stevegrant

The "rules" on Sunday kickoffs have changed so that non-televised games must kick off at the same time as a televised game so there is no overlap. Used to be that you'd get a 2pm and a 4pm kickoff on TV, but then a handful of 3pm games due to Europa League involvement which overlapped the two.

Shouldn't be supporting this sham of a competition, IMO.

Somerset and Surrey away, Yorkshire and Durham at home left to play. A tough ask to close that gap but reckon two wins and a draw could be enough.

I assume you missed the numerous articles in the last three months where key first-team players (and JWP) signed new long-term contracts? They won't have taken a pay cut to do so...

We've got a game against Watford's fans team tomorrow at BTC Sports Ground on Stoneham Lane, 10:30 kickoff. Still looking for a couple of players, and also a referee - if anyone is available and fancies a game, please let me know.

Given the awful timing of it, I fully expect that other away game to be Everton in January.

I'm not, he's 34.

8th. I think each of the journalists involved put their full league table in as a prediction, and then they work out an average position, rather than just asking the feature journalist to say where this particular team will finish. Considering some of the Guardian's writers - especially Louise Taylor, who probably had Newcastle and Sunderland finishing 5th and 6th respectively last season - that's probably a sensible move.

I wonder how pro-active the commercial department are in this regard - they must have a database of the companies that used to use the corporate facilities, so it shouldn't be difficult to start trying to repair relationships that were broken pretty emphatically under Cortese. Ultimately, regardless of the reasons companies walked away back then, it still has to be a product that people think is worth paying for - £43k a year is insane money for what's on offer, IMO, and I'm not surprised we've hardly sold any for the season on that basis. More than £2200+VAT per game, which you're committed to whether it's Man United or Middlesbrough.

Denmark do seem to have gone with a squad of relative unknowns. There's only 2 players in their squad of 18 with full international caps (10 & 5 caps respectively), the rest generally have U21 or U19 experience, so I suspect Højbjerg and the likes of Christian Eriksen weren't even in consideration for it.

No, it's a knockout draw, but to save time, teams are pre-divided into groups of relatively equal weighting. Then they draw the two 10-team "groups" into their match pairs at the same time (team 1 v team 9, for example), and then the two 12-team groups into their pairs. We had the same last year, when it came to the playoff round there were only 6 teams we could face instead of the 22 unseeded teams we thought we might be faced with. I think it's a combination of time and not having a bowl big enough to fit 22 of their oversize balls - they don't just have numbered balls like we do for the FA Cup, they put slips of paper with the team name inside the ball and spend ****ing ages unscrewing the damn thing to reveal the team.

I'd be more than happy with that. Lovely place. The playoff round draw has been pre-grouped again, West Ham have got a REALLY tough set of potential opponents! Group 1: Seeded - Genk, Olympiakos, BATE Borisov, Midtjylland, Rapid Vienna Unseeded - Astana, Osmanlispor, Arouca, Lokomotiva Zagreb, Trencin Group 2: Seeded - AZ Alkmaar, PAOK Salonika, Slovan Liberec, Austria Vienna, Saint-Etienne Unseeded - AEK Larnaca, Rosenborg, Dinamo Tblisi, Vojvodina Novi Sad, Beitar Jerusalem Group 3: Seeded - Anderlecht, West Ham, Krasnodar, Maribor, Fenerbahce, Panathinaikos Unseeded - Qabala, Slavia Prague, Brondby, Grasshoppers Zurich, Astra Giurgiu, Partizani Tirana Group 4: Seeded - Shakhtar Donetsk, Sparta Prague, Maccabi Tel-Aviv, Gent, Sassuolo, Qarabag Unseeded - Shkendija, Istanbul Basaksehir, IFK Gothenburg, Red Star Belgrade, SonderjyskE, Hajduk Split

Worth remembering it's split in two sections, so for example Man City can't be drawn against Dundalk. Champions Route: Seeded - Viktoria Plzen, RB Salzburg, Celtic, APOEL, Legia Warsaw Unseeded - Dinamo Zagreb, Ludogorets, Copenhagen, Hapoel Be'er-Sheva, Dundalk League Route: Seeded - Man City, Porto, Villarreal, Ajax, Mönchengladbach Unseeded - Roma, Young Boys, Monaco, Steaua Bucharest, Rostov

Or not

What, the 1-1 draw a year ago?

