The Kraken

I'm not sure. His parents mentioned that he's be going to Bath 3 times a week for training; you'd have to imagine that the coaching there will be better than he'd get with his mates (which, lets be honest, more than likely will just consist of a kickabout and not much formal coaching). He'll be surrounded by the best kids in his age group and coached by properly qualified coaches. As for matches, I agree about the whole 11 a side thing, its utterly ridiulous. But that all changed quite a while ago, and the FA have just passed regulations which means that small sided games will be used further along in the age ranges. http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/may/28/fa

Good work Bob; got there in the end!

And my response would naturally be "well if we can't prove it yet, lets not do it yet"!!

Yes but he would have been registered for his 3rd season before hitting 21, which I believe is the vital point. I'm pretty sure this has been discussed before and confirmed on here.

Schneiderlin qualifies as home grown. He would have been registered with us for seasons 2008-09, 2009-10 and 2010-11 before hitting 21 years of age.

Ha ha, you really can't get it out of your head can you. That was an isolated incident where 2 wrongs made a right. It hardly ever happens like that. In that case the lino would be right by the corner flag so 99% of the time would flag for it. Try seeing it without those blinkers on.

Forecast, Dickson, Puncheon, Barnard and Forte out from that list, maybe Seaborne too depending on where he's at. Butterfield could be at risk depending who we bring in. Need at least a new keeper (probably one other but lets get an U21 for that), at least one CB (two if Seaborne goes), a CM and a winger. Maybe a right back also, and if Harding isn't deemed up to it another left back.

And what is the result of technology in cricket? Has it made it worse? Has it detracted from the game? Is there a semblance of "oh my God, we've open a can of worms here with all this technology and its ruined the game"? As far as I can see with cricket, the overwhelming opinion is that technology has been a thoroughly welcome addition. The same with Tennis and Hawkeye.

Do you understand that GLT doesn't require a decision to be reviewed? An electronic signal is sent to the referee within a second of the ball crossing the line. It all happens in real time and will therefore be transparent to players and managers. As far as they can see during the game, nothing at all will change. The referee will still rule on whether the ball crossed the line or not. And I simply don't believe it will lead to excessive technology. I believe that's a very backwards way to look at it. FIFA have consistently said they won't have technology that disrupts the flow of the game. The benchmarks of GLT ensure that it has to fit in with those requirements (and be 100% accurate) before it can be introduced. Review of all decisions does not fit that criteria, and therefore won't (and IMO shouldn't ever) be introduced. You seem to be using isolated incident of 2 wrongs making a right to construct a whole argument against GLT. Football will always have an element of human error, because it will always need a referee (and presumably linesmen too). Why not just make the things we can control a little bit more accurate? It also makes the linesmen's jobs a little easier too, so I'm sure they'd welcome it.

Personally I think this is the only way we'll see a bigger stadium. Not exactly rocket science, of course... I wouldn't be surprised if in time, for games against the bigger sides, we see some form of ballot system for matchday tickets. Of course there will also be the twinning of games, but in the Premier League there aren't too many games that are unattractive so that will only have a limited effect. Also, it would seem we have no membership scheme (which I'm actually quite surprised about, it's fair and a decent money spinner). The ballot system would give the club a very good idea on the number of match tickets we could potentially sell above our capacity. And so would be a great indicator of what a maximum stadium capacity could/should be.

Your last line doesn't seem to bear any resemblance to anything I've posted. I've never said we can't fill a larger stadium under any circumstance; I've not even inferred it, probably because I don't believe it. So I'll thank not to put words in my mouth which contradict things I've even said in this thread. And IMO this thread is about the potential for a larger stadium in the future; not whether we should build one and then see if we can generate extra demand to fill it. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I think we will get a bigger stadium if the numbers show that we have the demand to consistently fill one. I don't think we'll build one just to resort to a whole new wave of discounting techniques.

Why does it have to be "well if we can't have technology for absolutely everything, we shouldn't have it for anything"? In this one case, yes 2 wrongs actually made a right in the end. For the vast majority of goals over the line not given this hasn't been the case, so its no good using one isolated example as a benchmark. Nigel Adkins was very fond of a phrase: "control your controllables". GLT is controllable with technology; without video replays (which I neither want nor think we'll ever get) offside decisions are not controllable with technology. Lets fix the problems we can fix, and not get wrapped up in the ones we can't.

I've said before FC; I appreciate the idea of the range of pricing or whatever, and while it's a commendable notion I simply don't see a business case whereby it could work in the environment of football where you simply have to have a "fixed" price in terms of what a season ticket costs. If we didn't sell season tickets and only sold tickets on a match by match basis then I could certainly see value in what you're suggesting. But as I've said, season tickets are THE most important type of ticket that the club will sell, and therefore they provide the benchmark in terms of cost. All other ticket sales have to be above the season ticket mark; which is why we get the sliding scale of Cats A, B and C. I don't really see too much other scope for movement within that. My view of discounting is this: Cat A games are the full price. They are the most attractive games, they'll likely get the highest attendances and the effect of price on these games is not massively significant (within reason). Subsequent to that, Cat B and Cat C games undergo a form of discounting; they are less popular and perhaps more succeptible to price reductions to get people through the gate.

