Lighthouse

Would be very surprised to see a goalkeeper come in. We’ve got a decent Championship goalkeeper already in the team, a decent PL one out on loan and a reasonable backup in McCarthy. I think we’ll look to reassess in summer depending on which league we’re in. If we do go up it’ll be Ramsdale, Baz and a another Caballero type of signing as third choice cover.

This is our first time playing on the 13th, which is an unlucky number, since we sacked Still. This will be Tonda’s first real test (TM).

Don’t shoot the messenger but my mate texted me to say he’s just seen Mo Salah walking out of the estate agents in Winchester.

Phew! That’s all.

Liquid football!

I’m not sure we were watching the same Mikael Nilsson, if you thought he was not bad. The okayest Scandi who comes to mind is Peter Madsen. Came in on loan for half a season in the Championship, scored a couple of goals, left. The end.

No Pompey in round four then either.

Winnable, I’d rather it was at home.

I wonder which Merseyside team or Crystal Palace away we’ll get this time.

I don’t think you can really call Ings under appreciated when he was once competing for the golden boot with 23 goals. I’d put him in the same category as Lambert and Pelle in that whilst many people were upset to see them go, truth be told we sold them at exactly the right moment.

None of that makes any sense. We sacked Still, Tonda was going to be in charge for the first two games at least. We won them both, no obviously superior candidate was immediately forthcoming so we gave him the next three. He ended up winning four out of five, including a couple of thumpings of reasonably decent teams, so we gave him the job. None of that is stupid, it all seems fair enough to me. We could have gone out and signed someone with 'experience' of the Championship, with different players at different clubs at some point, instead we went with the guy who has experience of winning games with Southampton, right now.

What stupidity do you feel is being rewarded? They gave him the job because he won four out of five games and had us playing some of the best football we’ve played since Ralph. There are many valid criticisms of S.R. But this seems like a reasonably sensible decision based on solid evidence to me.

I swear these commentators have said ‘blues’ about 200 times this half and not once ‘Birmingham’. Am I watching the unlicensed, Pro Evo Soccer 2006 version of this match?

Charlton vs Pompey has been abandoned now due to a medical event in the crowd. Seems a bit odd.

That's very obviously not true though is it. How many times have we played well, only to fail to take our chances, lose and end up saying, "FFS! Same story every time, out play them and lose FFS!" It's one of the longest stanging cliches in football, so don't pretend you wouldn't have minded. Tonda won four games out of five. The one he lost was to a 97th minute goal, when we were missing key players away to the team in third. It's as solid an audition as you can ask for and 12 points in 5 games would be 110 played out over a full season.