I don't have much of an issue with it being given as a foul, VVD does kick the guy's foot after the ball's gone, but the two angles shown on the highlights suggest it took place outside the area. But hey, it's Mike Dean, and he loves an elaborate penalty award. Just as well it's in a game that didn't have anything riding on it.

Anybody know if this is Espanyol's first XI or a bit of a mix-and-match? They're at Everton on Saturday, so clearly they'll be putting all their effort into that one against such a MASSIVE opponent

Gol Much bigger attendance than I was expecting, given the relatively short notice of the game being arranged.

The new SaintsWeb design will be white on black, just to annoy you

I'm sure the authorities will really sit up and take notice when they look at the attendance figure and gate receipts from their home games.

Huge swing in our net run rate with that win as well, gone from -0.137 to +0.467. Surrey are the only side with a better NRR than us now, so we're well in the mix with a game to play. Somerset have already qualified with a home draw for the quarter-final, so hopefully they take their eye off the ball and we can sneak a win on Tuesday. 1. Somerset 11 2. Essex 9 (in play v Middlesex, probably slight favourites to win) 3. Hampshire 8 - +0.467 4. Kent 8 - +0.458 5. Surrey 6 (+1 game) +1.02 6. Middlesex 6 (in play) 7. Glamorgan 6 - -0.32 8. Gloucestershire 4 9. Sussex 2 Remaining games: Tomorrow - Surrey v Glamorgan Tuesday - Gloucestershire v Essex, Hampshire v Somerset, Middlesex v Surrey, Sussex v Kent

Dawson with another belter of an innings, 100 off 69, including 29 off his last 6 balls. Only 13 dot balls, and his first 50 only included one boundary, so showed the value of finding the gaps in the field and rotating the strike. 316/5 puts us in a strong position on what sounds like a fairly slow wicket.

Alternatively, at the time of Les's first comment about wanting to keep players in-house, the level required of an academy graduate to get in and around the first team was low enough for that stance to be justified, hence players like Reeves, Shaw, Chambers, Isgrove getting fairly regular opportunities back then. Then, as the quality of the first team squad improves, the bar is raised so it's much harder for young players to break through, so we need to have an alternative for them, so loans within easy reach are a decent compromise. Now we're in a situation where we are currently the sixth-best team in the country, so the bar has been raised again. Local loan options aren't viable for the standard we want our young/fringe players to be playing at (Bournemouth are at too high a level now, Pompey far too low and that partnership would never work), so we now need to look further afield. It's called being pragmatic and doing what's best, not just sticking to a comment made four years ago because a few people on an internet forum might pick you up on a change of stance.

Yeah, Cresswell's out for months, so as a result last night they switched their actual right-back Sam Byram to left-back and put Michail Antonio in at right-back - a position he was continually exposed in last season. Not quite. They lost 5-0 away to Artmedia Bratislava in Gordon Strachan's first game in charge, and won the second leg 4-0.

Relevant scores: AZ 1-0 Giannina (Greece) [LATEST] Genk 1-0 Cork City Lille 1-1 Qabala (Kazakhstan) Saint-Etienne 0-0 AEK (Greece) [LATEST] Gent 5-0 Vitorul (Romania) [LATEST] Birkikara (Malta) 0-3 Krasnodar Zhodino (Bosnia) 0-0 Rapid Vienna Admira Wacker (Austria) 1-1 Slovan Liberec [LATEST] Aberdeen 0-0 Maribor [LATEST] Pandurii (Romania) 1-3 Maccabi Tel Aviv AEK Larnaca (Cyprus) [manager: Inigo Idiakez] 1-1 Spartak Moscow Austria Vienna 0-1 Trnava (Slovakia) Zaglebie Lubin 1-2 Sonderjyske (Denmark) So only two of the teams in that list have lost the first leg (both at home as well), but a few still in with a tough second leg. Not Gent, though