Mattster

Just looked at mine and one (out of two) of our adult tickets is also stamped 'concession' but the tickets themselves show full adult price for all tickets including the genuine (child) concessions. I'm not going to sweat it - assume just a bit of random incompetence that they won't be enforcing..

I had something similar happen as I mentioned in earlier post, except I am 99% sure (and my son was watching me do it and backs me up) that when they allocated other seats they were all together - when the confirmation email came through we ended up 3x singles 5 rows apart, which is in contravention of Wembley's rules (12 year old sitting alone). Hoping we can resolve in some way this week but the bottom line is if you are going to limit people to online only you really need to ensure that you have a properly constructed website. Our problems arose when we could remove an accidentally added seat from our order and it wouldn't either check out or remove the seat. Frustrating to say the least!

I had 3 good tickets lined up early but the site glitched out and then said they weren't availble when we went to buy - offered 3x nearby so I clicked OK and have somehow now ended up with 3x singles all separate and 5 rows apart. I have 2 young boys and this has completely screwed the day - I'm not even sure we can go with this arrangement and it will be next to impossible to contact the ticket office to get this sorted out.. I have no idea how this has happened!!

Klopp in the presser earlier - sounds like we can expect the C team on Sunday, if that - which will make things even more of a damp squib IMO.

Also pretty happy tbh - wasn't expecting a price drop at all, and I also fall in the sweet spot of having 2x 11-14 year olds in the family section who are both going to be less than half the price they would have been under last year's pricing structure. Almost tempted to renew now..

Watching Tella play for Burnley I do find myself wondering how many of our other players could thrive given the right coaching and playing environment. I very much doubt he would be performing like this for us, and not necessarily just because of the step up in quality required in the prem. Much as I'd love to see him come back and play for us in the Championship, I actually think it would be an act of inhumane cruelty to deprive him of the chance to play for Burnley in the prem next season. He seems very happy up there, his football is flourishing and the fans love him so I say let him go.

Welcome Orsic, and sorry.

Same. Feeling a bit deflated tbh.

Yep - zero percent chance he was saving that. Always a tough one to call though, he was definitely in line of sight.

If we really did skimp out on him over a couple of million then that really is disappointing!

So annoying. Whenever these games are postponed, they always seem to come back as mid-weekers which, from a selfish perspective, are far worse for me and the kids since we drive a fair way to them - often we have to miss them because of school nights etc. Silly decision IMO.

That makes sense, but they need to get a hurry on!

yeah - sounds weird? If we were going to sell him, we'd accept £X, but we haven't decided if we will yet??

Something must have happened between Che and Ralph? He may not be the best striker in the prem, but he's the best we have and not easily replaced for £15m.

It's also very tight in the middle of the table. At £2m per place, a win today would have seen us up in 10th and potentially £10m better off for the start of next season.. Disappointing.

Pretty clear at this stage that he has no intention of starting AA, ever. If confidence is what his game lacks (big if), he certainly isn't going to get it here. I'm in the start him for the rest of the season camp just to see what happens - playing Long and Broja ahead of him seems pointless to me.

£40m I believe and I agree - they could have him for that. He has impressed a little less as the season has gone on, although I have no doubt he is going to be a very good player. £35m profit is not to be sniffed at. I'm much more concerned about holding on to what we have (Tino excepted) this summer, in particular JWP, KWP, Salisu, Broja I think we need to accept is going. That could leave us running to stand still, as per usual.

I think for this reason they will have to work something out - no doubt they will be able to find a "loophole" that allows away sales without putting money into Chelsea's coffers (how much would they get anyway for organising away ticket sales?). The last thing the police will want is an official "no away fans" policy that everyone knows will be no such thing - just away fans interspersed with home fans. Much harder to control things that way.

Agreed, doesn't sound promising. I'm not sure his heart in is this cup run but I hope I am proved wrong.

True, and I'd love a decent cup run obviously. My main point is that I think we could actually push on in the league - 8th, even 7th (and Europe) might be possible given that we have so many of our toughest fixtures in the rear view mirror. We're flying compared to last season game for game.

I disagree. I think we could surprise a lot of people (including ourselves), with the run of fixtures we have ahead of us. Also, and I know this doesn't/shouldn't really matter, but each PL place is worth about £2m in prize money, and you get less than that for winning the FA cup (maybe a bit more, cumulatively).

The whole topic is fascinating to me, and it does seem as if the more we learn, the more we find that genetics play at least as big a role as the environment in an individual's outcomes. I read this book (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blueprint_(book)) last year after listening to podcast by the author with Sam Harris which was really eye opening. They can get very useful data from identical twin studies, where two people with identical genetics have been separated at birth and brought up in totally different environments. One of the most interesting takeaways from the book for me as a parent was how little difference your own parenting/choice of school etc actually makes to the outcomes for your children. It's still quite a contentious issue, of course, and intuitively most are unable or unwilling to believe it (including myself), but the data doesn't lie.

Certainly makes you think. The Everton figures aren't *that* much lower than what Newcastle can spend, and fair to say they have pretty much wasted all of it, turning a mid-table club into a lower mid-table club in the process. So yes, the Newcastle project could go spectacularly wrong which I am sure would amuse and delight a lot of people. Adding to the risk for Newcastle is the sense that the management seem to have very little idea what they are doing.

I think that's all we can do. I must admit my hopes did get up earlier this month, after the takeover, a few cryptic tweets that seemed to allude to something being in the offing and the hint of a "statement signing". Those hopes have pretty much faded now, especially with the big upsurge in interest from other clubs as well - I can't see us being able to compete in the summer so it is either now or never, and it doesn't look like it is going to be now. I think the best we can hope for is another loan spell, with maybe outside chance of buy with buy-back clause (really only "loan +" IMO), but how likely is that realistically? Perhaps more importantly, we need to start thinking about how we are going to replace Broja next season, since AA is not going to cut it.

A risky strategy IMO, since I think our chances of securing him in the summer are far lower. Having said that, if the rumours about our £25m bid "preparation" are true then we obviously have been "panicked into it", so I wonder what triggered that?