stevegrant

Yeah I know - I'll sort it tomorrow if I get a spare 5 minutes

I'm on a 5-year fixed rate for another 3 years, but I'm not in the slightest bit bothered regarding the interest rate drop. I know exactly how much I'm going to be paying out for at least the next 3 years on my mortgage, rather than worrying about whether the Bank of England will decide to help homeowners or savers next month.

As with all credit agreements under the Consumer Credit Act, you should have a 14-day period after you sign the contract where you can cancel it.

And therein lies the problem the game in this country faces. It's the "success now, ******** to what might happen in a few years' time or even further into the future" ethos Sky and the Premier League has built. For as long as people are happy for their clubs to be spending money they very clearly don't have, the situation will continue to fester, until one day a Premier League football club is suddenly going to be faced with ruin because they can't afford to pay the wages anymore. Only then will the other clubs wake up to the truth of the situation, by which time it may be too late for them as well. You only have to look at the "la la la, I can't hear you" fingers-in-the-ears attitude of Richard Scudamore to see why the clubs aren't all that bothered right now, but it'll be interesting to see what happens when the next TV deal is up for renegotiation. If the rights remain as a package, i.e. all of the clubs are part of the same deal, I am pretty sure the overall amount offered by Sky, Setanta and whoever else wants a piece of the action will be a fair bit less than the current contract. Sky's profits fell from £724m to £60m last year, so despite being the biggest revenue-generating broadcaster in the country, the profits have gone through the floor, so they're not likely to be able to afford to increase their current spend, and may even have to cut back. It's possible that the bigger clubs might see an opportunity to cash in, although with the PL constitution stating that 14 clubs have to vote in favour of policy changes like that, it won't be easy for them to push the deal through, but it's not entirely out of the question that they will want to negotiate individual contracts with the broadcasters like they do in other countries. That would mean massive amounts of money to the big 4 (and maybe Spurs, Newcastle, Man City, Villa, Everton), and the square root of **** all to the rest, because, let's face it, unless you're a fan of any of the smaller clubs, there aren't many people who are interested in watching the games involving those teams.

Well of course it's not a problem - he still gets paid his salary regardless. I cannot wait for the day when the **** really hits the fan and one Premier League team gets into real financial trouble. I wouldn't want that club to go out of business, because they've all got history and heritage, but it would act as the wake-up call the likes of Scudamore need. Sadly, I fear Scudamore will have already "earned" his fortune by that point...

From my point of view (I have no kids), their aims are entirely worthy, but the methods they are famous for are a bit of a double-edged sword, and they're in a catch-22 situation. On one hand, they need to do something that gets their cause a bit of media attention, but on the other, some of the things they've done could (and is) be perceived by many to show exactly why they've not been given as much access to their children as they feel they deserve. Some would argue that breaking into Buckingham Palace (in an age of tightened national security) and climbing onto a balcony doesn't paint a particularly good picture of a responsible father. Anyway, that's a slight tangent. Good luck.

But if we were in the Premier League we wouldn't be financially crippled and be forced into playing the youngsters (a number of whom are good enough already for the Championship, a number of whom aren't, IMO), so no argument on those lines is ever going to produce any sort of decent comparison because the environments are almost the polar opposite.

I thought you had a season ticket there anyway?

Which, knowing what the FA are like, will involve them asking the clubs to provide them with information about who owns them. They won't get much co-operation from the clubs because it's not in their interests to do so, and the FA will shrug their shoulders and say "we're satisfied that all of the owners of our member clubs have the club's supporters, community and future at the forefront of their thoughts", and it'll all be brushed under the carpet. After all, bugger all's been done about the Quest/Lord Stevens bung inquiry because there wasn't any legal obligation on the part of those involved to co-operate, let alone hand over any personal documents.

Top 3. AC Milan will presumably win the group. Heerenveen put 5 past Ajax last week, so they won't be easy opposition. The other two are a bit "meh" though. Man City's group looks particularly tough.

A bit of clarification... http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/2008/10/07/ticket-office-upgrade/

Cheers everyone, had a good weekend (Coventry game aside) and a pretty good day yesterday considering I still had to go to work!

