SaintBobby

It’s early days, but that bottom four do look pretty poor. As a whole - disregarding the games they’ve played against each other - their combined record over 15 matches is W 0 D 1 L 14. It’s fair to say that 0.067 points per game against the top 16 is probably relegation form. Long way to go, but I don’t remember Saints being quite this bad in the early matches in our first year back up.

This season is nuts. I’m starting to think we might get a wildcard winner of the league.

He also took out a gun. Shot dead their centre forward and then used the second bullet to shoot our left back through the skull. Brutal, but sends the right message.

Oh I see what you mean, I think. You mean how do we move from 20 to 18 teams, not what happens once we have stabilised at 18? I guess it would be done over 2 seasons, like it was when we went from 22 to 20.

Don’t follow you here. The plan is that it’s 2 up, 2 down automatically. The 3rd bottom team are thrown a chance of survival via playoffs. If they win those, then they stay in the division - so, would be two up, two down. If they lose those, then they are the 3rd team to go down and 3 come up.

The oddest thing for me is why the big clubs want the EPL cut to 34 matches. There might be good footballing reasons for doing so (more England games, fewer wear and tear injuries on players), but I’m sceptical on those. From a straight money-grabbing perspective though, you’d probably want to expand the division to 22 teams. If we go to just 34 games, you’d expect to see TV money and gate receipts fall by 10% or so. That’s a big chunk of change. I’m now so cynical about the big clubs that I take their motive to be reducing the voting power of the small clubs and then using their enhanced voting power to bend the money back in their direction even more.

Yes, I have factored that in but mistyped. At present, 3 teams out of 20 get relegated (15%), in future it is effectively 2.25 out of 18 (12.5%). But in reality, relegation will be more of a threat as the strong teams will still be in the division but we will be light a couple of weak teams. So, the season before last and/or the season before that would have likely seen Saints down.

Glitchy today...maybe about 50% of my efforts to get onto the forum have failed

The first thing to go would be collective bargaining rights for TV. That would ossify the top six even more....and probably for ever.

Only for this stint in the Premier League (which might be permanent, but probably not). If we're relegated and bounceback, we will be at the bottom fo the queue in terms of getting back a share. The real maths also work against us. At present, it is quite easy to find six allies from the other 19 clubs to defeat a move by the big clubs. (I think the 5 substitutes rule was a recent example). Under this system, we would move to having 1/9th of the vote and often be outvoted 7-2 or 8-1. At present, we have 1/20th of the vote, but only need to get allies to get this to 7/20ths to stop something. You can't measure Saints' power and influence purely on the % of shares we hold. A hypothetical system where we had 49% of the shares and Man Utd had 51% would not be an imporvement in our power - we'd lose everything that mattered.

We should oppose this. Saints being one of the nine shareholders will disappear forver if.when we get relegated. The chance of relegation goes up markedly. Statistically, it only goes from 15% to 15.25% of teams going down, but if you cut the division to just 18 clubs there will be fewer candidiates to be whipping boys at the bottom. The current arrangements - whereby any 7 clubs can block anything - are a godsend for a club likes us, and I'd need something spectacular on the table to want to surrender those constitutional rights. Too much power is already concentrated in too few hands. This would make it worse.

Can't see it. We maybe need a bit more cover for RB/LB, but the Williams deal goign south was probably the end of that.

Chilwell out for the Belgium game. I’m guessing every left back in England would need to get injured and become unavailable before Southgate even considers putting Bertrand in the squad.

£15 is a bit on the high end. But I would otherwise have bought 2 tickets for Stamford Bridge, so I'll pay. Worse experience, but saving money. A lot of that seems true of lockdown.

What's the problem? I think all 380 matches should be available on TV. I'd expect to pay more the more matches I can watch.

Sweet. He’s had a good game.

According to that Guardian article, in England it's David Watson of Notts County with the longest break (17 years). Looking him up on wikipedia, he only ever scored two gols for them - one in his first spell and one in his second. So, even if Theo scores for us, it won't be the longest gap between goals scored by a player for the same club!

yep, glitchy today again

On the cusp, I’d say. Prob just bottom half - but anything from 6th to 16th is possible.

May be nothing to it. But a range of things seemed odd. The club was days behind in confirming the signing, even after it was reported as done deal everywhere. We have seen virtually nothing of Salisu. Not sure he’s even done an interview for the club website? Hasn’t apparently been training with the first team, but instead training alone to get fit - fine, but not obvious how this would be the best way of getting him used to our style of play, which is the apparent priority. Most likely everything is fine, but it’s all rather unorthodox and I think there are grounds for being just a tad uneasy without any real grounds (yet!) to panic.

Feeling a bit sentimental. But even on hard nosed rationality, it’s a £1.5m gamble/insurance policy. Pretty small beer even if it doesn’t work at all.

Assuming Theo gets confirmed, who was the last ex-Saint who came back? By which I mean someone who played in the first team before leaving us initially, not only playing for the U-12s?

It does seem like most/all of the deadwood has finally gone. No immediate huge benefits, but less of an overall financial mess and absentee players. Good for the long run.

Good window. Despite the mystery over Salisu. Hope that turns out to be nothing major to worry about it.

Meh. Good general cover if we get Theo, I guess. But hope he is just used as cover.