The9

IIRC "Merit Fees" is the league position prize money and "facility fees" is how much you get based on your number of tv appearances, with a minimum of 10 live games shown. Merit payments were £755,881 per place. So this season tv has decided Fulham, Norwich, Reading, Saints, Stoke, Swansea, West Brom and Wigan weren't worth seeing much. Judging by the 480k more that QPR got than the others mentioned, that's the amount per extra live tv match shown. Does raise the strange prospect of Man U getting £8m more than any of those sides just for tv appearances, which means any one of the "10 appearances" teams would need to finish 11 places above Man U just to offset that with money gained by league placing !

Other than how to operate an Android phone, I suspect.

He's already been drip-feeding his fury about needing to make signings into the last 3 or 4 match day threads...

God absolutely. Incidentally, I know a taxi driver who has Schneiderlin's opinion on the new kit...

I think the one I spread about Lambert being pulled from the away kit launch prior to the Championship season starting has to be up there - hi to my former neighbour near Northlands Road, btw, I know he reads - or at least I did after I posted about that on here. Every word he said was absolutely true as far as I know though, Lambert did get pulled from the kit launch flyers etc due to a last minute call from the club, and he definitely wasn't on the advertising (it was for the yellow away shirt). It didn't mean we were selling him though, and it could also be true that Schneiderlin has found a better house, or just decided he wants to live somewhere else.

You have to assume Cortese was against it either because of some deep-seated political feeling about industry regulation, because he feels clubs should be free to throw cash at it and burn up into flames if they wish, or because his plans involve the club getting heftily above that wage limit. All the signs of the last week involve us having more cash to throw at it - though whether that is still intended to be sustainable or not is open to question - we took a loss to get to the Prem, will we try the same approach to jump the top 6 ? We certainly aren't going to maximise our merchandising potential by only selling kit in two stores in Southampton for instance, but the rumours are that that's exactly what we're going to continue to do under adidas... so something doesn't quite add up.

These are the kind of Pumas I was referring to which were useless for changing direction as there are no lateral "fins" to push against to redirect your weight - though these are actually from 2010 ! : Pretty sure these are Lallana's new boots, as you can see, nothing controversial about the firm ground sole.

Lallana had new boots on, first time he's worn those black Pumas with fluorescent yellow on this season, might not have his preferred sole plate, but equally, he's the one of our players who changes direction quickly the most. I can't say I really noticed more than 2 or 3 slips all match, which wasn't much considering how wet the pitch was.

How do you work out that a dry pitch will stop a ball less well than a wet one ? A dry pitch has more friction, and wet doesn't, so that is literally against the laws of physics. If it was too dry but had water sitting on it because it couldn't drain, it wouldn't be the dryness that was causing the slipping.

Most of them wear mixed sole plates with studs and "blades" on now (for want of a better term). I've worn firm ground boots since 1998 and never had a problem with grip, and the only "blades" I ever saw as problematic for grip were Puma speed boots circa 2003 which had no lateral movement fin on the ball of the feet and all the studs facing forwards, so any attempt to change direction meant the player was putting a flat sheer plastic surface onto grass. Blaming "blades" is just lazy scapegoating, there's literally no evidence supporting the lack of grip "problem" apart from one batch of badly-designed soles 10 years ago. Players are falling over because they are moving very quickly and changing direction more often and more rapidly than ever before on pitches which are almost always damp.

I didn't see the pitch for all of half time, but they spent most of half time only watering the Northam, presumably to ensure the ball wouldn't stick when flicked on by Crouch or when bouncing from a long ball.

Yeah, the year before included "changing the Seniors age threshold" amongst such other dubious pleasures as removing the free u-11 tickets, introducing new ticket taxes and the "1 week to get the money together" window. I think last year was just "Prem prices and moving people out of block 4" ?

Davis has a great workrate but Gaston's is certainly passable, plus you get his creativity - Davis seems to suit the transitional pressing game better though, because whilst Gaston is more creative and a better incisive passer, Davis' skill set includes more defensive ability to get the ball back to begin with, and if we're winning the ball high up the pitch with the defence out of position, the need to play a really accurate pass forward is reduced because there's more space to work in. Horses for courses really, we've moved away from pure pressing in the last few matches and it'll be interesting to see how it develops further.

Cheers, I'd be inclined to think there is no conclusion to be drawn from the corner flags, they don't even seem to match.

Yeah, I'm choosing to ignore the pre-Southampton FC days, and that we wore navy shorts until 1950 (which I actually think looks better, but still wouldn't be Saints to me).

