EssEffCee

Sunderland finished 4th last season not 6th. It's been years since a 6th placed team won them, Blackpool maybe?

No 3rd and 4th still play in a two legged semi as normal. The other 4 just have to play a one off game to decide who they play.

National league is slightly different I think with all ties being one leg with higher placed team at home.

Agreed mate, I didn't particularly want a pie or programme but it's the principle of it that some fans are more important than others in the club's eyes. It'll all be down to money, guarantee they still made a profit from those fans despite the freebies. And if they do Preston based on x amount of official coach travels it'll be the same. Reminds me of the fans forum when someone asked why the club didn't do anything for the fans anymore like free badges or a letter for doing every away etc. and Parsons replied with stuff they make money from like the fanzones.

How does it benefit those teams? They'll still play a two leg semi same as now.

Don't give them ideas. I dread to think what will earn points in this new loyalty scheme... It's like at Boro when people on official coach got a free programme and pie, because nobody else who made the 600 mile round trip on the first weekend of January deserved it of course.

Not sure that's that unpopular anymore. Most people I speak to in the real world don't really want us to go up this season.

Writing that post reminded me of something else for this thread actually: That 4 season run of top 8 finishes including Europe and a cup final has had a long term negative impact on our fanbase, giving us an entitlement which wasn't there before. I don't think we'll recover from that either without an extended stay outside the top flight.

Spot on. The points comparison to the season before is daft due to the amount of players we lost as you point out. People always say we were dull but we weren't away from home for much of the season. Didn't we score 4 goals in back to back away games at one point? Can't imagine we did that too often during the recent decade in the top fought. Basically it amounted to that stat about failing to score in our last x home games but we did miss two penalties in that run which could have turned 0-0's into 1-0's. Even so to judge a manager poorly based on a dull end of season run is ridiculous. Hardly the first midtable side to be on the beach towards the end of the season, especially after playing so many games having been in Europe and reached a cup final.

Stoneham would be a terrible location for a ground. The only good thing about St Mary's is the location.

The allez allez song is worse than the baby shark one for Angus Gunn.

QPR and Leicester are the other ones which come to mind.

The slow version of OWTS is shite and should be limited to 2/3 outings per game.

Our away support mostly is terrible these days I find, especially when numbers are good. Expecting Fulham to be the same next week, maybe even more so with the Sunday midday KO.