SaintBobby

Unfortunately, the result would stand at this stage...

Can we get that moron Merrington off the airwaves, please???

Beckford off !!!! ?????

Merrington : "I'm convinced this could go either way now..." Moron.

"To be fair to Jermaine Beckford, he went down like a fairy!" You f***ing what???

Producer blames commentator for missing ten secods. Commentator blames the music system at Elland Road. That buck is moving at speed...

Absurd. Saints player misses the start of the 2nd half and nearly a goal because of the reading out a "humorous" text message from Tunbudge Wells. Utter, utter c*nts.

Need to get Lambert involved more...

Not bad....scary last ten minutes though... Dont think we should go 4-5-1 as Connolly seems to have been our best attacking outlet...

Maximum bet allowed was a grand at bet 365 and a grand at Skybet. Rickie is now in to evens!

Two grand on Lambert to be top L1 goalscorer at 2/1

I really don't see what people find so difficult here. Or has this just become an in-joke semantic argument? Teams can be eliminated from competitions without losing matches or can progress in competitions without winning matches. For example, in the 1982 World Cup, in the second round, England drew 0-0 with West Germany and 0-0 with Spain. West Germany proceeded to the next round and England were eliminated. Did we lose 0-0 to Spain? When drawn matches were resolved by the toss of a coin rather than by penalties, did this mean teams were winning or losing matches 1-1 etc?

Italy. The final ended in a 1-1 draw. HTH.

It was a draw. Neither penalties nor extra time count in official W/D/L statistics. E.g. 1990 World Cup semi-final was England 1-1 Germany, which counts as a draw in FIFA stats. HTH

Alphabetical order, I believe. Or possibly trial by ordeal. I don't think they do anything as mad as drawing lots. That would be insane.

I'm sorry not to share the unadulterated joy you're all expressing here. As I see it, Norwich have an away goals advantage to take into the second leg ;-) COYR! Wembley in March and May (x2) please!!!!!! :-)

If you're worried about this, lay off your original stake. You would have made a 17% return on your stake in a week if you'd followed my tip. That's a sensational return on investment.

He's now at close to evens http://www.oddschecker.com/football/english/league-one/coca-cola-league-1/top-goalscorer Commiserations to those who didn't follow my tip. So I was correct it was basically free money as you can now hedge your bets, thereby 100% guaranteeing a return of 1/6 of your initial stake. Alternatively, you could keep your money on Rickie and stand to treble your money if he finishes as top scorer (a prospect that the betting markets rate as 50-50)

That's true, but to balance it off: (a) we will play more than 25 games at home this season (we're already at 29 for certain by my count, and there'll be more if we beat Norwich and/or Luton and/or get to the play-offs) (b) there is revenue over and above ticket sales - programmes, beer, hot dogs, Megastore sales etc. So I reckon 20 quid a head over 25 games is a far guess at an overall income stream - even if average ticket price is about 15 quid. HTH.

Genuine question: is there any intel on whether Norwich will field a strong XI or shove out what amounts to a reserve or youth side?

To return - vaguely seriously - to the OP's question, I'd imagine the break even point is easily being surpassed. Am assuming our salary bill is about the same as last year. I don't know what the break even point was last year, call it X. This year we don't have the mortgage on the stadium, which I gather was costing about £3m pa. Assuming an average cost of £20 a ticket, that amounts to 150,000 tickets we don't need to sell to cover the mortgage. Assuming 25 games at St. Mary's (ok, it's more than this, but some are priced much cheaper than 20 quid a head), this means we can "lose" 4,800 fans a game. So, whatever break even point was last year, it's (X - 4,800) per game this year. Do I get points for showing my working out even if my answer is wrong?

The bookmakers and betting exchanges is the answer to your first question. We're about 5/1 to be promoted, see http://www.oddschecker.com/football/english/league-one/coca-cola-league-1/promotion That's to say, the people putting their money where their mouth is reckon our chances at promotion are about 1 in 6. I'd guess this parcels out as about a c.35% chance of getting to the play-offs and a c. 40% chance of winning the play-offs if we get there. It is worth pointing out - just for the avoidance of doubt - that "getting to the play-offs" is not synonymous with getting promoted. I don't think anyone has explicitly stated that they amount to the same thing, but it is worth noting that even if we make it to the top six, we will still be odds against being promoted. In contrast, we are 7/2 to win the JPT and 4/3 to make the JPT final. That's to say, we have a VERY good chance - at least of a day out at Wembley. So, if you asked me: 1. Would I prefer promotion or winning the JPT? Obviously, promotion. 2. Would I prefer getting to the play-offs or winning the JPT? Hmmm...getting to the play-offs makes sense surely, but there's not an utterly massive amount in it. 3. Would I prefer to beat Norwich tomorrow or Leeds on Saturday? I'd definitely prefer to lose to Leeds on Saturday and beat Norwich tomorrow. That would make us heavily odds on to get to Wembley, and close to evens to win some silverware, whereas losing to Leeds would probably only damage our promotion chances by 2% or 3%, it certainly wouldn't extinguish them. QED. Field our best team tomorrow.

I'm sure he finds it's easy to forgive the misspelling of his name, too.

It's pretty simple if you look at this way: The points deduction is technically applied at the start, but we have the whole 46 games to overcome it. E.g. even if we'd won our first three games 8-0, we'd have still been bottom of the table after 3 games, but surely you'd look at our performances and say "wow, Southampton seem awesome, they will get promoted" not "Southampton are rooted to the bottom of the table, they are in a relegation scrap for sure." In order to try and work out where we might end up at the end of the season, we really need to measure our trajectory. And that means we should see the 10 point penalty as something we need to get rid of over the course of the whole 46 games. Frankly, it's irrelavent whether the penalty was applied at the start of the season, at the end or at 3.27am on Tuesday week.

We'll win by a tidy handful...4-1 or something....