stevegrant

In a slightly perverse way, them signing all of this young talent is their way of attempting to satisfy the UEFA Financial Fair Play criteria. Signing these players means that their rivals can't sign them, then they loan them out to teams of their choosing, thereby saving on wages and probably collecting a loan fee as well, and then if they still have no use for them after a couple of years they can sell them at a profit. Kevin de Bruyne is a prime example of that, signed for £7m a few years ago, sent out on loan a couple of times to his old club Genk and then Werder Bremen, came back, didn't do enough for Mourinho's liking so they sold him to Wolfsburg (who have been throwing money around lately) for £17m.

Puyol still had a year left to run anyway, they'd agreed an early mutual termination. Valdes' agent will be laughing all the way to the bank.

Yeah, seems reasonable. Full details: http://www.saintsfc.co.uk/news/article/02042014-southampton-manchester-united-ticketing-arrangements-1461485.aspx Basically, only available to those with 4+ home game purchases this season, then to 3+, then 2+. The club don't expect there to be any left after this.

He's on loan at Lazio at the moment. Chelsea's links with Vitesse Arnhem, who he was on loan at earlier in the season, is being investigated by the Dutch FA at the moment after there was a suggestion that Chelsea have "discouraged" Vitesse from qualifying for the Champions League. Their owner is an "associate" of Abramovich, so they're clearly worried that UEFA will link them and ban one or both of them as UEFA rules state that two clubs owned by the same person/group/company cannot compete in the same competition. The reason the Chelsea one went away was because Chelsea settled with RC Lens privately, so they dropped the charges. With Barcelona, there are at least 10 deals under scrutiny here, with little prospect of them settling with all of them.

Difficult to tell whether that means a ban on sales as well - if you're not allowed to sign anyone, why would you want to sell anyone anyway? Ultimately it'll probably all be redundant as Barcelona will appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, and it'll take months for that appeal to be heard, so the ban will be suspended until the case is heard, so they'll just go mental in the summer to make sure the ban doesn't actually affect them at all when it's eventually imposed.

They can sell, but their first-team squad is so small they'd be utterly mental to do so, assuming the ban is enforced (Barcelona will appeal). The most interesting part of this situation is what happens to the players they've already agreed to sign in the summer - they've already got a deal with Borussia Moenchengladbach to sign their goalkeeper, Marc-André ter Stegen, to replace Victor Valdés, and Gladbach have already started spending that money.

Apparently because the FA have done an exclusive licence deal with Topps, Panini can't use the FA logo on the England "shiny", so they just have the St George cross instead, and the players have been photoshopped onto generic white shirts rather than the full "portrait in kit" images. Good of the FA to **** it up for everyone

It's got Tom Cleverley, Jermain Defoe and John Ruddy in it, so I wouldn't read too much into it.

If I remember rightly, it was something like http://www.soton.ac.uk/~saints

And also by people who seem to fail to grasp the concept that the figures reported are up to 30th June 2013, a full nine months ago, since when we have improved our league position by 6 places (currently) and will benefit from the new broadcasting contracts that kicked in this season. It's a story about nothing, basically - presumably there's very little else going on at the moment.

There are a whole host of players who this applies to, stretching back the best part of a decade. The ECB has been allowed to treat people like absolute dirt because - until now - the team on the pitch has been winning regularly. Think back to how Matthew Hoggard was discarded after the tour to New Zealand, and players like Nick Compton, Samit Patel and James Taylor have been selected and then dropped seemingly without even being given the common courtesy of a phone call to explain the reasons. Carberry and Patel would have done a good job in Bangladesh, IMO. Carberry would have improved the fielding immeasurably, while Patel's record on the subcontinent with both bat and ball is excellent. His fielding's largely crap, but can he be any worse than, say, James Tredwell?

Assume Middlesex would want their side in the field for a day as well, so would expect them to declare overnight.

I thought it was 100%

Lovren was £8m, I'd say he's been pretty decent value thus far.

I think that if Chelsea get through against PSG, their semi-final could be on the following Tuesday, so their game at Liverpool would be swapped with our game against Everton. If that happens, it'll be an amusing kick in the balls for Sky who have clearly scheduled Liverpool v Chelsea followed by Palace v Man City with a "Showdown Super Sunday" feel to it.

The headline on the OS, which just says "2012/13 financial results released", or the headline on the BBC, which the club has absolutely no say over? I think most of the quotes are sensible in the club's article are sensible, taking a fairly reserved attitude towards them and not giving themselves (or others) too much of a pat on the back - although the "difficult financial situation" one is a bit odd - and I think you get a bit more clarity of the situation with Adam Blackmore's interview. Would be handy if someone had the time to transcribe that, actually.

The weird thing is that our batting in this tournament *****il today, obviously) has been very good, and that's usually been our downfall, especially on the subcontinent against teams packed with spinners. We haven't even bowled that badly, apart from Dernbach, it's our fielding that's let us down in every game. I don't think the Dutch dropped even a half-chance today.

Not anymore, it's done on tickets sold these days.

Significant alterations to the plans after they had been signed off, most likely.

Normal (i.e. non-corporate) matchday sales to home fans, in descending order, with total attendance in brackets, with 20,415 season ticket holders: Hull City 7,414 (30,022) Newcastle 7,400 (31,360) Manchester City 7,007 (31,229) Liverpool 6,417 (31,659) Tottenham 6,409 (31,455) Chelsea 6,392 (31,271) Arsenal 6,167 (31,284) Crystal Palace 6,137 (30,699) Fulham 6,105 (28,631) Norwich 6,092 (29,828 ) Aston Villa 6,004 (29,814) Swansea 5,654 (28,570) Stoke 5,626 (27,987) West Brom 5,483 (28,610) Sunderland 5,431 (29,596) West Ham 4,724 (28,794) Basically there are just over 6400 tickets available on a match-by-match basis, which is only increased when the away team doesn't take the full allocation of 3200.

You have to remember that the corporate section covers both the large seated area in the middle of the Itchen Stand and the corporate boxes. Pretty sure they didn't sell every box for the game, nor would every box have been full. In general, though, corporate sales have improved significantly since the middle of January.

According to the online ticket system, there were 86 seats unsold (although 71 of those were single tickets in the family section, so presumably they're unable to sell those), so the vast majority of the shortfall will be in corporate. I'd be interested to discover what the club does regarding ticketing agencies - it's possible that they have acquired tickets either on a match-by-match basis or season tickets, but they didn't find buyers for Saturday. I remember the Man United game last season when the game had sold out two weeks in advance and yet there was a massive block of around 100 seats empty in block 5 - the club claimed they were ALL due to people simply not turning up, which seems somewhat difficult to believe.