Wes Tender

The one who plays for Aston Villa? The Belgian International? I rate Lukaku higher than him, but that is my opinion which I am entitled to. And as for Pelle, I judge it on the whole package, not just on one or two aspects, rather like Ricky Lambert who was judged by many solely on his ability to score goals, and his other attributes of what he brought to our team were overlooked.

I rate Lukaku higher than Benteke. But it's all about opinions.

Benteke an improvement on Pele? Really? He may be a bit quicker, but doesn't have a brilliant shots to goals ratio, neither does he match Pele in his other attributes, aerial prowess, hold up play, speed of thought.

Here is the actual quote verbatim:- "West Ham currently as likely to go down as Man United are". Under the circumstances of the time, it was a real rib-tickler. Judging by the derision it received, lots of us on here were obviously too thick to realise what he really meant.

I just watched that, thanks for posting the link. She's absolutely barking mad.

*Yawn* So you're not getting the treatment for the NPD then?

Yes, now I see that you wrote that it was West Ham as likely to go down as Manchester United. But then when one is as likely to go down as the other, what difference does it make which order you have them? But I'm pleased to hear that since then, you believe that your level of perspective has improved. As for the other matter, it wasn't a matter of needing to pluck up courage. It was more a case of refusing to respond to the sort of infantile puerility that you demonstrate once more with your chicken taunts. I bet you enjoyed using that one in the playground, didn't you? Did the big boys tell you to grow up?

Why do they have to formulate manifesto policies that go deeper than jumping on the bandwagon of any popular alternative? Surely it is sensible to take account of the popular views of the electorate if one wishes to pick up votes. The Lib Dems have been trying to do that for donkeys' years and it was only when they got the opportunity to help form the coalition government that they were found out, but nevertheless they still managed to put a spanner in the works when it came to holding an EU referendum during this Parliament and now they will pay the price of losing seats hand over fist to UKIP as a result. Of course UKIP is just a fad, because as I say, they are a one policy party. Had the past governments had the guts to have held a referendum on Europe, there would be no need for UKIP. But because they didn't, they have allowed them to grasp the nettle on other nationalistic issues, the next big one which is going to be having a devolved parliament for England, which is another populist policy, therefore a vote winner.

Sorry, but I'm not going to take much notice of your view on my level of perspective when in a previous season you had stated that Manchester United was equally as likely as West Ham to be relegated.

Well, they're hardly likely to publish manifesto promises that are going to alienate the majority of the electorate, are they? It's the main parties' own stupid fault. A significant amount of the electorate want to have their say on whether they wish to remain in the EU, having seen our continuing loss of sovereignty through successive EU treaties that they have been denied a say on. UKIP is essentially a one issue party and the European Elections were their platform and the voting public gave the main parties a right kicking on their broken promises to hold a referendum. Now a General Election approaches and UKIP naturally have to prepare a manifesto covering a whole raft of policies, just as the other fringe parties have to. Ultimately the voting public have several good reasons to vote for them apart from their policies. Including this disillusionment over the broken referendum promises, there will be many registering a protest vote because they are fed up with the main parties and many will vote tactically to get rid of their sitting MPs, as I will, to get rid of the Lib Dem MP in Eastleigh. UKIP's best hope is to gain sufficient seats to hold the balance of power and that way they can insist on a referendum on Europe as a priority for the early stages of the Parliament. Additionally they can play a major part in sorting out the West Lothian question at long last. That is likely to be brought to a head if the SNP pick up a significant number of seats.

Pardon me for agreeing with the OP. I would have thought that the third top team being knocked out of the FA Cup along with the first and second teams was worthy of a mention regardless of who that team was. But the news media obviously think along the same lines as you, that it came as no surprise to anybody that little old Southampton were knocked out.

Top three being knocked out is more newsworthy isn't it? No doubt Manchester United would have had to have been knocked out for them to have said that the top four had been knocked out and even then you'd have to wonder whether they'd say that the top two and the fourth team were all out.

You believe that he's too naive to understand that top players here will naturally be in demand by the top clubs and that they would leave us if they were offered double their wages at one of the glory clubs? Of course, the same thing applies to Koeman himself and I'm not naive enough to believe that if he was offered the Barcelona/Real Madrid/Bayern Munich job that he wouldn't go, when the time is right, that is. At the moment, I think that Koeman would like to get us to a certain level and would regard leaving before as unfinished business. But if he manages to gain us CL football, he will definitely be in the frame for pretty well any managerial position. Of course money is the prime motivator, especially if it is allied to a genuine step-up in the club hierarchy too.

So he was quite happy to have the ability to replace the five who left last summer, but all of a sudden, when he might have the opportunity to dabble in the transfer markets for other players that might be on his wish list, he will have lost the appetite for it?

I suspect that he is vitally important in his role of helping the team unity. He seems to take it upon himself to lead others into helping the new arrivals settle in and be made to feel welcome. Team spirit at the club is the strongest I have known it and I'm sure that is in no small part down to him.

I miss Flyer. Whatever happened to him and his opinions that none of our players would have been good enough to get into their first choice 11?

Hypochondriac: We're such a knowledgeable lot on here.

Why? It was deemed to be impossible to replace those players with similar talent at the time they left. But having repleced them with players as good or better for less money, why is it pretty much impossible to do it again? Are players like those we got in a finite quantity and we took the last of them? And where most pundits tipped us for relegation when those players left, it was far more difficult to pursuade others to come in. Now that eveybody has seen that the loss of some star players gave a superb opportunity for their replacements to shine, surely the next batch have a great example of how they can develop/resurrect their own careers here. In my opinion it will be easier to do it again, not more difficult.

Agree with your summary of the two differently diverse characters of these players. Pochettino knew Osvaldo well and thought he could manage him and couldn't. Koeman doesn't know him and therefore has no particular reason for believing that he can be rehabilitated. Koeman is prepared to trust his own judgement over Elia, so I have some confidence in that. Anyway, the conspiracy theories with Osvaldo hint that he came here as a deliberate stepping stone to Milan, who wouldn't have been allowed to buy him from Roma as a competitor and that he therefore engineered his departure by thumping Fonte.

Funny how things have changed from the days that we fought against relegation most years. You would look at a fixture list like that and hope that you might with luck pick up points against the likes of Crystal Palace, Burnley, Leicester, QPR, Sunderland, with less expectation of those which were away and that the others were more difficult or highly improbable to gain points from. Now I look at a list like that and think that we might be lucky to get points from Chelski and City, but no reason why we can't beat all the others. It's a strange feeling.

When son number one was about 7/8 years old he was a typical plastic fan, wanted the Liverpool kit for Christmas, posters for his bedroom wall, etc. This was the all-conquering Liverpool,that won everything in sight and whose players' were household names. When he was about 16, he told me that Liverpool were coming to The Dell and could I take him to see the match? I agreed, but told him that I would be supporting my local team. Saints duly beat them 2-1 and he was a bit down in the mouth. The following year, he again asked if I could take him to The Dell to watch Liverpool and once again Saints beat them, 4-2. By that time, my son had been bitten by the Saints bug and subsequently asked for a half-season ticket for Christmas. Our first match was the 2-2 draw with Manchester United and we have been fans ever since.

I'm a glory hunter plastic.

No, you buy the horse.

Who said anything about being an established CL Club, apart from you just there? Let's get up there first before debating how we could remain there. And excuse me if my memory of you always saying that we could challenge for the top four is a bit weak. My recollection is of you poo-pooing the very idea that we could even finish above Everton.

And everybody tries to figure out whether that is Stoke or Sunderland.