The9

Quite. Pretty sure they only extended the size of the squad in the first place to announce he was in it though, so they've already done their bit of marketing there.

A bit more of a leap when you consider the Welsh clubs all originally joined before 1920 and the FAW didn't have its own league until 1992, whilst the Scottish League is the second oldest in the world. Even now there's a bit of an anomaly with the FAW doing all of the disciplinary stuff for the welsh clubs in English leagues and cups, it's recently led to the FAW having the opportunity to overturn red cards for a Cardiff City player to not miss the FA Cup Final and a Swansea City player to not miss the Championship Play-Off Semi-Final and Final for a place in the Premier League, which is all a bit dripping with self-interest (though they only overturned one of them). Just because I can shoehorn it in, just over 30 years ago Newport County played in the equivalent of a Europa League quarter final whilst playing in the equivalent of modern-day League One. They failed to finish in the (Div 3) top 3 that season. One other issue of course, is that England and Wales share the same legal system, whilst Scotland don't. Not sure how that would have any bearing, given Gretna and Berwick Rangers, but I'm sure it causes some weird anomalies somewhere along the line. And then there's the old "international clearance" that teams need to sign players from the same division but a different country - but if Newport can cope with it I'm sure anyone can.

I can't even imagine paying £40 a match in the Prem at the moment, I think with the ST I was paying £18 a match in 2009/10 and about £23 in 2010/11 to see League One, that's knocking double ! I suppose the good thing is that there are 4 fewer home matches to have to afford, and there are only really 4-ish teams that Saints are likely to charge that Platinum price for, and they MIGHT be offset by relatively cheaper matches against the likes of Wigan.

My point is that I want a good deal whenever I have to pay for it, but the sooner I'm told what it costs the sooner I can get it paid for. I definitely object to a late announcement because it forces my hand into a much shorter time period which is less convenient. I knew it was probably going to happen, but I don't have to like it, and the unknown is not a great motivator from a saving perspective. Equally, I don't care what other teams' fans pay, I gain absolutely no benefit as a consumer from the cost of anyone else's tickets because I can't buy them to see Saints 23 times, and my demand for a Saints home ticket is completely inelastic, in that I will want to go to every match.

Hmm, whilst I can't argue that player wages have shot up, that was caused by the relatively big money (then) of the Sky tv deal giving teams a bit of money to import better players, thus creating a better product for tv (bigger stars), and as a result creating a cycle of getting more money from Sky (and eventually overseas tv deals). The wages have soared hugely disproportionately to anything OTHER than the tv money - but it was the existence of the Sky tv money that caused the wages to rise initially. Once in the cycle of tv cash = big money for best players, the less important funds raised by people actually AT the matches is utterly irrelevant to club funding. In fact there's an argument for lowering the prices as far as possible to get people in to make the brand look more attractive on tv which helps push global merchandising more than looking like a poky half-liked club with a load of empty seats - on a small scale cheaper tickets could be offset by an increase in catering, programmes sales and other merchandise sales on match days anyway.

Yeah, the Crouch thing was from the pre-season match not long before he was sacked at Swindon when Van Damme took it upon himself to wang the ball 50 yards from left back at the beanpole every time he got the ball, with Sturrock widely reported as having specifically told the players NOT to do that at half time. We were a bloody good attacking team in some away games under Sturrock, he did have the use of a fit Pahars up at Man City and it made a hell of a difference. I still look back at that Villa away game at the very start of the relegation season and think "were we really THAT bad ?". I still can't reconcile some of the online reactions to the 2-0 defeat with what went on in front of me. Yeah we were second best, but we'd lost like that up there loads of times before, and Folly didn't even play in most of those. By the time we played Norwich away in November and Mikael Nilsson sh!1thoused a tackle right in front of me during a 2-1 defeat I knew we were in trouble. The side by then, the week after beating the Skates 2-1 (which was 4 days after THAT 5-2 defeat at Watford), was Southampton K. Keller, J. Dodd (P. Crouch, 83), C. Lundekvam, D. Kenton , G. Le Saux, F. Fernandes, R. Delap, P. Telfer (M. Nilsson, 72), A. Svensson, J. Beattie, D. Blackstock (K. Phillips, 60) Subs not used: A. Blayney, A. Jakobsson Something I've only just noticed is that our last 4 opponents of the season were also fixtures in November of the same season : Under Steve Wigley we did this : Premiership Sa 13Nov 2004 Southampton 2 - 1 Portsmouth Premiership Sa 20Nov 2004 Norwich 2 - 1 Southampton Premiership Sa 27Nov 2004 Southampton 2 - 2 C Palace Premiership Sa 04Dec 2004 Man Utd 3 - 0 Southampton For 4 points and a victory in a hugely anticipated derby. Under Redknapp we did this : Premiership Su 24Apr 2005 Portsmouth [redacted] Southampton Premiership Sa 30Apr 2005 Southampton 4 - 3 Norwich Premiership Sa 07May 2005 C Palace 2 - 2 Southampton Premiership Su 15May 2005 Southampton 1 - 2 Man Utd For a humilation, a relegation and the same miserable 4 points.

