Lighthouse

If we don't bring a forward in it'll because there's nobody decent available within our price range, not because everyone at the club has devout faith in the fitness credentials of Ross Stewart.

I can't see Charles having any meaningful involvement, given the amount of time he's been out, and I don't want Romeu anywhere near the team for this. Since he's come back his time on the pitch has barely added up to an hour, in which we've conceded three goals, two of which he was directly at fault for. Whatever your opinion of Downes and Jander, it pretty much has to be them at the moment.

No, it really isn’t. I really don’t get some of the takes people have on the last three years at Saints. Apparently we keep ‘reverting back to Russball’ and that’s why we’re crap. That’d be Russball that got us promoted in fourth at the first attempt. Actual Russball is a million miles better than this, we actually got results. Still had us down in 20th place and the team looked helpless.

Are you refering to Still? I don't care what he 'wanted to' do, his teams were dreadful and didn't seem to have a clue how they were supposed to be playing.

If there are two or three disruptive players then boot them out, but there are people on this thread talking about getting rid of everyone but two or three players. It's just not realistic.

We’ve already sold or loaned out at least fifteen players this season and signed or loaned in a further ten. We can’t just keep demanding a ‘clear out ‘ every time it’s not going well. A manager needs to come in and get this lot playing somewhere close to their potential. Two years ago we got promoted with a midfield built around Downes, Aribo and Smallbone, in front of a defence featuring THB, Stephens and Manning, protecting Bazunu in goal. That was all orchestrated by a manager who you’d think spends his days off murdering kittens, judging by the opinion of him on this forum.

Imagine this press statement from Spors in summer: "We've been looking at two 20 year old players for the last few months. We had the option of signing either another sub-6ft striker for £1m from Blackpool, he's just scored three goals in League 1, or a 6'4" USA international for £7m, who's just scored ten goals in Bundesliga 2. We're going with option A because it's much cheaper." How do you think that goes down?

I will say with a reasonable degree of certainty that if Ballard was still here he would not be getting into the team ahead of Armstrong and that if he did he wouldn't have come close to his scoring record so far. People are rather weirdly pretending that L1 and the Championship are the same level. They aren't.

Badly. It's now being managed by another idiot. Hope that clears things up.

I agree. There's a lot of hindsight going on here recently for a player who's still never done anything at Championship level. Last year's L1 golden boot went to Charlie Kelman. This season he has as many non-penalty goals as Ross Stewart, so making the step up is hardly guaranteed. Ultimately, Dom needed a fresh start at a lower level. He got it and he's thriving, so fair play to him. If, in summer, we'd signed a man who last season scored three goals in League 1, to spearhead our promotion push to the PL, people on this board would be apoplectic.

Watching the updates on SSN vidiprinter and thought we’d scored, turned out it was actually Stenhousemuir. On reflection, I’ve decided I am now actually going to go and support them instead. Toodles!

That's a story which screams 'going to Inter but agent after a few more quid' to me.

How anybody can look at our current squad and think we need to sell the league's top scorer, when our other three strikers have scored four goals combined, I cannot fathom.

Should be on the fringes of the playoffs as a bare minimum. Now that we’ve got rid of Bazunu, who should have saved all but four goals that we’ve conceded under Tonda, our defence is going to start looking A LOT tighter and the goals against column should pretty much dry up. Obviously we’re still hit and miss up front but given that we’ve scored in all but two games under TE, despite Stewart’s injury and Downs being hopeless, we should have enough to win most of our remaining games.

They're clearing out Iranian airspace of civilian traffic, that's usually a good indication that something's about to go down.