stockportsaint

What service are you all listening on? Just had a look at matchlive, was even prepared to shell out if they had saints games on, but Saints are one of the few clubs they don't cover. Their stuff was so out of date they still had Saints & Brighton in the Championship.

+500 When your bank send you a new switch card, they take great pains to obscure who it's from and what it contains. Saints wait until the match is sold out, publicise it on their website and the local news, then send highly-prized tickets out in envelopes that scream out to be opened up and robbed. I'd like the Ticket Office to justify what the £3 per order was for. I assumed it would be for some kind of recorded delivery (which is actually only 75p) How about sending out tickets in the order they were sold. Rather than leaving a massive pile of tickets to deal with less than 2 weeks before the game. Told the same today when I rang the hotline. +1000 And some of us have ordered tickets for a large group and need to post those tickets on to them. If we get replacements in the post, I'll have to meet 18 people at Wembley before the game to hand them out. +1000 What about those of us who have ordered a large batch of tickets that need to be posted on to their members? This is really worrying - I was told by the ticket hotline today that the last of the tickets were sent out yesterday. Who do we believe?

+1 for this. Would be a (moral) victory of sorts. Think we will manage it too. Reckon we'll end up around the low 70 points mark, with 6th place around 82 points. Even if we did win the next 11 games (you'd get amazing odds on that), we'd finish on 80, probably falling 2-3 points short.

On target for I believe his 5th premiership relegation - which will be a first for the Premiership, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Hrei%C3%B0arsson: Gone down with Palace in 98, Wimbledon in 2000, Ipswich in 2002 and Charlton in 2007. +1 - no point taking aging overpaid players, but worth looking at the pick of their youth. I believe they've already severely cut back on their scouting in the region, so it's likely we'll be doing a fair bit of that in the years to come.

Was anyone on here there when it happened? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hampshire/8566877.stm Not been in for many years, but used to work there when it was The Escape club back in the late 80s/early 90s.

+1 to all of that - Colchester want shooting for the p1ss-poor access to their ground, nearest away boozer to Cov's ground is about 20-30 minutes walk away.

+1 from me, but why not do it next season too?

I must confess I haven't read all 400+ pages of this thread, probably about a third of it overall. Can someone please inform me (and others, no doubt) what the significance is of the 8 weeks I've heard mentioned many times. My guess is that is has something to do with Administration, but I'd like it clarified if poss. I may have missed it but I don't remember 8 weeks being significant when we went into Admin last year. The season before we did - 2003/04. But they only managed 2 seasons in the CCC rather than our 3, hence why this is now their third season in the 3rd division. Guess they flew nearer the sun than we did (Champs League semi final vs FA Cup Final), hence the speedier drop.

quite frankly i am still amazed that clubs can now loan players to each other in the same division. it never used to be allowed, apart from goalkeepers as a special case. Should go back to that rule IMO.

Thank you for enquiring on this business. A member of The FT staff will be in touch shortly. From: Rupert.Lowe@duckhunter.com Telephone number: 01284 559746 Address 8 Duck Mansions Cheltenham Gloucestershire GL1 2BH United Kingdom

And onto my ignore list you go.... I love the Ignore feature, can't believe it took me so long to start using it.

Saturday's game was the first game in a long while where I actually do think the ref might have received a brown envelope either beforehand or at half-time. Either that or he's from Hoylake or Birkenhead. I can find no other reason for him to give *so many* decisions that favoured the home side: - Their goal came from a free-kick that should have never been - He ignored one of the Tranmere players persistently diving in our pen. area in the first half - The Barnard shove in the back in the 2nd half for a nailed on pen. - The Tranmere defender shoving Barnard as they chased a through ball, followed immediately by a back pass which the keeper picked up. - I won't include the Fonte "pen" as it looked to me like either a dive, or he made far too much of a gentle contact. - The Tranmere penalty - looked dodgy at the time from 100 yards away, looked even dodgier on the TV replay.

I do exactly the same, so to avoid the Alpine t0sser's comments, I simply put him and Glasgow t0sser on my ignore list. Tis bliss, like stopping banging your head against a brick wall. The only time I have to read their unceasing negativity is when people quote them.

Scrappy game overall, wasn't sure about the Fonte "penalty" shout, but before that Barnard was clearly shoved in the back in the area as the ball came over. There was also the incident where most Saints fans were clamouring for a free kick as barnard was tussled off the ball by one of their centre backs, and understandably missed the back pass from the CB to their keeper, who picked it up on the edge of the area. The ref missed it too, but it's his job to spot those things. Think it might well be a good shout that he gave their pen to **** of the away fans for the stick we were giving him. Best chant of the day - "de de de der - HMRC"

Yes - it did kick off, inside as well as out. IIRC It was the game that all but relegated them from the Championship, and they took none too kindly to the Saints fans in Blocks 1, 2, 3 who kindly pointed out that they were being relegated. Lots of stuff thrown over the netting, in both directions. Lots of Leeds fans caught not just by CCTV but by the ITV cameras on The Championship the following day.