Dunno, but I do know Andrew Surman pretty much owes his U-21 career at St Mary's to the FA not knowing that Saints loanee from Aston Villa Stephen O'Halloran was going to be making his St Mary's debut for Republic of Ireland U-21s in the same match.

15 tickets (the minimum amount to buy for the discount) at £5 each is a total cost of £75. So you only have to get 8 people interested to split the £75 between you and get a discount on the standard £10 per person admission fee. 8 people is £9.38 each 9 ppl £8.33 10 ppl £7.50 11 ppl £6.82 12 ppl £6.25 13 ppl £5.77 14 ppl £5.35 and if you get 15 along, then it's the £5 stated. Bargain anyway.

Bloody hell, maybe I won't be going there next season then.

That needs some rewording for clarification, what it says is that the odds of the first two teams alphabetically finishing in the first two places in alphabetical order are 380/1, in a league of 20. Using A-B-C-D etc for team names, for clarity, if my maths is right it's the 1/20 chance of team A coming first, multiplied by the 1/19 chance of team B coming second when team A is first, and so on for Team C in third (1/18 ), D in 4th (1/17), E etc until you get to Team S in 19th (1/2 chance of coming 19th) and T in 20th, where the chances are 1/1, aka "1", because they're the only team left and that has to happen. They way you've worded it implies that if there are only two teams called A and B in a league the chances of them finishing A then B are 380/1, which clearly isn't true as there are only two possible outcomes in that league table. Hey, 12 years since I passed my Statistical Analyst exams, never used it even once, and I can still remember basic principles of Probability, result !

That what wouldn't last long ? His decent results or his job ? There was nothing wrong with his football at Saints - we were direct in that we played the ball forward as soon as possible, but it was mostly on the deck and we weren't hoofing it by any stretch of the imagination. I know this as I was not only attending matches, but having arguments about our style of play on message boards in 2004 as well, because what some people were claiming just wasn't what was happening on the pitch. People looked at Crouch up front and just assumed we'd be whacking it, whereas most of the time under Sturrock we were playing the ball out wide and chasing it in behind their full backs - which worked very well up at Eastlands against Man City when we won 3-1, amongst other decent performances against Liverpool, Spurs and a 4-1 win at Wolves when Henri Camara rather bent Jason Dodd's leg IIRC. Considering the injuries we had by the end of the season and that we were playing for nothing by then we were doing reasonably well. The defence and the bench for the Niemi Day game at Charlton says a lot about what Sturrock had to work with in the last month of the season : A. Blayney, P. Telfer, F. Hall, D. Kenton, S. Crainey, F. Fernandes (L. Griffit, 85), D. Prutton , Y. Folly, A. Svensson (C. Baird, 13), B. Ormerod, J. Beattie Subs not used: D. Blackstock, M. Cranie, M. Poke

Because there are more people interested in watching football in relatively pleasant environs than there were back when a pile of matches just looked like two gangs of yobs in silly clothes trying to have a fight at a dump. Obviously there's a demand factor in pricing as well, that's one of the things you can start to calculate once you eliminate the underlying trends like inflation. The cheapest 2010 FA Cup Final Tickets (Chelsea, at least) were £40 (plus a £4.87 booking fee, but let's be generous). Purely inflationary cost calculated backwards would have made the 1988 ticket £20, which is £12 more than it was. So somewhere along the line something's thrown over a 100% hike into the costs. I only wish I knew how much the cheapest seats were in 1988, although back then seats were a premium compared to terracing and now there's no alternative.

