SaintBobby

Italy. The final ended in a 1-1 draw. HTH.

It was a draw. Neither penalties nor extra time count in official W/D/L statistics. E.g. 1990 World Cup semi-final was England 1-1 Germany, which counts as a draw in FIFA stats. HTH

Alphabetical order, I believe. Or possibly trial by ordeal. I don't think they do anything as mad as drawing lots. That would be insane.

I'm sorry not to share the unadulterated joy you're all expressing here. As I see it, Norwich have an away goals advantage to take into the second leg ;-) COYR! Wembley in March and May (x2) please!!!!!! :-)

If you're worried about this, lay off your original stake. You would have made a 17% return on your stake in a week if you'd followed my tip. That's a sensational return on investment.

He's now at close to evens http://www.oddschecker.com/football/english/league-one/coca-cola-league-1/top-goalscorer Commiserations to those who didn't follow my tip. So I was correct it was basically free money as you can now hedge your bets, thereby 100% guaranteeing a return of 1/6 of your initial stake. Alternatively, you could keep your money on Rickie and stand to treble your money if he finishes as top scorer (a prospect that the betting markets rate as 50-50)

That's true, but to balance it off: (a) we will play more than 25 games at home this season (we're already at 29 for certain by my count, and there'll be more if we beat Norwich and/or Luton and/or get to the play-offs) (b) there is revenue over and above ticket sales - programmes, beer, hot dogs, Megastore sales etc. So I reckon 20 quid a head over 25 games is a far guess at an overall income stream - even if average ticket price is about 15 quid. HTH.

Genuine question: is there any intel on whether Norwich will field a strong XI or shove out what amounts to a reserve or youth side?

To return - vaguely seriously - to the OP's question, I'd imagine the break even point is easily being surpassed. Am assuming our salary bill is about the same as last year. I don't know what the break even point was last year, call it X. This year we don't have the mortgage on the stadium, which I gather was costing about £3m pa. Assuming an average cost of £20 a ticket, that amounts to 150,000 tickets we don't need to sell to cover the mortgage. Assuming 25 games at St. Mary's (ok, it's more than this, but some are priced much cheaper than 20 quid a head), this means we can "lose" 4,800 fans a game. So, whatever break even point was last year, it's (X - 4,800) per game this year. Do I get points for showing my working out even if my answer is wrong?

The bookmakers and betting exchanges is the answer to your first question. We're about 5/1 to be promoted, see http://www.oddschecker.com/football/english/league-one/coca-cola-league-1/promotion That's to say, the people putting their money where their mouth is reckon our chances at promotion are about 1 in 6. I'd guess this parcels out as about a c.35% chance of getting to the play-offs and a c. 40% chance of winning the play-offs if we get there. It is worth pointing out - just for the avoidance of doubt - that "getting to the play-offs" is not synonymous with getting promoted. I don't think anyone has explicitly stated that they amount to the same thing, but it is worth noting that even if we make it to the top six, we will still be odds against being promoted. In contrast, we are 7/2 to win the JPT and 4/3 to make the JPT final. That's to say, we have a VERY good chance - at least of a day out at Wembley. So, if you asked me: 1. Would I prefer promotion or winning the JPT? Obviously, promotion. 2. Would I prefer getting to the play-offs or winning the JPT? Hmmm...getting to the play-offs makes sense surely, but there's not an utterly massive amount in it. 3. Would I prefer to beat Norwich tomorrow or Leeds on Saturday? I'd definitely prefer to lose to Leeds on Saturday and beat Norwich tomorrow. That would make us heavily odds on to get to Wembley, and close to evens to win some silverware, whereas losing to Leeds would probably only damage our promotion chances by 2% or 3%, it certainly wouldn't extinguish them. QED. Field our best team tomorrow.

I'm sure he finds it's easy to forgive the misspelling of his name, too.

It's pretty simple if you look at this way: The points deduction is technically applied at the start, but we have the whole 46 games to overcome it. E.g. even if we'd won our first three games 8-0, we'd have still been bottom of the table after 3 games, but surely you'd look at our performances and say "wow, Southampton seem awesome, they will get promoted" not "Southampton are rooted to the bottom of the table, they are in a relegation scrap for sure." In order to try and work out where we might end up at the end of the season, we really need to measure our trajectory. And that means we should see the 10 point penalty as something we need to get rid of over the course of the whole 46 games. Frankly, it's irrelavent whether the penalty was applied at the start of the season, at the end or at 3.27am on Tuesday week.

