DuncanRG

Football songs are all embarrassing on record, so that's not a problem. Doubt it'll catch on but it would sound better being sung by the fans, especially if we tweak some of the lyrics to have a go at Pompey or clap really fast. Not the time to do it, though. If the players are expecting a confidence boost from us bellowing it out before Boro, they've got another thing coming.

Erm, yes.

Not pointing to you specifically but I am baffled by the amount of stick he gets for this. It seems a total non-issue to me. I suppose it's nice to have a Strachan who you can entertain you, but managerial interviews are almost always dull, and having someone who's particularly lifeless in front of the camera should be welcome encouragement to turn them off.

I hope your hangover's not too bad today, Monk.

Redmond took on defenders a fair amount as well, but just like Sims he didn't do very well. Anyway, I wasn't trying to compare Redmond (a fairly experienced young pro) specifically with Sims (17 years old).

I love this. War is peace, freedom is slavery, improving every year is a downward spiral etc.

How was it for me? I hope your sex doesn't finish as weakly as our campaign did.

Glad you've sussed that smart businesswomen base their decisions on games against Hapoel Be'er Sheva. Devil you know? Are you kidding? She and Markus have been absolutely phenomenal. They've revolutionised our club.

He's 22. On that subject - would we be more lenient with Redmond if he were an academy product?

They do miss Kante, but their bigger problems this year are psychological. Their title win proved that looking at football exclusively through names in the squad and transfers only gets you so far.

We can nail this with two simple facts: 1. Our club is brilliant 2. Last night was crap.

A few reasons to be critical of Puel, if I may: 1. Unless he went knocking at Reed's door in the summer and Reed said no, Puel does shoulder some blame for our lack of striking options. 2. One of the reasons our attacking roster seems so weak is that he hasn't got the best out of the talent they do have. Not consistently, anyway. 3. Last night after Austin went off, we kept putting crosses in to players who were never going to get on the end of them. That's an obvious tactical error. He deserves credit for other things, of course. If we followed the trend we'd actually be improving, as we have for six years in a row. We usually replace class players with class players.

So not a myth, then. No one said good recruitment had to be cheap, especially not in the inflated English market. We rebuilt an entire team in one summer and improved on the previous year's league finish, then improved on it again. That's not just good recruitment, it's quite exceptional. Don't let a bad result (and what might prove to be a poor transfer window) cloud your judgement of our business over the last few years. Personally, I've not read any articles saying we'll always replace our star players - in fact, most journalists predict that at some stage we'll fail to replace them properly.

Don't think anyone would be praising the performance even if we'd gone through. It really was terrible - somehow we looked beaten and like we'd already won, all at the same time.

You don't actually believe that's real, do you? I wonder whether Fonte's being moved out early so we can offer Van Dijk the captaincy (and possibly another pay rise) before the vultures circle in summer?

Yeah, but that didn't happen, did it? Doubt this happened either. If he did leave a comment he's deleted it - no record on Instagram, where you can see what people you followed have liked/commented on. Given the screenshot cuts out the account name (meaning people can't check), I expect it's a hoax.

The bit I'm struggling with is why we're selling him in January, rather than next summer or indeed the one just gone. Have we scouted someone out who couldn't replace him at another time? It would be mad to see out half a season with two senior, fit centre halves. We've prepared well in one sense by giving Van Dijk games with the armband thoug. We won't miss Fonte nearly as much on the pitch with VVD's leadership, but it will still be a real loss to the club. As the last man standing from the lower leagues I'd have loved to see him lift a trophy for us.

Optimism, I like it! Assume Pompey are out.

We sold Wanyama for about £1m less than we paid, but as he was going into the last year of his contract I don't think we can complain that much. The same applies to Clyne, as I recall, but we made a profit on him. £20m was a very good price for Lovren, £30m a very good price for Shaw, £32m a good price for Mane. The fact that Mane, Lallana and Lovren are becoming better players under Klopp doesn't mean we could have demanded more for them. He's adding that value, not us.

It would be nice to let the children go into another room and have this discussion. We absolutely are a selling club, but we have made a success of it where others have failed. There are plenty of 'buying clubs' who have failed too, so we have to consider ourselves lucky to have found something that has produced success. As frustrating as it is to watch good players go so regularly, it has worked. Whether we could have done even better by standing firm on this player or that is for the birds.

So our first choice keeper has just made a terrible mistake and might have taken a knock to his confidence? I know, let's drop him!

Couldn't watch the game. Here's the (probably distorted) impression I got from Match of the Day: Really poor defending, not bad going forward but same problem of taking chances/cutting edge, Boufal looking very dangerous, Fonte on a serious off day

Struggling to think who else we've undervalued, I think we've got very good prices for everyone. The only reason we might imagine Mane going for more is because the new TV deal threw out the rulebook, but according to your calculation he was worth £51m, not far off what City paid for De Bruyne.

Took a friend to Arsenal for her first ever football game. Her first observation was how strange it was that the fans were insulting their own players.

You'd have to use the term 'one of' pretty loosely! Anyway, I think we were marginally stronger last season with Pelle and Wanyama here and the same options off the bench for their positions. I suppose the difference is that Koeman would have been less likely to use McQueen, Sims and Reed.