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It makes such a difference having a player with pace who can take people on. They don't just create chances directly, but they get extra attention, defenders often have to double up, which then opens up space for others. I'm not saying they are equally good, but it's the main reason why people clamour for Boufal to play. He might be a bit of a 'show pony', but Zaha has been labelled that in the past too. It's especially true when games are tight and teams are packing out defences. You simply can't break them down by safe sideways passing waiting for an opportunity.

"It's a challenge I'm excited by. It's a great opportunity to come back to a club I know well, and a club I've got real affinity with, and I couldn't turn that down," Hughes said. A real affinity with? Hmmmm, ok if you say so, Mark. Good luck to him though, he's gonna need it! Looking forward to seeing his first win on Sunday :-)

I'm not sure this is true. Some of the dirtiest football I've seen against us has been Hughes' Stoke teams. But, they have been matches where we've been in control and it's like the players were told "Southampton don't like it up 'em". In fairness, it worked, as we went from leading 2-0 in the cup to 2-2 before Pelle grabbed a late winner. I think the other game was under Puel when we drew 0-0 but they had 10 men and it felt like we had about 90% possession. They might have been dirty of those occasions, but they weren't a 'lump it forward' side. Hughes got a lot of credit for morphing a Tony Pulis side into one that played attractive football at times - not always an easy feat, when you consider how Pardew has fared following Pulis at WBA. I don't recall Football playing "route 1" football under him, and I can't believe he'd have got the Man City job on the back of playing hoofball with Blackburn. I remember being convinced he would be a failure at Blackburn, and he surprised me. I've never liked him, and I have always been sceptical of his appointments at various clubs, but with the exception of the car-crash-FC-QPR, he has always done better than I expected him to. I don't know if he'll keep us up, but I know we have a better chance than we did a few days ago.

Didn't he get the Wales job? Presumably he wouldn't chuck that in and apply for the job here.

Thanks for listening OldNick - apart from (some songs) being a bit heavy for customers, nothing else to worry about (i.e. no swearing) I don't think... Yes I'd love to have a gravelly 'rock' voice but unfortunately nature hasn't bestowed that upon me!

Strange, link seems to work for me and others... you could go to Soundcloud and search 'Atlas Fury' if you were desperate to find it, but no worries otherwise!

Definitely not my full time job! I'm 33, too old to start a music career I'd say, but who knows. I always wanted to write/play, in fact a lot of the songs (or at least bits of them) were written many years ago. Then in the past year or so we started getting back into it and decided to do the EP. At the very least it's nice to be able to say we have something professionally recorded, regardless of what we do with it next. Although there are bits of bass which we wanted to stand out (e.g. at the end of the piano in Last Man Standing), one reason why it's more of a 'support' instrument is because neither of us are bassists (we shared bass duty, I'm playing it on 2 songs), so we felt more comfortable having simpler/quieter basslines with the occasional twiddly bit. Our main musical influences tend to have big guitars too, so we wanted them louder in the mix. Yes, playing live will be tricky with just two of us, so we'll either recruit some new members, find some temps or never play live. Hopefully not the last option though!

Thanks for the comments Lord D, always appreciate feedback, and glad you at least didn't want to immediately turn it off! Not sure if you mean the bass should just be a bit louder/more noticeable, will bear that in mind. Yes I am doing the vocals, but no offence taken, as you say it's often a personal taste/preference with singing. The songs are all self-composed, thanks for listening!

Not sure he was best player we could have signed, and at £19m pretty terrible value for money, but the more options the new manager has, the better. It felt like Pellegrino 'favoured' Carrillo and didn't want to entertain the idea of Gabbiadini being anything more than a cameo. But if the new manager changes the way we play and still sees a role for Carrillo, even if it's coming off the bench, all well and good. The money is a sunk cost, best to forget about it now and just hope that he can bring something more than he has so far to the table.