We'll win by a tidy handful...4-1 or something....

Don't forget lifelongsaint....

Am I only one who thinks this is close to being free money? http://www.oddschecker.com/football/english/league-one/coca-cola-league-1/top-goalscorer Rickie Lambert is 2/1 to end the season as L1's top goalscorer. This means if you think Rickie's chances are better than 33% of ending as League One's top scorer, then this is a good bet. I think he is presently topping the charts with a two goal buffer. I'd put his chances at about 50%+. Get your money down fast. By the time I've finished this post, I may already have swung the odds.

sorry to rain on the parade. great result today and great momentum. Play-offs are achievable. BUT...one negative way of looking at it, is that we started the season 10 points away from the play-offs and now we're 9 points off the play-offs. With nearly half the season gone, we have only made up 1 point. Ok, we started slowly and are now motoring. However, there's a long way to go. Also, it goes without saying that the further we climb up the table, the harder it gets to climb higher still (cos the teams around us will typically be winning not losing). I'd say we're about 50-50 to make the play-offs and about 35-65 to go up if we do make them. So, Im still looking at out promtion odds as about the same long-ish shot as England winning the World Cup in July.

A big advantage for a Premier club is that they can borrow more easily against future revenues. My guess is that they've borrowed against all their future Sky money for the season (which I assume is paid in installments). They have probably borrowed against all future guaranteed revenue streams (e.g. I'd be unsurprised if they have sp*nked their two years of guaranteed £8m parachute payments up the wall already). I think it would be good for football if Portsmuff blew up. Saints were reckless in the years leading to admin, but a large amount of the problem was a monumental infrastructure decision - the new stadium - which became increasingly unfit for purpose as we slid down the league. The skates seem just to have splashed all the money on transfers and salaries they can't afford - it's not as if they've spent more than 5 quid on Fratton Park. F uck em. I don't much care if they live or die - but have a slight preference for them dying.

Simple question, really. I'm v. upbeat about the owner, the management and the players. Let's say Pardew gets offered £5m to strengthen. If you were AP, how would you spend it (serious suggestions only please!) My own view: Sign Trotman, Waigo and - most importantly - Antonio (guesstimate 1.5m -at about 500K each) Put Lallana and Schneiderlin on drastically improved and lengthened contracts with huge buy out clauses (guesstimate £2m) Keep 1.5m in your top pocket in a Wengeresque way. Thoughts?

Just got back. We thrashed them 1-0. Should have been 3-0 at least. We didn't finish as clinically as usual - to put it mildly. I think Bart only had one save to make all night. Papa was awesome apart from the ridiculous number of offisides (maybe as many as 8?). Given his pace it's maddening - he doesn't need to push that far up. We were better when we switched to 4-4-2 after about 30 minutes. I prefer Papa as a centre forward than a winger. As otehrs have said, Schniederlin was utterly amazing. A flawless display - and could develop into our "quarter back". Hammond was a bit poor. Lambert was clearly knackered for the last ten minutes. Antonio is as mad as a goose on stilts, but terrifies the opposition. Jaidi was a brick wall and Perry's positioning and timing was top notch. Overall, am pretty pleased.

I voted for the JPT. I honestly think we're unlikley to get promoted in the League. We may well make the play-offs, but would be odds against going up even then. In thirty years of supporting Saints, I've never seen us win anything. Of course, I want us to get promoted. But in my imagination, we beat Leeds at Wembley to win the JPT in the Spring and then win League One in 2011 with c. 110 points. I think I'd prefer that to winning this year's play off final against Huddersfield and getting knocked out by Norwich in the JPT. Madness? Maybe. The real lunacy is that some people think the FA Cup is the priority!

Mirror image of the Rovers win in round 1. i want a glamour tie in round 3 and then to focus on the real business of the league and the JPT.

I rate him highly, always have done. But I'd be surprised if he leaves in January and I think we might well keep him next season. The last few weeks have been the first time he's ever really put a run of form together, and I don't think he'd yet make the starting XI of any Premiership team. Add to that, we can probably be generous on his wages (certainly compared to most CCC teams).

thanks. Still no word from him.

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the system says u cant accept private messages pm me if u still have tickets. Price stands.