The9

You've missed the point. The wages will go up because better players will come to the Prem for the money rather than playing at big clubs elsewhere. That will be possible because the FFP limits will all go up for each club in line with the increased income across the board - and then the big players already at the clubs will get rises too, because that's what always happens when people re-evaluate their value. What Wenger said about China is that it will further increase the transfer and wage inflation we always see from more money being in the game, rather than "we have to outspend them". The clubs won't come to an agreement on ticket prices because the amount more they get will depend on league position as well as fixed fees, so there's no way of knowing exactly how much more they'll get, or what percentage cut they should make - and there's no way the top clubs will agree to lose, say, £50m when Bournemouth only lose £5m, or whatever. As for boycotts, yeah, sure. In the incredibly unlikely event people actually stand outside and protest rather than the short-term knee-jerkism football fans are known for, no-one would report it for fear of missing out on the cash cow in the future, and nothing would happen as a result anyway. Besides, it's also absolutely in their interests to make football a thing for the people who have the most money to spend on it, and the demographics also suggest family-friendly, middle-class people are way less hassle in terms of policing costs too. Simple economics. The complaints being led by the ever-persecuted scousers despite the fact that 2/3rds of their ticket prices have frozen or reduced can't be helping matters much either.

If that was the case they'd have had us move the segregation behind the goal and insisted we sold the front rows before the back ones already, because anything under capacity and St Mary's looks half full on tv due to people not buying Northam Blocks 43/44 and the front couple of rows of Itchen 1-4.

Unfortunately the Premier League don't give a sh11t what fans think, especially those with that opinion. Those big name, big money players are part of what makes the Premier League popular abroad, and the only way that remains the case is by Prem clubs being able to pay bigger wages - hence the panic over Texeira and others choosing China. The fact remains that ticket prices are negligible compared to other revenue streams and they could still drop ticket prices AND still fork out millions in wages, but the clubs just aren't going to do that until they're made to by either the government or the Premier League (who won't without self-interest).

No, but you said "If Saints were offering 100k a week our recruitment and sale policy would have been very different the last year or two!". Our recruitment and sale policy are unlikely to change much, our wages are.

He posted a pic of his new boots and the message "buzzing to have the boots back on and out there training again" 4 days ago on Instagram, which implied he was training again. Though it might also just be a contractual thing for adidas to plug their amber PrimeKnit X15s.

He's not good enough to start consistently in the Premier League for a Saints team that would finish in the top half on anything he's done so far. Should have a decent career at Championship level though.

In which case it's got sod all to do with "P.C." and everything to do with ensuring we profit from our training outlay if the player is sold in the future. Plus they're probably relatively cheap to retain and they know their chances of breaking into the Prem somewhere are better staying with us and maybe getting a break, than if they drop down permanently and have to work their way back up. It's interesting to see how Klopp has immediately committed to playing Liverpool kids in the FA Cup to get a decent look at them and seems to be persisting with the likes of Ibe and Texeira on a more regular basis. They're still basically where we are in the table, but without us progressing our kids through the first team at the moment.

Presumably by judging the quality of tea it makes.

Ok, genuinely interested in how this is only a thing for online gaming and not other mass-participation events though.

Bit different in L2 when hardly anyone fills away allocations and the allocation itself isn't a restricting factor. Neither Saints nor Arsenal have gone to AFCB so it isn't relevant in that comparison. And even the Skates can't claim their home crowds as part of the away calculation. I get your point though, and there have been away attendances published for FL matches for a while, hopefully it's online somewhere.

2011 wants to know how Mackail-Smith never made it above mid-table Championship with Brighton and has now only scored 3 goals all season for Luton in L2. And as for Seaborne... now in a second season at Partick Thistle via free transfers to then-Championship Yeovil and, having been initially loaned to them, to L1 Coventry.

Bit more hassle with the longer walk from the Theatre Royal though, not that either are massive treks, but the White Swan/Mucky Duck is a lot closer.

Huddersfield came third on 87 in the end, we ended up on 92. Peterborough fourth on 79 but won the playoffs.

But what's it got to do with running a football club?

More like Man U are sliding backwards and dragging Schneiderlin with them - they've played 21 matches with him this season and only lost 2 (inc the one against us), they've played 14 without him and lost 6 of them.

But how does that translate into people actually giving the club money? It's a fairly tenous link to make between people who love online football gaming but haven't worked out there are real clubs they can go and watch, isn't it? The response suggesting clubs might sponsor in return for a share of winnings and sponsorship is a viable revenue stream, but if that's the case, we should also be doing the same kind of sponsorship for traditional other sports with mass participation and big winnings for the very elite players. Like tennis...?

Purchased, via a mate, just now. He was told on the phone that Saints will email out a specific date on which people will need to collect non-posted tickets if you want to avoid the ridiculous postal charge (and we still got nailed about £3 each booking fee anyway).

Usually around this time of year we get a few kinds of "end of season forecasts". There are the ones done by the work experience using an online results/table generator (usually from the BBC, who sensibly don't tell us what THEIR work experience has come up with using it). This is clearly one of those, and done by someone from Portsmouth who hasn't even looked at the league table since either the 10th week of 2012/13 season or this time last year judging by the outcomes. There are ones done by extrapolating results so far, which as you would imagine basically just gives the existing positions in the table but with more points. They're probably more accurate, but don't take into consideration the imbalances in the fixture list which even themselves out over the next few months - e.g. Leicester have Man City and Arsenal away in the next two games, which will give us a much better indication of where they're likely to finish than a table in which most of the other sides have played at least one of those teams more often than Leicester have. Then there are the ones which use algorithms based on previous performance, balanced against current and likely performance, and a whole host of subjective weightings. They're usually the best, but as there's no tried and trusted method of getting this right and the methodology is usually too complicated to discuss, there's not a lot of benefit to those either without the assumptions, which are rarely shared. In short, get to the BBC calculator when it pitches up and have a go yourself, and get loads of others to do so, at least you have a chance with the wisdom of crowds (as long as you don't have too many Man U and Arsenal fans, which is the problem with everything else footballing and crowdsourced). Even then... Leicester and Chelsea?

Because there are absolutely shedloads of potential fans with no club allegiances with a growing interest in football and piles of disposable income we'd happily liberate them from. Plus a huge talent base that might not be delivering due to not having top level coaching guidance.

Genuinely no idea what the benefits of this might be.

Depends on who wins the League Cup and where they'd finished in the League. FA Cup winners who qualify as FA Cup winners go into the EL Group stages, lowest ranked League qualifiers go into the EL 3rd QR. I'm sure it's in the examples in the appendices of that Spanish UEFA document I linked in the Euro thread last season.

MLG does the Saints FM stats, that's all you need to know.

The Europa League winners have never qualified for the CL before this season.

Interestingly(?) the Skates currently have the highest average away attendances in the division. Given that their home crowds are on average twice as large as everyone else in L2, you'd expect that would always be the case. But last season, based on all 23 aways (rather than the sample of 14-ish so far which could be skewed), they were only the 4th largest away following in L2: http://www.worldfootball.net/attendance/eng-league-two-2014-2015/2/ behind Luton, Southend and Plymouth.