It also means based on the £8 1988 FA Cup Final ticket price, that 2010 FA Cup final tickets should be £16.

A decent indicator of ticket prices is that my FA Cup Final ticket (face values) in 1988 was £5, my FA Cup Final Replay ticket in 1993 was £10, and my FA Cup Final Ticket in 2003 was at least £25. There was a huge hike in top-level ticket prices due to all-seater stadia around 1992 (as you can see from '88 to '92 the Cup Final Price doubled, there were terraces in '88 but not by '92 and the capacity was 20,000 fewer) and the costs have continued to rise up until very recently, when at the top level even the clubs like Wigan who are dependent on the Overseas TV deal for their funding rather than people actually turning up realised it looks better with the ground remotely full, plus they'd sell more merchandise and food, even if they don't actually need the fans' money.

This does imply that people aren't already saving, or spending everything they earn on essentials, or paying off debts they have already accrued to get themselves out of debt they were already in, of course. FWIW, I'm one of the ones who said last year that people don't have the right to complain if they haven't saved the money, because we expect there not to be an instalment plan this year, and I stand by that - but some of the "just get a credit card" planks just don't seem to have gathered the issues that others may be having, or that they might not want to add to them and it's frankly rather insensitive to suggest there's an "easy solution" that anyone can get. I don't have a credit card at the moment, btw, but I don't think I'll be getting one just to pay for a season ticket either ! I think the bigger picture is that a lot of people can afford, say, a payment of £60 a month for about 8 months to come straight out on pay day without it being a problem because their funds for the rest of the month are then fixed from that point, but setting aside £40 for 12 months without dipping into it come the end of the month to pay bills and unexpected costs is a lot less workable for a lot of people.

Or last season, or the season before, all of which featured the same rumour.

Yeah, well done, and I'm pointing out that a lot MORE people will either have already tried this and not be able to do it again, or will have not been able to do it in the first place. The "can't afford to pay in one chunk nor just extend their overdraft and don't already have a credit card but still actually able to get one" subset of the fan base is probably minute compared to the "can't do any of those" group. Basically you'll either have a spare £500 AND be able to get credit, or you won't have the money and you probably can't.

It's not just OWTSGMI either, they also do "Come on you Reds" plus they've got songs for Rory Delap, Ricardo Fuller and Kenwyne Jones too. When I watched them stuff Brighton earlier in the season it was REALLY weird.

Sadly, and somewhat incredibly, already know the answer to this. But you're going to have to click here to find out... http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2011/mar/09/has-league-ever-finished-alphabetical-order

We basically won one and lost one under Sturrock, more than enough to keep us in midtable.

2005 was a nightmare for a side which had battled and been proud in escaping relegation so many times, 2009 was potentially disastrous from pre-season - I remember posting "if you look around the room in poker and can't see the mug, it's you" in relation to the fixture list. With that in mind when we started getting thrashed by grown-ups we'd all got resigned to it long before, with 2005 we still had hope and no reason to doubt our safety. One last thing, if Markus had "seen the file" 18 months before, Lowe still wouldn't have sold, we needed to go into admin to get rid of the board structure that had the potential to block takeovers, and drop the price to something attractive.

The badge will almost certainly be reverting, though I'm guessing. Makes no sense to have a 125 crest in the 126th season and there have been no hints at all of a crest redesign.

It would be nice if just for once ONE of your posts was based in reality.

I'd be inclined to believe the post 40 towards the start of this thread, seeing as when pressed the bloke came back with a description of something (the Cosmos collar) he didn't even know was already in use for someone else. There's always the possibility he's convincingly making it up though. The sash last season was pretty well known as one of the possible designs (along with the quarters) before it was released, because of the sash kit on the Umbro Teamwear site, which was just too much of a coincidence.

That's why I said "Huddersfield-esque Umbro teamwear kit". Because it's an Umbro teamwear kit. The keeper's shirt mentioned above is here btw : It's called the "Forza".