stevegrant

Depends how they price it, I reckon. Anything more than a tenner and you'll have most people saying "can't be arsed, not worth the effort", I suspect. So obviously it'll be £20...

If those seats are already free (i.e. they're not reserved for an existing season ticket holder) then you can do it online now without having to speak to anybody, or without having to wait until the renewal deadline to pass. However, I think we sold somewhere in the region of 20-22k season tickets, so there likely won't be that many seats available right now in areas that people will generally want to sit/stand in.

I think the one thing I'd cut them slack on is the Vince situation. While obviously the disruption has been known about for a while, I get the feeling those in charge were a bit blindsided by his decision to uproot his family to Dubai, and it didn't leave them enough time to source a suitable replacement, even if there were such a thing available. Mark Stoneman had test experience at the top of the order so I suspect they thought it was a "least bad" option for them as a stop-gap (hence the one-year contract) which would simultaneously plug a gap in the top two and allow others to bat in perhaps a less exposing position. Fair to say it's not worked out yet. That said, I still rate Yorkshire and Worcestershire as comfortably worse than us, and based on our game the other week Warwickshire too. And we've been inconsistent rather than outright dreadful so far - the wins were both very good and two of the three draws were after being on top in the game and running out of time due to the weather. But as mentioned by pretty much everyone, we have known that the top order has been fragile for years, really. It was generally Vince or the middle to lower order bailing the others out, and without Vince that leaves fewer bail-out options. I think the bowling has mostly been OK. Abbott has been excellent again, Fuller continuing to prove deceptively important, Dawson good when needed (surprisingly infrequently this year so far due to conditions or opposition team collapses), and Wheal, Turner and Baker have shown glimpses, but they are young players who don't have all the answers yet and will get it wrong sometimes.

I imagine your best bet is to renew your existing seat to lock in the price, and then once the renewal deadline passes next month you'll then have a much wider selection as all the ones reserved for existing season ticket holders but which haven't been renewed will become available. There is a form to fill in - link here - so I am assuming there's not going to be an automatic way of doing it, unless you're happy to take a seat that wasn't a season ticket holder's seat last season.

Would largely agree with that assessment, Robinson looked head and shoulders above anybody on either side in terms of just an all-round game and having both the physicality and spacial awareness that you need at senior level, so he's the one I would expect to see in and around the first team next season. Dom Ballard is an unrivalled centre forward when playing against his peers, but his senior record in a few loan spells in League One doesn't yet suggest he's going to be troubling the likes of Adam Armstrong for first team minutes next season, he's a very willing runner (and to do so for 120+ minutes was undoubtedly impressive) but while he's got a little burst of pace it's probably not quite enough to make a difference against experienced pros, and while he's not a pushover physically he's not big or dominant against players of his own age. I don't want to write off someone who's still very young in his development and has shown such promise but we've been here before with the likes of Ryan Seager and even Cosimo Sarli for those of a slightly older disposition where banging the goals in at reserve team/U21 level doesn't necessarily translate to the first team. Will Merry was one player I'd not seen before in the flesh, but he looked more attack-minded last night than I'd thought him to be, two or three excellent driving runs through the heart of Palace's midfield (which was their main weakness, I'd say), his cameo curtailed by a shin injury, assume he got closed down late by a defender when he took a shot from the edge of the area that was well saved by their keeper - one of about 8 saves varying in quality from decent to outstanding. That game could genuinely have ended 6-6, 8-1 or anything in between, such was the openness of the game. Not sure such an open game will work to our benefit against Man City in the final, but we'll wait and see, I guess!

So exactly the same as two years ago, then?

Might be on Palace's YouTube channel but wouldn't expect them to announce anything until very close to kickoff to maximise ticket sales.

And we have catering that is the envy of the Premier League...

5pm on 12th June.

Likely people who basically had no intention of going again this season, so they noticed they hadn't finished paying for their season ticket and just cancelled the direct debit via their bank. I imagine the club would have first tried contacting them to reinstate the payments but after that they probably just blocked the ticket. If I remember rightly, the early St Mary's days featured voucher books for season tickets as they had the free bus passes attached as well, so there probably wasn't much they could do about fraud (and let's be fairly clear, that's what this is/was) because every ticket voucher was the same and nothing was scanned to authenticate that exact ticket.

