stevegrant

The aisle between blocks 40 and 41 is literally full of people for the entire duration of injury time, that must be at least 100 people just stood in the aisle not going anywhere. They are in absolutely no rush to go anywhere at any point. If they were that bothered about getting out first, they'd either move their season ticket nearer to the front (plenty available down there) or squeeze in next to someone near the exit - that way, they actually do make a quick getaway.

My take on it is that if you want to leave early, fine, but just get on with it. The thing that REALLY ****es me off these days is the number of people who "leave" (i.e. go from their seats) and then stand in the aisle all the way down the stand because, actually, they weren't leaving at all, they just wanted to move nearer the exit, and then you're getting in people's way.

Correct. Newcastle (away) -2 Everton (home) -3 Watford (away) +1 - 2nd place in Championship swapped with 2nd relegated team, Burnley Norwich (home) 0 - playoff winner swapped with 3rd relegated team, QPR West Brom (away) +1 Man United (home) 0 Swansea (home) +3 Chelsea (away) +2 Leicester (home) -2 Liverpool (away) +1 Bournemouth (home) 0 - 1st place in Championship swapped with 1st relegated team, Hull Sunderland (away) +3

It's £1 per ticket online.

Brits abroad making ****s of themselves? A novel concept...

As a guide, my season ticket was £628. Buying my seat on a match-by-match basis would cost: 8 Category A games @ £42 each = £336 3 Category B games @ £39 each = £117 8 Category C games @ £34 each = £272 Total: £725, £97 more than the season ticket. Assume that I buy online for convenience, which means a £1 per ticket transaction fee as well, so that's £116 more than my season ticket. It's effectively only those three Category B games that I get "free" with my season ticket. Fortunately, Watford is the only (currently) scheduled midweek home game, but we've got to have at least one game switched to a Monday night at some point this season, although that game might not be at home. The ticket exchange is only available when a game has sold out in advance - I think it's only been used for the Leicester game so far, which sold out at least a week ahead of the game. The pricing - along with a large number of Sunday games so far - has, IMO, shown the perfect balance between supply, demand and cost. I wouldn't be particularly happy paying £42 for an individual home game, but the attendances and the point at which games have sold out suggests they've got it spot on from a maximising revenue and minimising disappointment perspective.

Those games would more than likely have sold out to season ticket holders with plenty of aways anyway, so they probably won't even get down to members.

By their very nature, members are going to be those who are unable - for whatever reason - to get a season ticket and attend every home game. As a result, they're not all going to be buying for every home game, so of course it makes sense to sell more than there are tickets available for any one game if they can do so. There are literally no words in the membership terms and conditions that state that buying a membership guarantees a ticket for a particular game. The only way to guarantee that is to buy a season ticket.

Unfortunately, that is no longer the case. One of the things that came from the creation of the "elite" list of referees who would be full-time professionals is that the Premier League is able to effectively tell them how to referee instead of the FA, FIFA or IFAB (the committee that effectively "sets" the laws of the game). A few years ago, a pre-season briefing from the PL to PGMOL (the organisation that runs the professional referees in this country) said that too many top players were getting themselves sent off because the referees were applying the laws too literally, and that referees needed to do as much as they could to ensure the spectacle of games weren't ruined by top talent missing games through suspension or having taken an early bath.

It also didn't always serve as an advantage to the team with the free kick. If the original foul was 30 yards from goal, it gave the attacking team a genuine shooting opportunity as there's space for the kicker to get the ball over the wall and back down again the other side, whereas the defending team knew that if they delayed the taking of the kick, they'd take a booking and the ball would be marched 10 yards closer to goal, giving the kicker only one half of the goal to realistically aim at.

Sold out. No idea if they'll be getting any more in.

I think Fox's less-than-enthusiastic attitude towards it is probably a combination of having not paid very much for the rights in the first place, and the resulting viewing figures being largely rubbish. In fact, for the first five "gameweeks" this season, they averaged just 42,000 viewers per match. That's fewer viewers than can fit in more than half of the stadia in the Bundesliga, from a country home to more than 300 million people. Whether those viewing figures are caused by the league not being that attractive to Americans or Fox not pushing their coverage very well is open to debate - suspect there's a bit of both - but having PL games on NBC at more or less the same time just kills it. I saw last night that so far on NBC, our games alone have attracted average viewing figures of more than half a million people, and we have the 4th-highest average (we were second before the last round of games!)

I don't necessarily think that by reducing ticket prices you would automatically see an improvement in the atmosphere at games. You only have to look at the Villa game as an example - £12 a ticket and the atmosphere was crap. There needs to be a willingness among those who do end up in the stands to do something.

The Bundesliga is currently pulling in €628m a year, which is around £450m. That will rise to around €800m from next season (£570m). Meanwhile, the PL figures are currently £1.8bn a year (£1.06bn from the domestic rights, the rest from overseas), with the new domestic deal more or less the same as the combined total from the current deal. Taking Swiss Ramble's very conservative estimate of a 30% increase in overseas rights (domestic increased by around 70%), that takes the annual total to £2.8bn, nearly five times larger than the Bundesliga's income.

And that's a conservative estimate, based on the value of the overseas broadcasting contracts only increasing by 30% - the domestic one has increased by 70% starting next summer, and the overseas ones have generally increased at a faster rate than the domestic ones in recent years.

Pretty much exactly this. £4m just happened to also be the figure Bournemouth required to fit within the acceptable losses in the Football League's FFP rules that season...

I'm sure I read years ago that AC Milan refused to sign a player on the strength of a dental assessment, as they felt he would be highly susceptible to injuries.

On that basis, I assume you think Fonte was crap last season then?

As mentioned, you said we have a weaker squad than last year, and yet you have only compared our first team. Yes, our first-choice XI is almost certainly marginally weaker than last season, but the whole squad has been improved significantly. Players who were regular starters in the last two seasons are only making the bench this season, and there are some players who have played regular first-team football for us who sometimes don't even make the bench. In past seasons, we would only name 16 genuine first-teamers in the squad and fill with two youth players, and if we got two or three injuries at once we looked stretched to breaking point. Simply not the case anymore, and that shows genuine progress with squad depth.

So it seems as though the attitude continually prevalent at Pompey even extended as far as the stadium announcer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-34676743 Assume he'll be offering to pay 4p in the pound of that fine...

Christ, shows the fluctuating fortunes of both sides in that period that they had 61 different players in 9 games, while we also got through 45.

That soon??

Don't think Boruc has played a cup game since he signed for them, so that would have been planned regardless of last weekend's howlers. Surman's played 90 minutes in every league game so far this season (but 0 minutes in their three Capital One Cup games), so no reason to think he won't start on Sunday.

More pages, apparently.

That seems more like "More from the 'Football existed before the crossbar ceased being a bit of tape' department"