The9

I can't see us not starting with Wanyama and Romeu given the vast improvement in the second half on the weekend - if we had a centre back who wasn't Yoshida and had started the game at half time we'd have probably been ok. We don't need to worry about tiredness yet but I can see some humpings in our future if/when we play top 6 sides after group stage matches. I take no pleasure from pointing out I've been talking about the team (not the squad) being weaker and "Schneiderlin and Alderweireld sized holes" for weeks, even when we were winning, but there it was. Very pleased with Romeu, somewhat disappointed with the people who haven't yet worked out the problem isn't Cedric (or even Targett), but the big gaps in front of them where we're narrow in the middle and the wide attacking midfielders aren't defending deep enough nor the narrow midfielders wide enough. Plus obvs Yoshida v Lukaku, not like we've seen that before, he gives the guy 2 yards and beats him to everything. Bringing Rodriguez on on Saturday was akin to throwing in the towel, we'd already proven that trying to outscore them just leads to us getting nailed on the break. Oh, and we didn't play 4-3-3 at any point on the weekend, again.

Would be weird if we somehow managed not to sell out the allocation, I'm kinda surprised but then it's two aways in Europe in the same month, and people will also be spending money on Prem aways at 3 times the cost (and Newcastle is usually an overnight stay too). I'm not looking forward to the state of my account after the 28th if we're in the Group stages and there are three more sets of flights and hotels to pay for 3 days before I get paid!

Ah yeah, of course - I had mine by then and was in a meeting for the whole time from announcement to sell-out so had forgotten that.

The system was very clear that Vitesse away would determine priority for future matches - as it is I'm surprised that they're even able to offer them to Vitesse+ST+6 aways because I didn't think Vitesse was even made available to those with 6 aways, so theoretically speaking there wouldn't be anyone with that few aways who got a Vitesse ticket. They've actually done this pretty sensibly, but I bet they were hoping it would sell out before this morning, you'll have all the home memberships piling in for Man U and whoever else goes on sale today, along with West Brom away and still Norwich and Midtjyelland home and away now!

Here you go, Whitey! As I said, no-one plays alternate H/A games, position 1 and 2 go AHAHHA and HAHAAH, 3 is AHHAHA, 4 is HAAHAH.

Interesting, and thanks for tracking that down - but the rules and the group sizes are different this year and they've shown lots of predilection for pre-arranging pots to prevent clashes and the awks of having to "skip a group", which is what they used to do in situations like that. Looking at the coefficients, I can see both Spurs and Liverpool being in seeding Pot 1, but equally Liverpool may drop into Pot 2 - but then I haven't looked to see if there are even 12 teams with higher coefficients than them yet. This European football stuff is great, I've had a crap day at work but still beaming just from getting a ticket at 9:01 this morning. Oh, and I still have one ticket left for the home end in with the Danish Saints if anyone has booked and thinks they might not get an away end ticket.

I posted the actual schedule about 10 posts ago, no-one plays alternate home and away. We could be anywhere in the positions 1-4 and won't know which until the draw - but we will know the dates and locations of all 6 matches for Sept-Dec once the group draw is complete. What we won't know is whether we kick off at 6 or 8.

Preaching to the choir here, that's one of the reasons we're going there. Shame I can't say the same about Stansted.

They'll be in with a chance of winning the title based on signing Schneiderlin alone.

Not much point, Apple TVs were crap at running XMBC even on Gotham, the ATV2 I stopped using about a year ago and now sits under the TV doing nothing is a hunk of garbage which never failed to buffer or crash anything resembling even 720p or with a lot of movement onscreen. Assume ATV3 has a better processor and HD, but even so, the ATV2 put me right off using it.

I want a 3D and 2D kit editor. Not really, I have templates and Photoshop (and Paint.net, for that matter). I would like the game to stop assigning created players with IDs that are ever going to be used again though, they need to be tied to some unique identifier so that no matter how many times you use the same Db it always creates a new UNID, preventing the bloody thing from shifting my created players to new IDs and losing all of their associated pictures (without having to use a stupid non-ID based naming convention in the xml file). I mean, the ID numbers exceed the number of people on the planet by a factor of about a million already, how hard can it be to NOT just call them all 20260whatevernumbersarenext956 or whatever. And don't get me started on getting rid of XML for proprietary FMF files, massive pain in the ar5e for anyone who wants to just edit and create stuff.

Points deduction says the distinction to the holding company was moot.

But probably not as well as having a system that prevents big clubs stockpiling shedloads of players in the first place. Literally all they have to do is restrict first team squad size and academy sizes, and then at worst the top sides will just have to run loosely-affiliated feeder clubs everywhere else like they already do, but they'd have to actually dump someone from their main squad(s) to accommodate a new person. There are probably loads of ways to cheat the system, but the problem of stockpiling goes away as soon as kids realise they're either playing in an academy first team with a direct line to the first team, or they're playing for some spin-off first team abroad somewhere and still getting match experience.

Yes, in the sense that they are trying to get people to part with their money and they want people to bet on as much as possible they won't win on. I'm also familar with the way media works in driving agendas, into which Sky has a significant input.

Aren't we leading 1-4 on Administrations as well?

I also want us to absolutely murder them, obviously.

The daft sods. A Villa-supporting mate told me yesterday they started at Bournemouth with only one of the players who began the FA Cup Final. That's mental, and there's also no way signing 10 new starting players is any kind of organised strategy.

You're right on this one - there were a few people saying Rodriguez wasn't proven in the Prem, and that Wanyama's passing was poor (other Scottish manager saying stand off him and let the ball come back) and I can't think of any bashing Clyne, but that was no more than maybe 2 or 3 comments out of a heap of them. If you want an example of people slating a player, well I'll hold my hands up to saying I thought Bertrand was going to be bad based on his disinterest at Villa and tendency to leap into tackles and give the ball away lazily - and he only let himself down with any of that against Swansea at St Mary's. I also had a pop at Martina after how utterly dire he was in Salzburg, but even that was in the context of him playing out of position after maybe 2 days training, and he's been comfortable enough versus Vitesse and Newcastle when given the chance in his actual position. There is, however, no general tendency for anyone who isn't blatantly a troll to just hate all of our signings for no reason.

All the indication we need about who was behind player signings came when we signed Forren on the same day as appointing Pochettino despite not having a manager for at least a week at that point. It certainly wasn't dependent on the manager.

New agent showing client how easy it is to get interest in him and raise his wage demands if necessary.

There really is.

DSB.dk - does it in English too - but their app is probably better.

Train price doesn't seem to change, though depending where you're going to and from you might want a seat reservation - there aren't any on the train from Aarhus to Herning, but there are from Copenhagen to Herning. Aarhus also has the pleasure of a 50 minute bus transfer from airport to city at a cost of about £10 each way.

Ok, I have all 3 of our away end tickets (thank fegg).

Massive shock as team copies other successful team's strategy. Let's hope it works out as well for them as Everton getting in the Wigan manager and his principles, and Man U getting in the Everton manager and his principles. An element of "playing down to their previous level" has been evident - you can't just change 10 years of planning to fit a new model overnight - in Mitchell's favour is that it's more likely to be Pochettino that gets the boot than him - against him is that Levy hasn't exactly been a bastion of tolerance and planning in the past... ever... and this idea is as likely to get the boot as every other one. Also, plus plastic Spurs fans screaming for them to spend more money on basically anyone. We're lucky in a sense that we don't have a rabid pervading entitled moronic global idiocy of a fan base.