Lighthouse

Their demands/aims are the same as they’ve always been, the total subjugation of Ukraine under the control of Moscow. It’s quite clear from what the Russians have said so far they haven’t deviated from this at all. In short the want to keep everything they occupy right now and keep Ukraine isolated and defenceless ready for their next assault when they’ve amassed sufficient forces along the new border. It’s quite clear from Lavrov’s stance on the free part of Ukraine that he has absolutely no intention of allowing any kind of security guarantees. Other than a load of hot air from Trump and his cronies, absolutely nothing has changed. The only card they can really play of any consequence is some sort of crippling economic blackmail which would force Kyiv into total surrender and would be one of the most disgusting manoeuvres of any US government in history.

It’s so weird that Lavrov won’t accept any NATO peacekeeping troops in Ukraine as part of a ceasefire deal. If Russia gets to keep the parts of Ukraine they occupy, why on Earth would that matter?! Russia definitely isn’t going to attack the rest of Ukraine again in the future. Definitely not.

Pulling the fluff off the filter in the tumble dryer.

Rusk was in charge for two games. The first half against Liverpool in the cup was as bad as anything we’ve played this season. Fulham we got a backs to the wall 0-0 in a game where they wasted enough chances to beat us three or four - nil. No manager who would ever realistically come here is going to do anything other than lose pretty much every game with our squad. Even the unrealistic names thrown around, like Moyes and Potter, wouldn’t do much better than we’ve done with RM and IJ.

They could have bought him for much less than €50m. They chose not to.

I certainly don't disagree that Ramsdale hasn't exactly been amazing but I don't think Alcaraz is what we're missing.

Fernandes is, by a long way, our player of the season. Alcaraz's assist came from a Palace throw in to nobody, which he squared to Beto. The goal was a rebound which fell to him eight yards out. He'll have to do a fair bit more for me to wish we had him in the team instead of MF.

So you’d prefer to have Alcaraz in this team, with McCarthy in goal?

I'm not sure I'm reading this correctly, are you saying Fernandes wouldn't have been much of a loss to this team?

Have we tried four at the back since being 3-0 down after 14 minutes against Spurs? We seem to be compensating for the fact that most of our defenders and our central midfield are, to put it mildly, sh*te.

He looked poor in the Championship, Juventus didn't rate him and nobody in the PL wanted to buy him in summer. Selling him allowed us to buy Ramsdale and we've got Fernandes in his position, who is a far better player. Let's not get too excited because a rebound fell to his feet eight yards out against Palace.

Everton have always had far better players than we have, their problem was Dyche. Whilst some like to pretend he's a no nonsense, old school, tough pragmatic manager who's teams are well organised and hard to beat, in actuality he's just a bit crap. That's Burnley and Everton he's now taken to the brink of relegation, only for them to have a massive improvement in form when he was sacked. Juric and Martin between them have scraped together nine points. An absolutely excellent manager who's highly unlikely to come here might have managed fourteen or fifteen but ultimately, we're still finishing bottom.

I don’t know why anyone would want him out or what anyone thinks he’s supposed to be doing with these players. Whether he’s the man to take us up next season I don’t know but you can’t blame him for this.

It’s going to take more than slutty nuns to win today. I’ll try a lucky neutron star.

James Bree, Nathan Wood and Will Smallbone all starting a Premier League football match together. What a time to be alive.

Indeed. People need to be more pacific with they're grammar.

Lhuandre Pretorius replaces McDermott as our overseas batsmen for the Hawks. Technically we could have both but you'd imagine we're after a bowler instead.

TBH I’ll be quite happy to see him back next season. He’s a perfectly decent Championship keeper and it’s mildly amusing to watch the same people throwing an absolute tantrum at every goal we concede. The fact that people are piling into him now, playing his first competitive football in nearly a year, behind a clearly crap defence, just shows how much people want to hate him.

You’d have to be rather more naive to believe that: a) Ukraine would negotiate a deal which literally gives them nothing. It’s basically a piece of paper that says, "we’re okay with everything Russia has done." b) Russia will stop fighting when they’ve been officially rewarded for what they’ve done so far but haven’t got everything they want yet.

You’ve been saying this for three years now. I’ll believe it when both sides actually agree to a treaty and it holds. You seem very keen to tell everyone you’ve been proven right, just because the old man who thinks air traffic controllers are blind, black, lesbian psychiatric patients says he wants to talk to Putin.

Why would Ukraine agree to any kind of deal in which they were not involved in any kind of negotiation and get nothing out of? This isn’t a negotiated settlement, it’s simply a case of whether or not Ukraine can continue to defend itself without US military aid.

This, in a nutshell. We’re still nowhere nearer to any actual agreement between Russia and Ukraine. Trump will no doubt meet up with mad Vlad, as it’ll look good for both of them politically, and agree to a bunch of stuff that Ukraine will have no desire to accept. What it’ll come down to then is whether the rest of Europe, without the involvement of the USA will continue to help Ukraine on the battlefield.

No you wouldn’t.

I understand the frustration but I’m not buying this bit. The players are trying, they’re just extremely limited in their ability.

I’d say most flights are ‘low level’ when they’re taking off TBH.