The9

eg crack whores.

Pretty much the only things to be learned from this whole thread are 1) That Saints will never please some people and 2) If they're going to charge more for people to see a club who charges away fans loads, try not to do it in the last game of the season, so some people (well, one person) don't think you're doing it for some other reason.

Thing is, it's not that simple - and I can (usually) understand why someone would feel the need to complain to the FSF if there was something unfair happening. But basically there isn't.

Or somewhere in St Deny's? Ironic given that Saints and Newcastle have both reduced prices for travelling fans to the others' grounds this season.

Though they did also reduce the overall squad size City were allowed to name as a result. Which admittedly is a weak sanction, but it is still a sanction - and I'm sure Jovetic wasn't happy about it.

What I've got from this is that david in sweden has finally reached ART levels of nuttiness.

Interestingly, me having said there are the same number of Cat A as previous seasons, this shows there aren't, and they have added a Cat A from what was previously a Cat B (I think in 2013/14 it was 6-6-7. But they've also added at least one to Cat C which was Cat B, which offsets the cost (if you ignore that basically ALL prices are higher than they were the previous season and only consider the relationship between the Cat A,B,C matches). The other thing of note is that QPR being in Cat B supports the notion that clubs with expensive home tickets (and therefore expensive tickets for Saints fans at away matches) are reflected by being higher on the Category scale - QPR and Villa are two of the more expensive away tickets, so conversely we charge their fans more to see us. It's both in line with their cost expectations and reasonable to charge similar amounts for the same two teams playing, albeit at different venues.

Again, you have no evidence whatsoever that ticket prices are higher just because it's the last home match. Whilst I've heard a rumour which says it's Villa's fault. Which was from 4 months ago, which is still 3 months after you probably should have been complaining about this, too. As for the tv revenue, every Prem team has had it, the consequence being every Prem team is better placed than any other league's teams to sign the best players in the world and pay them stupid money, the consequence of that being that a massive amount of the extra money, as it always has, goes to the players and agents. Meanwhile, dropping matchday prices doesn't actually make the club any more money - and it is a business attempting sustainability, not a charity. I'm not saying the club shouldn't consider reducing the price of tickets (they're not btw, last week's rumour I heard was that it'll be £720 for next season's ST in the Northam), but I'm more than happy that there are a fixed number of Cat A tickets, which we've known since July last year, and I'm also fairly comfortable that the club isn't just hiking the last game. Then again, if the last game is against Brentford (or similar) next season and it's also a Cat A, you might have a point. But even then I can gladly state that I couldn't care less even if the club does make the last home game a Cat A, provided they still have the same number of Cat A League matches as they do this season.

They've not implemented this yet though have they? I thought it was just at the discussion stage? Also, this place is going to the dogs, not one Rule 1 picture of Osvaldo's missus, despite her getting a mention above. Wouldn't have happened in my day.

When you look at the stadium config it's bonkers. Carlisle fans in the top tier behind the goal with 2 or 3 empty blocks either side for segregation, yet Saints fans taking up 2/3rds of the middle tier including areas in between Carlisle fans down the side, and Saints fans on the whole of the bottom 2 tiers on the opposite side. There were at least 4 completely empty blocks they could have used if they'd sorted the allocations out a bit sooner. Though I guess they have to have a range of prices and had to sell halfway line tickets to Carlisle, they could have limited it to one tier along the side at first... probably wouldn't resolve the gaps behind the goal though.

I'm going to start only counting Premier League records since Barclays began sponsoring it. That'll confuse a load of people and create a ridiculous history break where there is none...

This. And also making a bunch of assumptions about why it's happened. And ignoring that as a result, a different Cat A match this season has been a Cat B.

It's your assumption that they've done that. I've heard from other sources that it was Villa's doing and Saints retaliating. Plus you're basically moaning about nothing because there are the same number of A, B and C games as last season overall.

Why am I expecting a response suggesting we buy eleven of them?

Soccernomics, Bear. Goalkeeper is the most undervalued position considering cost against impact on result. So buying a better keeper is almost buying points.

It was Friday. So that's probably the registration deadline for stupid faffing re-signing your own goalkeeper emergency contract shenanigans gone too.

If I remember correctly, the reason the Villa match is Category A is because they refused to drop their prices for Saints fans in their home match when the prices were initially discussed and Saints are basically charging the Villa away fans as much as our fans got charged up there (which ended up being televised on a Monday (?) anyway). Conversely, Saints and Newcastle both agreed to charge away fans less.

Actually Van Aanholt's deflection was massive and completely changed the direction of the shot - the issue is that there was no way that the dubious goals committee could possible have known if Mane's contact was already on target or not. Whilst Kane's DEFINITELY WASN'T.

Well that's an absolute bloody travesty.

Hey, those feckers are ranked higher than Saints in attendances when they've drawn worse than the rear end of a horse, plus some work experience at the Mail can't count, it matters to me - why would I put any stock in any of the other figures if they can't even spot an obvious outlier like that?

Nope, Hull is DEFINITELY wrongly ranked in attendances. 20-30k for most of the 50s and over 20k for a few years in the 60s. Other than that, pretty much under 10k for the rest of their history. Compare to Saints, whose last sub 10k attendance average was 1935. Yet Saints are ranked in the 30s and Hull 19th on a scale where lower is better? That's just wrong. http://www.european-football-statistics.co.uk/attnclub/hulc.htm I suspect they should be ranked 49 not 19 for crowds, which would also put them on 207 total, and 37th instead of 32nd.

Most of that pretty much makes sense - though how Hull rank 19 in crowds when they were churning out 4-5k crowds only 15 years ago and have never had a crowd over 24k in the Prem beats me. Were they massive in the 1950s or something?

I get the feeling he's playing there because they're the only ones who'll have him now - didn't he get out of the game altogether for a while after his injury and problems at Sunderland? If we're looking at a solid, relatively short term solution who won't have a problem bench sitting but is proven in the Prem (and has been mostly good this season), I can't see Leicester needing Mark Schwarzer as backup for next season's Championship campaign - unless they sell Schmeichel. But then we'd have two old bench-ready keepers...

It would, but it's a long way off and shouldn't factor in any considerations at this point. There's only one football stadium in England that's even trialling it, and that hasn't been redeveloped yet.

Ha, I was diagnosed with Osgood-Schlatter's as a kid, I was running a 100m and my leg just completely gave way for no reason. After 6 weeks in plaster a physio had a look at it and said actually my cartilage had popped out. He popped it back in and it was fine after that. Oh, and my wife has a hairline fracture of her patella right now as a result of smashing it on the stairs at work. The issue with Forster sounds like the kneecap popped right over to the side of his knee as he slipped, dragging the tendons with it. Plus he's got a LOT of weight going through those knees due to his size.