You can throw insults if you like, but maybe I'm not "grasping" it because I either don't agree with you, or because I don't feel your argument makes business sense?

And this is one of the calculations that the club will surely be looking at. From a cost/revenue point of view, is it worth increasing in size or shoud we just stay at 32K and maximise profits by keeping prices at the higher end of the scale. The devaluing comes if you have to sell tickets at around £15 or so just to get people through the door. You can't sell all of the tickets that low. And Cat C games will be heavily discounted from Cat A games as it is.

How many more times? There already are different prices. We have three bands of ticket prices for league games, Category A, B and C. Cats B and C are discounted versions of Cat A. Doubtless there will also be discounting for League Cup games (and based upon our pathetic attendances for those in the last couple of years there needs to be). So of course I think additional discounting is bad, when we already have it in place. Especially when we'd be building a new stadium to have extra seats, to then extend the discounting even further just to fill those very seats.

Its relative to whatever the club determine the full price for a match ticket. That's the point at which you'd hope/expect the club could sell to capacity for some games without discounting. We're already going to be discounting Cat B and Cat C games, really. And if our previous time in the PL is anything to go by we probably won't even sell 32K tickets at those discounted prices, let alone 40K. Which is why I'm a little sceptical about even the effectiveness of even further discounting, and more so concerning the whole notion of a much bigger stadium and its actual viability.

For me, the crunch is whether we could sell 40K tickets for the more popular games at the full price. If we can't do that, then the whole talk of a 40K stadium is redundant and we don't need one that big. That's the first benchmark to try and establish. Then try to establish how many games would sell out. Price schemes etc etc are all well and good; but at the risk of again repeating myself, we should be building a stadium with a capacity to fit the level of demand, and not devaluing the ticket pricing just to put bums on a large number of otherwise empty seats.

Well that's all well and good; but I think we've already agreed that perhaps the best policy is to prove the demand first and then build to suit that, as opposed to the other way round. Which is also (surely) what the club will look to do.

Yep, and its exactly what would happen. Referrals work in other sports because there are natural break points. Rugby referrals after a try; there's a conversion to wait for anyway, (which the kicker is allowed 1 minute to prepare for) so adding a few seconds on top of that is nothing. Cricket, you have the time it takes the bowler to get back to his mark so again a natural break. Tennis stops after each point. Football is entirely based around a fast paced games with few interruptions. There have been many innovations to make this happen better (backpass rule, offside rule changed, advantage rule adapted, injured players get treated off the field etc etc). Video replays would be a massivley detrimental change IMO.

Again; we already have different price categories. Man U are Cat A, Norwich cat C. It already exists. For the Cat A games, we've got to be looking at selling all tickets at the original price. If we can't sell 40K tickets against Man U with regular prices, then we simply don't need a 40K stadium. The idea of prices rising against Norwich as the game gets closer is a bit weird IMO; and does very little to encourage the walk-up crowd (i.e. those who make a last minute decision to go to the game). It seems you're trying to recreate the wheel on ticket pricing whilst perhaps ignoring the real question; do we actually need a bigger stadium to satisfy current demand. If you think we need all sorts of innovative pricing schemes just to get customers through the door then it suggests we don't.

No, no and thrice no for me. I absolutely think it should be brought in for GLT. But I simply don't think football would stand up to referrals for all the things you mention. Technology will only work IMO for issues which are 100% cut and dried such as a ball going out of play. Fouls, dives etc etc are sometimes subjective and you'd completely dimish the authority of the ref by taking that sort of decision making out of his hands.

Yeah I've heard the easyjet argument before and couldn't disagree more with it. Selling flights and selling match tickets are completely incomparable IMO. Let's say, for instance, you're thinking about going to Saints v Fulham. Or Norwich. Basically, one of the least attractive fixtures. And lets say you know that prices will come down the closer you get to kick off if there's plenty of tickets available. What is there to incentivise you to buy your ticket earlier, and therefore more expensively? I don't see us selling out 40K against these sides so there's no need to get in there early. Everyone will surely just wait until the price comes down and therefore buy at the lower price. All you're doing is pushing sales back and lowering prices. Against the higher ranked sides I'd imagine tickets would be priced high anyway (they are, for Cat A games). Sorry, i think that one's totally unrealistic and always have.

First point: cheap pricing has already been introduced for less attractive games, we have Cat A, Cat B and Cat C. Second point: I'm not so sure. I know that we already have different prices for goals, wings, sides and now premium seating. I'm not sure how viable it would be to introduce another (cheaper) banding of tickets. Besides, I'd suggest that at the size of stadium we're looking at, even a seat high in the corner is going to be a great view. And again, it goes back to the idea of putting in extra seats if you need to discount them to shift them on.