SaintBobby

Seems a pretty sensible option from their narrow point of view. Their ballache at the moment is 7 smaller EPL clubs vetoing their desires. If the big six left and linked up with the other 72, the other 14 would surely have to follow? The big six could rewrite the rule book as part of a new EFL. So many EFL clubs are now teetering on the brink that they’d agree to virtually anything as long as they have a cash handout to survive.

I believe it was the Athletic - possibly also (merely referenced) on Sky Sports or BBC Sports app. Parry didn’t say that the big six would leave and join EFL, he just refused to deny that it had been discussed. It stands to reason- you make most of the 72 non-EPL clubs into a set of desperate welfare cases and then present it as a fait accompli to the remaining 14 Premier League clubs. It’s not as if a standalone league of Saints, Burnley, Fulham and Sheff Utd plus ten other similar clubs is going to be a very credible prospect.

I agree with this sentiment, but the thing that worries me the most is the possible new alliance emerging with Project Big Picture. It seems - with Rick Parry refusing to deny it - that the “big six” would consider leaving the Premier League and rejoining the EFL. Were that to happen, it would leave the “small 14” well and truly fecked. Seems to me that the “small 14” need to urgently build alliances with the Championship and League One clubs to thwart this madness.

Yawn.

God. What a total yawn. It’s like watching your boorish, drunk uncle who thinks he’s so clever and has zero self-awareness. Doing everything to be the centre of attention. It’s tedious. And really rather sad.

God, what tedious behaviour.

Well, if you derive implied probabilities from bookies’ odds then you have Newcastle at 3/1, Brighton at 4/1 and Palace at 5/1 to go down. If my maths are correct, that equates to a 50.2% chance that at least one of these three will be relegated....and therefore a higher chance that one of these three will end up in the bottom four.

Only worry for me is if it’s set too low. If his market price is, say, £60m but the release clause is £40m you’ve set yourself up for a load of clubs triggering it. If there is a release clause set it at £100m. And for twice that amount, you can buy the whole club FFS!

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!