Dunno about that, Lee Hughes ran away from the scene of his death by dangerous driving crime but only served 2 of a 4-year sentence.

Poor finishing cost us just as much as poor defending tonight. We had more than enough chances to get something from the game, but you can't fail to mark people like we did tonight and expect to take any points.

How many times do you need it banging into your skull that, for as long as I have been an admin on here, not a single person has ever been banned because of their views. Rules have been put in place in an attempt to keep discussion civil. We don't expect everyone to agree on every issue that's discussed, that would be boring and would defy the point of a forum like this, but we do expect people to at least show a modicum of respect for other posters, regardless of whether you agree with them or not. That is why you were banned under one of your previous guises on the old forum, because you were abusive and rude towards anyone who disagreed with your point of view. I don't remember ever saying that I won't listen to peoples' views. I'm always willing to listen to opinions about the forum and how it's run, but it's entirely up to me whether I then act on them. Do you honestly think Hilton Hotels, an international corporation, are going to change their policy off the back of your single complaint? You know as well as I do (or at least you should do) that they've probably got a set of pre-defined "thank you for your comments" letters which they drop the customer name and hotel name into a space and hope that settles the matter. If it was a really bad ****-up, someone might get a bollocking and they might include a voucher as well for goodwill, because it doesn't cost them anything. Do you seriously believe that?? The diversity of opinions on the main board is still as wide as ever. The overall number of posters is down since we moved to the paid subscriptions, but in my opinion, the actual quality of posts has risen significantly. People are much more careful when there's money at stake (even if it is only a fiver), which I believe has led to many more "considered" replies than before when people would bash the keyboard in response to someone's comments and then all hell would break loose. As I've said before, this forum is NOT a democracy. How we run the forum is entirely up to us. We're happy to listen to peoples' opinions, but it's still entirely up to us whether we alter the way we run things. There are plenty of "minority" views available to view on the forum, they don't tend to hide, and like every other view, they are tolerated by pretty much everyone on the forum.

Er, since when has the forum ever been a "democracy"? Have you (or anyone else) ever been asked to vote on who runs the forum or how it's run? A handful of us run the forum, and we do so as we see fit. That has never changed, even back in the old Saints Forever days. If we decide we don't want somebody posting on the forum, that's our prerogative. As it is, we try to be as fair and even-handed as possible, but, quite simply, you are very very wrong if you have got it into your head that this forum is a democracy. Put it another way, I wouldn't expect to have a say in how you ran your own website, so why should you expect to have a say in how we run ours?

At least you can rely on one site to get its facts right...

or David Icke...

I'd suggest you check it again then. I'm pretty sure that, when I signed up for the loyalsaints forum god knows how many years ago, it didn't mention anything about being sent e-mails "asking for help" (let's face it, you and I both know it's advertising, albeit subtly worded) to further a commercial venture that wasn't even close to being in your thoughts when you launched that site/forum. As an example, it's like Rupert Murdoch using all of his contact details from Sky Digital customers to advertise The Times and then turning around and saying "well they're linked because they're part of the same group of companies". News International simply wouldn't get away with it, simply because BSkyB and whatever limited company The Times officially comes under (Times Publishing or something like that, I think), are different entities. Whether there's a link in ownership is irrelevant. Customers aren't necessarily aware of that link (and almost certainly don't care), and I'm sure they'd get pretty ****ed off if they got e-mails from Sky advertising a completely different product.

Dyer was reportedly on £5k a week, and I'd be stunned if Robertson and Smith are on even half that between them.

Also consider the fact that he might just not fit into the system Millwall are playing this season, rather than him not being good enough. After all, they were happy to pay £150k for him last summer.

Might be worth pointing out that I believe Saints DO get a small percentage of the away ticket sales, by the way...

He played for Millwall's reserves against our second string on Wednesday night, so someone obviously liked what they saw in that game. I'm also intrigued by the need for more midfielders when our need is certainly defensively.

He was arguing with the ref for about 20 seconds, presumably aiming a torrent of abuse at him, and then eventually got fed up and threw the ball at him