I only looked at my own renewal price, so I don't know if it's replicated across the board, but an adult ticket in the Northam was £499 this season and if you use the payment plan this year it's £497.70, so it's still effectively frozen. Given the apparent number of people who abused the payment plan this season, we seemingly have them to thank for the extra expense.

Yeah, basically this. Apparently numbers "in the hundreds" simply cancelled their direct debits midway through the season because they couldn't be bothered to go anymore. Quite surprised the club doesn't have any recourse on that through the Direct Debit guarantee (the main aim of which is consumer protection but surely should protect the "service" provider in cases of deliberate non-payment of agreed amounts), so I guess their way around that is to levy a charge and to ensure payments are complete by the end of the calendar year. They've said that anyone with an outstanding balance on this season's ticket won't be able to use the payment plan for next season. Quite surprised they've not just said "no season ticket for you", tbh, but I guess money talks.

Three drops in the slips already

Happy to be corrected but I didn't think Kraft had put any money in?

And a number plucked from thin air which would probably undervalue the club even as a Championship one. Ultimately every club is for sale if the price is right, it doesn't need the owner to be engaging M&A specialists to find buyers to prompt a sale when there are seemingly loads of willing buyers looking for a football club to invest in.

I think it'll be difficult for Villa to be playing twice a week for a month, academy players aren't used to that sort of schedule. They've also got the FA Youth Cup final against Man City after four of their six remaining games, so I think I'd put City as massive favourites for that final right now. Maybe they get the 11 points they'll need from their remaining six games, but I don't think it's a foregone conclusion at all.

Probably worth also comparing with Sheffield United and Burnley, tbf - Leeds will always be a big draw for Sky because they know it's a guaranteed viewing audience. Worth noting there have been 9 midweek rounds where everyone has played either Tuesday or Wednesday (might have been one or two rogue Thursdays thrown in there too), plus there's 2 on Good Friday/Easter Monday coming up, and Christmas featured Boxing Day, plus everyone playing on Sunday 29th and New Year's Day (a Wednesday), and the final day where everyone is kicking off at 12:30. So that's 15 games of the 46 that are already definitely not Saturday 3pm, so I'd discount those from the "look how many games get moved for TV" discussion. From the remaining 31, Sheffield United appear to have had 7 moved to a Friday night (predominantly big games - opening night, Hull home and away, Leeds, Sunderland, Coventry), surprisingly only 3 Saturday 12:30s, 4 Sundays (the two Sheffield derbies at 12:30, West Brom and Watford 3pm) and a single Monday night (Leeds). So that's 16 Saturday 3pm games. Burnley have had a few more moved, with only 11 Saturday 3pms - 8 Saturday 12:30s, 4 Friday nights, 2 Monday nights and 3 Sundays - but looks like they might have had a few games postponed during the season which have had to be played midweek. Compare this to last season for us, obviously on the old TV deal: 16 non-Saturday games in the original schedule, leaving 30 that were originally Saturday 3pm. 22 of those remained, with 5 moved to Saturday lunchtime and 3 to Friday night. We obviously had more games televised than that, but these were midweeks where games were either played Tuesday or Wednesday anyway, over Christmas on days where everyone played the same day and over Easter where everyone played Friday and Monday. By my calculation, we had 17 games televised out of our 46.

Solid start, 55/0 off 17. Middleton doesn't have a particularly wide range of shots, but he does at least seem to have the patience to wait for a delivery that suits him.

And if you fancy one of our Glass Half-Full/Half-Empty pint glasses, you can get them here: https://shop.totalsaints.co.uk/products/tsp-pint-glass-half-empty-half-full Currently UK only (still trying to find a suitable overseas distributor)

Probably cost a few quid in advertising revenue too, in fairness

I need to do a database server upgrade at some point, I suspect this may be related. Migrating a 14gb database should be a piece of cake...

Those weird Saints-related Facebook groups might be for you then, seen some proper odd stuff going on there whereby the admins set every post on matchday to be fully moderated so they quite often don't become visible to everybody else until days later, so then somebody has posted something in reaction to an incident in a game on the Saturday and it then gets posted around the same sort of time as a game we're playing on the Wednesday utter lunacy.

OK, I think we are back...