My summary 3: Fox 4: De Ridder 5: Gazzaniga, Guly, Mayuka 6: K Davis, Hooiveld, Fonte, Ramirez, Ward-Prowse, Lallana 7: Yoshida, S Davis, Shaw, Puncheon 8: Clyne, Lambert, Rodriguez, Cork, Boruc 9: Schneiderlin

The "slow-down" is the biggest problem we have, it's difficult for the players to switch between a possession mindset to a direct threat mindset, especially when we have most of the ball and we're not winning it in transitions and catching defences out of position. When we don't have a sharp runner (no pun intended) able to spring the defensive line and get on the end of a through ball with the opposition defence established in positions, we just keep moving it back and forth in front of the defence with no penetration. Puncheon and Lallana are as guilty as anyone else, the only players happy to swing a cross in or run beyond the back line seem to be our full backs, and even they hold off pushing forward fully when the defence is already there, because our attackers usually are as well. Basically we really struggle to penetrate defences if we don't win the ball high up the pitch and only Rodriguez seems to be able to create openings for himself.

It was pretty reserved last year, only one or two kicking off.

I think the club would have kept the same prices as this season in place for the Championship, more matches than this season to cover the overall cost, people adjusted to new levels, and a better squad than 2011/12's successful year.

We can only hope that's the reason. The cynic in me thinks it's because there's a huge price hike coming and they want to give people an extra month to get the money together, but I also can't see what justification there is for any price rise - if anything the excitement was more for this season than next, when it starts to get "samey" again. That usually affects demand, but also frees up some seats for casual fans. Of course as ever, new signings are a spike for the feelgood factor needed when it comes to making a significant financial commitment, which an ST is for many.

Pompey are honouring the Life STs they sold to some sort-of daft sods before the last time they were in admin and desperately needed some cash, even though they decided against doing the same for the millions of pounds they owed in tax to the public purse. It is of course the ONLY thing they've honoured, and it's costing them a few grand in STs from the kind of silly bugger who'd pay to watch them in League 2 anyway, who nevertheless is theoretically getting to see them for free forever. The point being made by Saint_clark, however, was that due to the new tv deal giving all clubs about another £20m minimum in the Prem next season, they could choose to let everyone in for free, and still make as much money as they did this season because the difference is absorbed by the tv/prize money.

We voted against the FFP rules because it appears Cortese's plan A is to spend shetloads of Liebherr money quickly and that's easier to do when there are no limits on wages as a percentage of turnover and suchlike. We already did this relatively speaking in L1 and, to a lesser extent, the Championship. The stuff he said about clubs choosing to manage themselves sounds like free-market rhetoric from a club with new money, but it's a reasonable point that clubs should be able to get a leg up like Man City and Chelsea have via financial doping and not have the ladder pulled away so others can't do the same. There was a similar discussion about Dave Whelan last week, they overspent to get to the Prem, then he tried to get a Prem 2 started to keep Wigan up there, and supported the FFP rules once he'd already used their absence to his club's benefit. It does of course leave the ability for clubs to "do a Pompey" and spend money they don't have in a quest for the top, before burning out and suffering the consequences, but the argument is that "at least anyone can do that if they want to". But, no, I can't explain the rules.

UEFA's FFP rules are being challenged by the Bosman lawyer, that only affects the ability to play in UEFA competitions. I *think* as the Prem has its own regulations, driven by UEFA's move and of course self-interest in keeping the profit and not giving it to players and agents, and they won't necessarily get rid of them if the UEFA rules are shown to be anti-competitive.

Top 6 shouldn't have been too difficult, one of the bottom 3 at least was going to come from the promoted teams, as for the rest, well no-one guessing anyone from 9th-17th was far out and with the margins being only 5 points across half the league pretty much anything in that pile would be close. When it comes down to it, anyone who said WBA/Swansea/West Ham would do well, that Man U would win the title and that QPR and Wigan would go down has got all there was to predict. Unfortunately for me, West Brom and Swansea were the two I thought would struggle.

Beats Nottingham Forest's response when I pitched up to our relegation match in the Championship noting that whilst both our match tickets had fallen out of my back pocket on the way to the ground, I knew exactly which seat numbers they were because all of our friends still had theirs and the numbers were missing two from the sequence. They said "you'll have to buy two more tickets for different seats at full price". Cost me another £70-ish and made somewhat worse by the fact that they ended up getting a load of players' shirts where they were !