The9

Can't sell ticket? Here's the amount we're selling your ticket for sent to your account via BACS. If you want you can set how much you're prepared to sell it for so there's even a chance you might make a profit (because the market will determine the value). We'd rather facilitate the stadium being full as new customers spend more on merchandise anyway and we might encourage someone to become a longer term fan, plus we'd like to thank you for your commitment to the club this season, so don't worry about the negligible admin cost of an online resale. In short, I buy an ST, I control how much it's available for resale for. Obviously there's a side-effect of people potentially only buying to resell game by game instead of actually going, but there's absolutely nothing stopping them doing that in practice at the moment and there's no viable profit margin that makes it worthwhile on a regular basis.

Well yes, but in the event you can't go, it has a value per game which is less than the club is selling it for to someone else, and more than you're getting for it if they do (plus they tie you to having to spend £600+ to buy an ST the following year to benefit from it). The club's also making money off you for helping them make more money from merchandise and food. Plus I realised there was a typo in my original prices and actually it's £513 not £537 you'd get back so you're basically losing out on a fiver compared to the average value of the match on your ST every time you do it. There's no reason to use the service at all unless you absolutely can't find a single person you can trust to take on your ST for one match and pay more than the low value the club offers in the event it sells. Agreed that it's better than StubHub making the money, but that's about it.

When the margins between success and failure are so slim, and player moods are the most significant element of performance that can't be controlled, a few thousand a week to potentially raise the spirits before a match of a group who cost millions could be the shrewdest investment going. Not to mention the message it sends about rewarding loyalty if the club don't treat him with respect. Cortese saw some of this loyalty picture and built up his cult with promises of Champions League to a small core of players, but their loyalty seems to have been to him not Saints. At the same time his treatment of the likes of MLT and Benali and the failure to appreciate how their presence could benefit the club said all you needed to know about how well others were treated when they didn't have an immediate tangible benefit to the goals in mind.

It think it's a pretty crappy version of a ticket exchange, you get a credit against next year's season ticket. Fans are only going to use this if they can't find a mate to give them a chunk of cash which is more than the "per game" cost but less than buying an actual match ticket. The refund values make it even worse. If I bought a Northam ST, cost £625 (I think) - and couldn't go to any matches, assuming this was available for all matches in a season for the purposes of the calculation and they all sold out, I'd only get 8*£30 + 3*£27 + 8*£24 = £513 back. You lose nearly £100 in "credit" against the following year's ST. Plus, that's assuming 1) they can sell your ticket - as you don't get a credit if it isn't sold 2) that the game has already sold out in order for this to be available 3) you don't change your mind after the ticket is sold, in which case you have to buy another seat at full value - for a match that's already by definition sold out to begin with. I can see this one having the staying power of the QJump app, priority queues and contactless payment bands (though contactless cards are at least a thing).

I'd love to build up to the big Newport v Portsmouth match this week, but given that County are solidly the worst team in the division even I can't try and spin anything other than an away win at Rodney Parade on Saturday. Thanks to the foresight of... someone... the match is being played at the same time as Wales v South Africa in the Rugby World Cup, and much as I'd like to claim that won't make any difference to the home attendance, it might. So with the sexy new away end at Rodney Parade open for the first time (away capacity 1285), there's actually the possibility of a buoyant Skate side and their glory-hunters having as many as County have in the ground for some of the game. Unless of course they don't sell out the 1285 tickets for an away match where they should go top of the table which is only 2 hours away. There are still away tickets available. Weirdly, the Skate first team played Cardiff's development squad (squeaked a 2-1 win) earlier today. But then Newport have just signed two of Cardiff's best U21 prospects on loan and they didn't play, so that's a rather unrepresentative version of their U21s anyway.

Not really, I'm merely saying that no matter what we do we're still going to look good compared to what the Skates did with relation to the tax revenue lost from their activities.

We parked within half a mile on some waste ground off Anfield Road, wasn't free but was watched and didn't take THAT long to get away afterwards. Judging from Google maps it was behind the Abbey Lawns Nursing Home 9 Anfield Rd, Liverpool L4 0TE, UK. 53.433061, -2.965683 https://www.google.co.uk/maps/dir/Abbey+Lawns+Nursing+Home/Anfield+Stadium,+Anfield+Road,+Liverpool/@53.4331666,-2.9657137,77m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x0:0xb72fe4d43930c875!2m2!1d-2.9657568!2d53.43292!1m5!1m1!1s0x487b21654b02538b:0x84576a57e21973ff!2m2!1d-2.96083!2d53.4308294!3e2 As for paying the locals, yeah, my dad used to do that in the 1980s when he went. "Mind chya cyaa fer a kkkkkhquid mistuh?". Inflation and all that.

