to murder civilians. It’s not Israel’s mission to do exactly that. If they just wanted to kill civilians they could have killed hundreds of thousands. No amount of whataboutery means ‘you can’t complain’ when you’re an innocent civilian and people are trying to murder you.

Yes. Yes you can. That’s a deliberate attempt to fire munitions into populated civilian areas and kill as many people as possible, as they have been doing for many years. If I were an Israeli I’d probably be complaining about people trying to murder me.

I’d say not wanting them back IS getting over it, TBH.

In which case a loan would make sense for them.

But signing Lallana is basically the opposite of pragmatic, it’s driven purely by wistful fantasy and nostalgia of games he played for us 15 years ago. Injuries have prevented him from being anything like that player for many years now, to the point where he doesn’t appear to have a future at the club who just finished eleventh. Steven Davis for £800k was a pragmatic signing. So were Hammond, Butterfield and Harding in the lower leagues. We'll need a couple more of them but Lallana isn’t one of them.

It’s a very important role, we need to be errr… putting…. more black people in hospital, have I got that right?

I can’t for the life of me understand why anyone would want Lallana, just because he’s been here before. Two years ago people were saying that anyone who didn’t want Bale back was an idiot. After six months of 20 minute MLS jogging sessions, in between rounds of golf, he went to the WC, was the worst player in it and promptly retired. If you’re recruiting players based purely on attributes and fitness, Lallana isn’t even on the radar.

Jack and Jan are a decent level of third and fourth choice CBs for a club like ours, hoping to be stable in the PL. Would I want either starting in August, assuming everyone is fit? No. I’d like to hope we can get ABK fit and in the right mindset, then we just need to keep KWP, find a LB with a double barrelled surname and our defence might look alright.

The Beeb are reporting Chelsea are after Maresca, which I think will be a hilarious disaster all round of it does happen.

Why wouldn't we be? If we're letting McC go, we're clearly looking to get someone in and they're going to have to be good enough to start the lions share of games next year. At the risk of repeating myself, it'll likely be a new first choice, Lis and Lumley until Baz is fit. Better keepers are NOT going to come here and be third choice.

I think you greatly overestimate the standard of footballer willing to be third choice goalkeeper at Saints AND within our budget. He's obviously not going to be starting PL games, unless we have a serious injury crisis. I would hope we're looking at a new first choice, with a view to competing with Baz long term, with Lis and Lumley as cover until the latter recovers from his injury.

We don’t need two new keepers, if we let Lumley go we’d only end up replacing him with another player of similar calibre. We’ve a big enough recruitment task as it is this summer, without wasting time on a like for like swap for a third choice keeper. We will almost certainly be looking for a new first choice, Lis will most likely be on the bench until Baz is fit, Lumley is third choice. I’m not sure what else you’re realistically expecting.

Lumley is a reasonable enough, low budget, third choice keeper and no worse than Cropper or Forecast have been in that role in the past. He’ll probably only play a handful of cup games against lower league sides next season and even that’s only because Baz will be injured. McC’s wages are too high for that role and judging by this season it’s been a bit too costly to even have him in the squad at all.

Him and Rudi Skacel are going to interchange on the left, putting crosses in to Onuachu to nod down for Kevin Phillips.

I’m not sure that logic follows. It’s a bit like saying, “short term the house is on fire, so covering the furniture in petrol is fine.” We will need better players than those mentioned to be starting for us next season.

He’s not a ‘sit back and spray it around’ type of midfielder but if we’re looking for an upgrade on Smallbone (which we will need) with a good engine, I think he’d be a good candidate.