stevegrant

Our own capacity is irrelevant here. Looks like we've sold around 1500 so far, assuming all the grey seats have been sold and not just held back for some unknown reason - a couple of the blocks have suspiciously large sections of entire rows that aren't available when the trend is usually for blocks to fill up from the aisles inwards. For the first morning, I think that's pretty decent, especially considering the date, time and TV status of the game are not yet fixed, and a lot of people won't be able to buy until they get home from work this evening.

Exactly my thoughts too...

Had we charged £25 for the original tie, I doubt anybody would have batted an eyelid about that, or then the replay being charged the same amount. It's only in the context of the fact that Saints did a season ticket holder offer that their pricing now looks in any way nonsensical.

All their tickets were sold to season ticket holders. From the Tottenham Hotspur Supporters Trust statement on the pricing:

I'm led to believe that we actually charged Spurs £20 a ticket, as per the "non-ST holders" price in home areas, but Spurs themselves decided to subsidise tickets for their fans.

Noticeable on the article on the OS that we emphasise that the prices are set by Spurs, so you suspect we're not overly impressed either. That said, I'm sure in the past that FA Cup ticket prices had to be agreed between the two clubs because the revenue is shared... Suspect 5690 is the maximum Spurs would give us on a "sale or return" basis, i.e. we wouldn't have to pay for any unsold tickets. Suspect that's probably a fair allocation, though, I'm not convinced we'd sell 9000 at 10 days notice, unless of course tonight's draw gives us Pompey away again

The Premier League era began in 1992, Charlton returned to the Valley that same year and didn't gain promotion to the Premier League until 1998.

Twice, we lost in consecutive years, 1-0 and 3-0. The 3-0 was the Forster air kick game, the first PL defeat there was a Yohan Cabaye goal from distance. Palace are the team we have the most PL away wins against, with 6. Selhurst is obviously our favourite away ground, having also won there 5 times when Wimbledon were playing home games there. We only have two grounds where we have a 100% record in the PL era: Bradford City (2 from 2) and Reading (1 from 1). We have 5 grounds where we have lost every PL visit: Barnsley (1), Birmingham (3), Oldham (2), Portsmouth (2) and Swindon (1) Plus a load of others where we've not won in the PL era: Arsenal (21 ), Burnley (5), Charlton (6), Derby (6), Wigan (1)

Well it happened last season, we rather stumbled over the line after that win against Wolves.

And that's despite everyone knowing that the upper tier there is about 3 miles from the pitch. Probably fair to assume that the only reason we've got 3000 for that game is because it's basically impossible to segregate that area to a smaller number, so West Ham will offer the full 3000 on a sale-or-return basis (i.e. no risk to the away club if they don't sell out) to everyone.

The competition rules state they'd have to offer us up to around 9,000 (15% of capacity), but it would be fair to assume that a significant part of that big allocation would be on a guaranteed-sale basis (i.e. the club would have to pay for them all regardless of whether they sell them or not), so there's pretty much zero chance they'd actually take that allocation.

Sort of. The club isn't allowed to charge the away team more than they charge home fans for the same type of seat. If they're doing a "season ticket holders for a tenner" deal for us, they have to offer the same to Spurs. Fair to assume that all of their 5300 allocation will be sold to season ticket holders, hence the £10 price for them. As for away allocations, I had a lengthy phone call with the ticket office manager a few weeks ago when the Palace tickets went on sale (I'd bought in block T getting an unobstructed view, only to find that the club cancelled my ticket and moved me right into the corner because they'd incorrectly put the full allocation on sale when we'd not taken it) and they have their reasons which I would say are flakey at best.

Wonder whether the players have decided they've been playing well in that away kit and so would prefer to play in that when they get the chance.

Also wrong, unless you're somehow assuming that the entire Leicester lineup failed to complete a single pass to a team-mate.

It's still wrong. We only accounted for 42% of the total possession of the game, our passing accuracy value only reflects our own attempted passes, it takes no notice of the 58% of overall possession Leicester had. If "21% of our possession found a home", our passing accuracy would have been 21%.

I'm pretty sure 52% passing accuracy means that only 52% of our passes were accurate, tbf.

I'd say that it's not a "this season" thing, tbh. We've been strong on the road for a while now, going back to the Pochettino and Koeman years. Looking back at our away record since promotion: 2012/13: 3 wins, 16 points, 13th best record 2013/14: 7 wins, 26 points, 8th best 2014/15: 7 wins, 23 points, 9th best 2015/16: 7 wins, 27 points, 7th best 2016/17: 6 wins, 22 points, 7th best 2017/18: 3 wins, 17 points, 10th best (amusingly still better than Arsenal that season) 2018/19: 4 wins, 16 points, 15th best 2019/20: 5 wins, 17 points, 5th best It's only really last season and our first season back up where we had a poor away record, and I think it's fair to say that the style Ralph has us playing is particularly well-suited to playing away from home where the opposition is more likely to come and attack us. At home, supposedly weaker teams will sit deeper and not be too concerned with having much possession, which means we don't get the opportunity to win the ball from them in good areas as often. Comparing our away record with our home record in each season is interesting: 2012/13: 6 wins, 25 points, 14th best record 2013/14: 8 wins, 30 points, 8th best 2014/15: 11 wins, 37 points, 5th best 2015/16: 11 wins, 36 points, 6th best 2016/17: 6 wins, 24 points, 17th best - quite the drop-off there 2017/18: 4 wins, 19 points, 19th best 2018/19: 5 wins, 23 points, 14th best 2019/20: 3 wins, 11 points, 17th best So the immediate and knee-jerk analysis is that, actually, our away form has been relatively constant over the last 7-8 years, and it's been pretty decent. Our issues have been caused by our home form that dived off a cliff in the second half of 2016/17 (two home wins from Christmas onwards, before that was W4 D3 L1) - get that right and we'll be competitive again in this league, IMO.

Lots of ifs and buts. If our game at Nottinghamshire hadn't been rained off for 3 and a bit days, we'd have still been in the title race in the last few games. Things may have turned out very differently. Also, if Alex Hales hadn't been an absolute dickhead, we'd have had James Vince available for most of the summer.

The horse incident took place before the game - it's still daylight in the video.

Worth noting for reference that the Newcastle fan who punched a police horse after a game against Sunderland was jailed for a year and given a 6-year football banning order.

Kyle Abbott has signed a new 3-year contract

If anybody was still looking for tickets, the FA have released just over 100 Category 1 tickets (Kingsland blocks 29, 30 and 32, and Itchen block 9, priced £55) on their ticket portal: https://ticketing.thefa.com

Your payment appears to be marked as "pending" until the 22nd, for some reason.

You appear to be a Full Member, so it seems that it does... *shrugs shoulders*

How did you make the payment?