The day of the Ipswich game back in 2005/6 - we lost 2-0 and after the second goal went in the crowd turned on Rupert Lowe and that was, for me, the beginning of the end for him, until he came back again to "rescue" us from Dulieu/Hone etc. Anyway, that evening we went out on the town for a few drinks, and ended up at the casino at Town Quay. There we were with our £20 of chips on the roulette table, putting £1 or £2 at a time on black, or if feeling adventurous, maybe £5 at a time. On the same table were Kosowski and Hajto spunking our gate fees on the table, putting wads of £20s down at a time to buy more chips. I remember seeing the wads of notes and feeling angry that they got so much cash when they'd played sh1t that afternoon. Hajto was massive, as I recall, easily 6'4", and lots of muscle.

or 0.44 of a Rory Delap - so that would be what, both legs, or one leg and one arm?

you might just have something there yorkie. The most likely CCC vacancy to arise in the near future is the Palace one, as there are strong rumours that Warnock is off to QPR, and Pardew did play for Palace for four years. Although it would seem slightly odd to leave a financially secure league 1 club on the up and in a cup final for a CCC club in admin and big financial trouble and quite likely to get relegated, but the pull of the old club is a funny thing. Of course, this could all be utter bollix and he had a face like thunder due to some family crisis which he got a call about after the game.

looks a bit too much like this for my liking:

To any Manchester/North West based members not going to the Huddersfield home game. You may have heard that Radio Five are staging a live debate entitled "Business in Sport - football in the red". It's taking place in Central Manchester at the Manchester Central Convention Complex (aka GMEX) next Tuesday evening at 8 pm and I've managed to get tickets for it. They're free and I ended up with four of them by mistake, so there are 3 going spare. I'm hoping we get to ask the panel questions, although given the plight of our neighbours down the Solent and our recent history, it'll be difficult not to gloat. More details on it here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00r35t4 Please PM me if you're interested in going. Just a shame Pompey won't now be getting wound up the day before.

Proper Lolage Terry is a grade A ****, but Bridgey knows Capello would pick Terry over Bridgey if it came down to a Mexican standoff between them, so I'm not at all surprised he made this decision. Could be interesting on Saturday. Will find out what City fans think of all this at work tomorrow.

Agree with most of the above - are you sure about the Lizzie bird? She is quite annoying in that Blue Peter presenter patronising-yet-keen kind of way. Found the bloke who did it last Saturday much more acceptable, as he was much less earnest about it all, just read out the emails etc. in a matter of fact way. They certainly do a much better, more balanced job than ITV ever managed, even if you ignore the advert factor.

sounds about right

Now 19 points off playoffs with 2 games in hand. To make up 19 points in 16 games - very difficult, especially when you're chasing top 6 teams who are (mostly) winning. When you're scrapping at the bottom of the League, as we were for many years in the Prem/at the Dell, a couple of wins moves you up a few places and out of trouble, at least temporarily, 'cos most of the teams around you aren't winning. Once you get towards the top half of the table, it's much more difficult to make up ground on the teams above you as they tend to win more. Time to forget about the League and concentrate on the JPT and get the team/squad gelled together so we hit the ground running in August, rather than our usual sluggish start to the season. This squad will be a real force in this division next season, and we'll probably not have two of Leeds, Charlton and Norwich in it, poss. all three. If they're replaced by the current CCC bottom three of Palace, Peterborough and Plymouth, there's a lot less to worry about there - we'll probably be joint favourites to win the division. Of course, if we beat Walsall and Huddersfield in the next week, lots of people will get all excited about the playoffs again, me included. Realistically, to have any chance of making the top 6 by May, we need to have a fantastic March - Huddersfield, Leeds, Swindon and MK Dons - all above us. Win 3 of those (Leeds being the least important), and we make up ground on other contenders. After that we only have Brizzle Rovers and Charlton after Easter as teams above us.

Is it just me, or are tickets for away games getting released later and later - this game should surely have been announced as soon as we got knocked out in the 5th round by you know who. In fact it could have been announced earlier than that, with the proviso that arrangements were subject to the Pompey result. It's getting pretty tight to the game when the game's 11 days away and no announcement. Doesn't leave much time for sorting out post office ****-ups. Anyone know whether this is down to our ticket office or the opposing clubs' offices.