I'm not sure if this kind of thing's allowed or if it shouldn't be in 'the Lounge', but I'm not sure anyone reads the other sections, plus I'm feeling buoyant following the news of Pellegrino's departure! My band (two-piece) have just recorded our debut EP, thought I'd share it on here for anyone who might be interested: I'd say the genre is rock/alternative, but definitely some cheesy/poppy bits. Would love to hear anyone's thoughts, and of course hope you like it and want to share it with others! The EP is also on Spotify, iTunes etc.

Pearson is a complete kn0b but I think he'd do better than Hughes, Bilic & maybe Silva. I'd certainly trust him to get the pre-season training right too - no more unfit players!

I like Bilic. Not sure how good a manager he is though... he seems capable of galvanising sides but the lack of fitness in West Ham's players during his time is a concern, always feel that hints at a lack of willingness to do the 'menial' but important things. I also wonder how much of his success at West Ham came down to having Payet, who was absolutely brilliant for them that season.

To be honest I'd say that's more of a reason to appoint Silva. We are having to take someone with a short term objective, not necessarily the best person we could get if it was pre/post season. The board seem at pains to stress this is not an 'interim' appointment, but why shouldn't it be? Hire the person who gives us the best chance of staying up, offer them a hefty bonus. In the summer, they can either apply for the job full time or look elsewhere. The idea of managing Everton might even be added incentive for Silva to do well with us. One argument might be that Mark Hughes would make a decent manager in the Championship, but even then I would rather we looked elsewhere. Maybe Graham Potter would be the ideal candidate if we had to ship out all our big names and start again with a lower profile squad.

Exactly. The reason it "sounds familiar" is because nearly every manager prefers to play one up front. It's just that most managers don't play 1 up front with no support while telling players not to pass it forwards if there is even a remote possibility of losing the ball.

The strange thing about his time at Hull was how they collapsed in the last few games when they had done so well to get close to survival. The momentum seemed to be with them and then... they lost to Sunderland. And then got thrashed in their final two matches.

Although I agree that Hughes isn't necessarily a long ball merchant, his Stoke side were one of the dirtiest to watch when things weren't going their way. I remember a couple of occasions (at least) where we had the better of them and it looked like the instructions from him at HT were "go out and kick lumps out of them". Some people might like that, maybe for the last 8 games we might need it, but it's not something that I would enjoy longer term. (And there's a difference between showing some aggression and being dirty). He's also a pretty dour man, don't like him much at all. But others have said, it will be an improvement on Pellegrino.

Pretty much. Thought I'd go a few weeks back but Pellegrino had drained any sort of enthusiasm out of me. I did check the tickets this morning but didn't buy. Made other plans for Sunday, but then the news broke. Looks like an 8-hour round trip to Wigan for me after all - block 2!

Not any more, Golden Balls, NOT ANY MORE!

Unbelievable. I thought this board were always succession planning? I suppose, in their defence, it has been a sudden downturn in form

"the Moussaka incident", as Leon Osman described it

I'm so glad we didn't 'do a Leicester' and win the league, that would have been awful. Kudos to the board for making sure that level of incompetence could never happen here.

Not as canny as the fans who put bets on it earlier in the season. Presumably you must have put something on right at the start of the campaign?

Huddersfield v Crystal Palace; West Ham v Stoke; Stoke v Crystal Palace; Swansea v Stoke. Those are four fixtures where our nearest rivals are playing each other and therefore someone will necessarily pick up points. That ignores all the other potentially winnable games they have (e.g. vs Brighton, Watford, Bournemouth, West Brom). Only a mad man would see picking up a few draws as a viable route to survival. Unfortunately, it seems that's exactly what we have...

To be fair, every club is a nothing club to TalkSport unless you are one of the top 6 or Everton. They still have a few decent presenters but most of them are poor. Some aren't just horrendous presenters, but sickening human beings in general. I'm mainly thinking of Mick Quinn, wouldn't surprise me if it was him who said what you claim.

That would be ridiculous in our case though. We are currently outside the relegation zone! Surely any manager with a bit of self-belief would fancy his chances of steering our squad to safety? A manager could take up an offer of a big survival bonus, knowing that "the damage had already been done to team spirit" is always a viable excuse if they don't succeed.