The9

I'm not sure we should be giving this too much thought anyway tbh. Saints will pick up the players they can get with the intention of making them as good as they can, I don't think there's any more to it other than that there is an obvious difference in the likelihood of finding certain races in mid-Wales compared to north London and as you say, it reflects the area - just that the area is wider than just the immediate vicinity of Southampton. I'm sure MLG will be along to provide some detail soon... I'm actually hopeful it might be useful this time.

There have been some return trips for about £210 all along, assuming they're the ones leaving at stupid o'clock at night with an overnight stop in Istanbul, arriving about 5am with similarly ugly return times. Having said all that, we've just decided to go to Leicester as well so the whole "back at 10pm to Luton on Friday night, stay in Leicester Saturday night" plan needs looking at - I'm already flying back to Manchester from Prague to get in Blackpool v Newport on the Saturday before Saints v Everton on the Sunday... Quite enjoying the logistical fun.

The only thing I can think of is that individuals are getting all three together, group bookings are getting the next game only ("mine" is actually "mine and the wife's"). As long as my purchase history corresponds to my ticket status ("printed" for Sparta, and "purchased" for the other two), I'm not too worried about it.

Used to be, the Elite Player Performance stuff deregulated that a fair bit. Weirdly a couple of friends of mine in South Wales have had kids in Cardiff, Newport, West Brom and Leicester academies. God knows what the regulations are there... Leicester is JUST within 2 hours' drive (at 3am) though, which I think was one of the old criteria.

As an update, my Sparta Prague home tickets without the other games have just dropped through the letterbox, so they're definitely not putting them on the card. Strangely, a mate of mine has had all three of his (ambulant) tickets in one batch. And very nice "Europa League" branding they are, too. No hologram though...

He did, and we've put a few people there, but none of them have exactly... worked. I'd suggest Hojbjerg, but even though I think he's been very good overall, he seems to play more safe passes out to the wing from the edge of the box than anyone.

First time I've even noticed he existed on here tbh.

You're weird. This is a thread of people saying "it sounds pretty bloody unlikely" backed up by various reasons it's pretty bloody unlikely.

Pretty sure it was Kitson when he was playing, right up to his spell at Oxford the season before last, no idea what's happened since then, I've only read the first two books as he was starting to annoy me by being seemingly more and more out of touch and sensationalist as he slid out of relevance.

I happen to be logged into my Purchase History - Sparta shows as "Printed", the others as "Purchased". Incidentally the Hapoel Be'er Sheva AWAY tickets show as "collect at St Mary's" which we know isn't true, but I'm fairly sure that's because it's from a pre-set dropdown and "Collect from Be'er Sheva" isn't going to be on any kind of standard list.

I'd also like to point out Boufal not being available until October absolutely sods this right up, even if he does end up being the greatest thing since sliced bread, he's still been unavailable for two months and the club (from the early "he won't play yet" PR) obviously knew this. I'm not saying we shouldn't have signed him, I'm saying we might have considered an interim solution that wasn't just Tadic in the number 10 role having seen how blunt we've been going forward without any variety in our attacking.

Boufal has literally been signed specifically to play at the point of the diamond, so it seems a bit silly to change the formation so he isn't playing there now we've actually got him.

Crab Lungs thinks we've got some kind of aryan dwarf policy going on, or something like that anyway.

I'm confused by your post on a number of levels here: 1) Our tickets are supposedly in the upper tier behind the goal (which is where the plexiglass is), so how are they going to close it when that's the area we'll be in? 2) Domestic games will be different to European games, I doubt anyone will have had to show their PASSPORT as opposed to just ID to get into a derby. 3) Their Ultras are behind the opposite goal (green seats), which is the opposite end of the stadium to where Saints fans are, rather than to the right?

A mate of mine got his bundle today.

On the bright side it'll give you another 4 weeks to learn how to spell his name. Poor kid, by the time he debuts expectation levels will be that he'll be the second coming of Pele, Maradona, Messi and Ronaldo all rolled into one, and if we keep the current level of decent chance creation up we might need that too.

Tbf we just got back from watching matches in Lens, Lille and Paris, we are not at all afraid To be killed in nasty ways Brave, brave, brave, brave

Israel beats Midtjylland because by the time we get to Prague we'll have used Denmark for two matches already, and there will be a different group of superdooper daft bastards deserving of priority. Be'er Sheva being first gives them a great chance to "control" the priority for the low allocation high turnout Sparta game, knowing the Milan one has a huge allocation which will satisfy a lot of the occasional away fans.

Saints or Inter?

You're talking about two different things here: 1) The likelihood the stewarding on the day will identify a need to react to a situation which has occurred despite the measures in place (Saints fans in home section) and 2) the chance of people getting tickets legitimately within Saints' allocation when using someone else's eligibility. In 1) in the event the initial checks have failed, they'll do whatever is appropriate to avoid crowd control issues - we don't know if the middle tier will be sold or empty and if it's empty it's an obvious solution in the event of problems. The solution will be to fix the checks that let people get in in the first place and publicise it, they'd have to be utterly incompetent to not do that and then allow the same situation to occur again for another match. This stuff is always based in rumour rather than fact anyway. For 2), given that the club have said for the official allocation you need to provide a number of details including passport number, there's every likelihood people will not get into the official allocation section without that exact ID, so people who aren't eligible probably won't bother. They WILL check ID everywhere, and it will need to match the details Saints have given Inter to put on the tickets. Unless the ticket only has my name on it, I'll be taking my passport to the game even though I know you only need ID, because it may need to match the details provided. I may take it anyway, it's a lot of potential hassle for the sake of carrying one document. Having said that, some people are stupid, so they may do it despite all the evidence they won't get in (and are less likely to get in than someone doing the same in a home section). The same doesn't necessarily go for ID (and passport) checks in the home sections, where there's no particular reason people would need anything other than their usual ID cards. UK driving licenses could be fine to use for that ID, for instance.

Could be. They had to announce Inter early because of the ID requirements so used the Midtjylland game.

You wouldn't want to be too predictable to either extreme. We are currently incredibly predictable and easy to defend against.

Yeah, we knew that about 2 weeks ago, and when they didn't announce him in the Europa League squad list.

Won't happen though, they've already released the Inter criteria.

It wouldn't be brilliant for my lift to the airport. Plus anyone who spends £300+ getting to and from Israel to get priority when they can get hospitality in Milan for that is mental. And stop saying "potential security issues"... I'm enjoying my sleep at the moment, I don't want it interrupted by thrashing nightmares coming from alongside me.