The9

I doubt they'll offer print at home like they do for people for Serie A, but they appear to be fine with Saints fans in "neutral" areas, which is a bit mad. Probably because they'll have your ID from the ticket purchase and (probably, I can't remember), CCTV.

God help us if that £6.50 is to send tickets directly from Inter's admin office to our home addresses...

You rate Italian organisation way too highly. We'll be lucky if they even remember to unlock the turnstiles.

Yeah, this is true. I'd forgotten how spread out these games are. At least we now know the answer to "will the club wait to announce priority until after some other matches" is NO, they're doing priority for at least the first two aways based on 2015/16 only.

Inter are selling Be'er Sheva and a 3 match Europa bundle at the moment - noticeable that there's an English language version of the site except for the 3 ticket bundle which includes Saints. There are also Vivaticket sales points around Milan (around 10 in the relevant area, 5 or so in the City Centre). http://www.inter.it/en/biglietteria

Not officially for Inter nor Prague, only Be'er Sheva. But it looks like Inter will sell to anyone - though not yet on their website. As I mentioned before: Be'er Sheva Low demand, low supply Inter high demand high supply Prague high demand low supply I'll just pop over to Inter.it and see if they've got any ticket news there.

I think the answer is "large perspex fences in front of the top tier". On that note, Torino didn't take many, considering it's only 85 miles away.

They won't check ID on anything, so it's not going to be an issue. EDIT - This may not be the case, read on

We only have 5000 with 5+ aways, but I bet there are the same again with 3 or 4... I don't think it'll get past STs. I think Be'er Sheva probably will, and Prague definitely won't.

As suspected. You'd think I'd have remembered:

I'll have to look at the photo I took when I was there and get back to you... and then probably edit the original post.

I'm guessing what they'll do is not sell any tickets in the lower blue and then possibly open up the rest of that end later - though they don't really have much time to do that.

Bloody hilarious that the bloke who got confirmation that the side stands would be "neutral" (read "for home fans but we don't really care who buys them") has also come up with the fascinating revelation that Saints fans will be in the third tier behind the goal at the opposite end to the home fans. Or "the away end", as it's known.

Also interesting - I already have an online account with Inter and they did print at home tickets for their Serie A games (no idea if they would for Europa League), their ultras always go behind the goal blue end unsurprisingly, but the side stands held a LOT of home fans too.

I am absolutely certain Inter will not bother checking ID against tickets. The more interesting thing to me is that we don't have more than 5000 people who've attended 5 aways in a whole season. I suppose that's about right...

Not all of us. Just weird "wanting to fail" types.

You don't, but you do need an aerial threat to make defences think they need to defend against an aerial threat. A single-faceted attack of players trying to pass and create a through ball is easy to stop with an established defence. Boufal's skill and quickness should help with creating space, and direct running pulls defenders out of position, but it's still easier to stop a single-faceted team than one which can also hurt you with a high ball to someone who can score from it. Charlie Austin may be 6ft 2 but he's not an aerial threat you'd aim a high ball at in the main, as he mostly makes runs to get the ball into his feet. Despite Rodriguez being slightly shorter, he's lean and has played as that kind of target man before at Burnley so gives the impression of being an aerial threat and also moves to the far post to attack crosses with his head, which is movement onto defenders' blind side where they don't know if the ball is coming in low or high. Rodriguez has the ability to shoot from range, to finish closer in, to run at players, to win headers and to hold the ball up from clearances - we need someone with all those skills to complement the option of playing the ball early and wide to countering strikers, or passing forever and putting in low crosses in front of an organised defence. I'd also add that your opinion of Romeu "getting shrugged off the ball too easily" seems to have been formed from him losing out on two challenges where he was off-balance or stretching for the ball in early matches - or a couple of times pre-season where he didn't get a call and was robbed, all of which are understandable when your attacking colleagues are new people or in new positions (as opposed to just failing to execute as intended).

Seeing as the next game is Arsenal away I'm fairly sure there won't be any major issue if we don't win that one. Assuming you're not counting Charlton as a first team fixture (though we didn't win, Puel had nothing to do with it as far as I'm aware), the 5th game will be home to Sparta Prague and the 6th home to Swansea. Losing the next 3 would be a problem, but even with that much depends how it happens.

I am reliably informed he has a new three year deal waiting to be signed in his new kitchen, he just hasn't signed it yet. Or something like that. We'd be paying him 2 years' worth of it just in gratitude for what he's done with us so far, it's practically an act of charity giving him that additional year when he's unlikely to remain at his peak til then.

Mourinho claiming to be interested in a player immediately before we play his team? Surely not.

Everton, compared to their fans' expectations. I'd say we did exactly what I expected us to do, other than replace Pelle like for like. We haven't signed anyone obviously disruptive or that doesn't work with our system(s), we've kept 5 or 6 who wanted more money which helps with the consistency, and we haven't lost anyone we haven't planned to lose. In fact we also kept Tadic who was expected to go by the ITKs. And we came out of it with two European Champions we didn't have at the start of it. Hojbjerg looks like a great investment too. Plus we broke the club transfer record for the kind of creative central playmaker we haven't had since Gaston stopped being the solution. While everyone else scrambles around for names or last-minute signings, we've known who we want to sign and improve for 18 months and have gone out to get them. It's not flashy but it's been working for the last 3 or so years now.

Club America at the moment.

FWIW, we didn't play 2 DMs for probably more than half of last season. One of the reasons we didn't keep a clean sheet in the last 13 games of last season, but also one of the reasons we scored more than we would have done playing more defensively.

We also seem to do pretty well at managing the tightrope of player egos, which can't be hurt by not having people paid massively more than others (though I'm pretty sure every contract includes a no-discuss clause about wages).

Loans with an option to buy. So not short-termist.