I think we're giving a boneheaded statement too much of our time here.

Fernando Torres for Chelsea between 19 Jan and 30 April 2014 by any chance?

I watched Ireland and Scotland's matches at home, Bosnia v Wales in a pub in Nottingham and haven't seen a second of Lithuania v England even now. It was the very definition of pointless. I do hope Steve Grant enjoyed his trip though, the daft sod. Mind you, I was in Nottinghamshire for two League Two matches...

Everyone and his dog knew Ancelotti was being spoken to about the job, he and Klopp were the two clear favourites with the bookies from Saturday evening onwards and that's what was being reported immediately after the sacking. The prevalence of Klopp-only coverage from Monday suggests it was known pretty rapidly that he would be the choice which suggests Ancelotti either wasn't interested or the whole "interest" thing was a SkyBet-boosting angle. I'd be more narked about Redknapp digging Rodgers out a couple of weeks before his sacking in the paper in a much worse attempt to agitate and show his availability.

Which is exactly what Clyne, Lallana et al were saying. Not something akin to "I am definitely staying for the duration of my contract and not interested in leaving".

You can, all you've got to do is be a tangibly much worse team which struggles to qualify. FWIW 1997's draw in Italy to get to France '98 was much more exciting even as a dire 0-0 draw because of the stakes, but how was 2007's defeat to Croatia on the "excited to qualify" scale? Don't worry, they're building up to it.

Former England captain Terry Butcher was sacked by comfortably-bottom-of-League-Two Newport County two weeks ago, just to give a modern perspective on how well-qualified he is to be having an opinion on this stuff nowadays.

You need to support two teams. Nottingham weekender and 180 minutes of League Two gash under my belt (also two new grounds).

Well THAT'S not true.

Thierry Henry scored 2 in 17 matches in 1999/2000 for Arsenal... including an 8 and a 7 goal spell without scoring. He also scored 10 in 9 games later the same season. But you're right, the best players in the world don't go 14 matches without scoring. However, as Pelle didn't do that, and no-one is claiming he's one of the very best strikers in world football to begin with, I'm not sure what your point is. Pelle went 7 without scoring last season, scored against Palace on Jan 24 and then went another 8 before scoring for Italy. He also scored 10 in 11 at another point in the same season.

Rodriguez's match fitness 2 seasons ago came from being a starter in every match, at the moment he's in and out competing for a start in AM with on-form Mane, Tadic and Davis (and Long and Juanmi to get on from the bench). Plus when Lambert was up top Rodriguez's role was often to go past the front man and get into the box, he's not being asked to do that as much from LM, so it's not a surprise that he's scoring less OR that he's not quite as sharp - though tell that to MK.

Seniority and age-eligibility. He's still young enough to qualify and play in the next tournament, are any of the players he was dropped for?

Clearly and repeatedly. If there was any possibility of him taking the Dutch job whilst under contract to Saints he wouldn't have openly dismissed the possibility numerous times. He also has little to gain by doing it - there's more money than ever in the Prem and he's in the position to negotiate a new deal with the new TV money next year (or go somewhere else when his contract is up for more money too if that's what he wants), and the Dutch team is so poor at the moment he might think someone else needs to get them back to their normal levels before he considers taking over. If there's one thing that'll ruin a reputation unjustifiably it's a national team that's already at an all-time low and with which you get little time to coach and can't replace the players with better ones unless they already exist and inexplicably aren't being picked.

You might want to mention that to the £130m debt writer-offers (including a sizeable chunk of HMRC revenue) down the road first...

That could be due to the libel laws. If someone suggested he had a cocaine habit, for example, that might put the forum in a difficult position. I'd be interested to see if he's sued the West Ham owner for the comments about his knee.

We have a deal with JD Sports this season, apart from Gatwick and a few south coast and nearby JD Stores you can also now buy Saints shirts in their store in Oxford Street in London, which is a start. Agreed that the international based commercial income needs a rocket strapped to it.

Except we didn't. At all.