stevegrant

Depends how quickly Mackay gets another job - ultimately, the support staff will be most loyal to their families and bank accounts, if they haven't got a job elsewhere to walk into, they'll probably be quite determined to stick with what they've got.

While all the off-pitch nonsense has been an absolute shambles, he's not been helped by his players. They were absolute dog**** for the vast majority of yesterday's game. No fight in any of them.

Yep. There's no segregation.

In the Putney End, it's all the same turnstiles for "neutral" and away fans, so if they said that, they're lying.

I remember when England played South Africa in a Champions Trophy game a number of years ago, Graeme Smith was going to pretty much beat us single-handedly before he came down with cramp. Back then, runners were still allowed, but it's always been at the discretion of the opposing captain, and Andrew Strauss rightly refused to let him have one on the grounds that you shouldn't be allowed help for not having the stamina to cope. Similar situation in football, IMO - if you've got cramp, tough ****. Get fitter.

Randomly throwing your arms around

Fox played in our win against Man City last season, while Hooiveld played well in our defeat at Arsenal this season, but both of those were with Boruc behind them, not a rookie with lead boots keeping him stuck on his line.

Realistically, there's no big name who's actually available at the moment, which makes the whole AVB sacking even more knee-jerk and badly thought out. The rumour is that AVB was unhappy with his lot at Spurs in the summer and wanted to leave then - if that's true, Levy would have been better off doing a deal then when there were LOADS of big name managers available. By the sound of it, they've approached a number of people with a view to taking over at the end of this season, Louis Van Gaal and Frank De Boer being the main ones, but neither are prepared to jump ship until the summer (De Boer is chasing a 4th straight title with Ajax and Van Gaal has the small matter of the World Cup with the Dutch national team). Giving Sherwood 18 months just about demonstrates a bit of commitment on the club's part while also not making it too expensive to ditch him when someone better is available in the summer.

That was a private conversation that will remain so.

He was given two non-negotiable options to preserve his forum life, but chose one that wasn't available.

Hilarious decision. He'll be gone by the end of the season.

I suspect whoever Boruc's long-term replacement is will - in addition to doing the usual stuff you expect from PL keepers like saving shots, catching crosses, etc - be good with the ball at his feet, able to distribute the ball quickly to the full-backs 50 yards away. From what I've seen of Forster, his kicking is terrible.

Erm, no, I don't think so.

And because Salisbury hadn't got their affairs in order by the end of the season in which they entered administration, the Conference booted them out, so they ended up back in the Southern League.

I suggest that says more about your eyesight than the "tiring" sight of us wearing colours that have been synonymous with SFC for decades.

That's Monaco whose average crowd is 8007 this season.

Probably. Firstly, it's not the FA's test, it's the Premier League and Football League (who each have their own, slightly different, tests). Secondly, those tests are to ensure that the people attempting to buy football clubs are neither criminals (to prevent money laundering, etc) or proven incompetent when it comes to managing finances in football. They are not designed to subjectively decide whether an owner is a bit mental. Wind the clock back a few years to when Tan bought Cardiff - they were on the verge of going bust. If the FAPP Test was subjective as you seem to suggest it should be, and Tan's takeover was blocked because the Football League thought he might be a bit of a mentalist, and as a result Cardiff went out of business, I think it's fair to say the FL would be taking a large share of the blame.

Can you imagine Redknapp working for Tan? He's got it pretty cushty at QPR, he has an owner who basically bows down to his every demand, regardless of how ridiculous it is and/or how much it costs. Lennon would be my guess for Cardiff.

Yep. As mentioned above, once signed for Coventry from Real Betis but was then sold on to Real Madrid before he made an appearance - it seems as though Betis wouldn't deal with Madrid, so Madrid's solution was to basically use Coventry as a middle-man!

And Norwich. One of those two jobs will become available in the coming months, I suspect.

Even with the benefit of hindsight, I think everyone recognised that NC had a plan - whether it was a "Bloody Good" one or not was open to debate at the time. Tan doesn't appear to have a plan of any sort - what's his end game? So you get rid of Mackay - whether he's doing a good job this season is debatable - what's next? Sure, there will be plenty of managers willing to take the cash on offer for what would probably be a short-lived job, but it's hardly conducive to stable progression.

Where is the "benefit" in finishing 8th instead of 9th, other than an extra £1.2m which will get absorbed into the club's general running costs? Does anyone know or care who finished 8th three seasons ago? Does anyone even care who finished 8th last season? I bet most people can remember who won the cups though...

It all adds up. An extra £2m is £40k a week the club can spend on wages to bring in (potentially) better players. Clearly the league is going to be the priority for those who have most to gain from it - those with a realistic chance of getting in the top 4. We are not one of those teams, nor are we ever likely to be, regardless of what ambitions the club has. For the rest, that means survival first and foremost - staying in the PL at the moment is worth around £45m in broadcasting and prize money MORE than the £20m a year parachute payments (i.e. roughly £65m total for finishing 17th) - and the only way to build success is to do well in the knockout competitions which are within reach. Win a cup (doesn't matter which one, they both provide extra revenue from extra games and a route into Europe) and all of a sudden the exposure the club gets is much greater, the club can then offer European football to prospective signings, there is prize money within the competition for wins and draws, extra gate revenue from the three home group games (and potentially more if we get through the group), etc. It all adds up, and I'm sure anyone in charge of the finances at a football club would tell you, every bit of revenue is important. Say, for example, we won the FA Cup. That would give us a total prize pool of nearly £3.4m (you get differing levels of prize money for each round win). If we were to get to the final, we would play in at least 6 games (not including any replays). In FA Cup games, the split of revenue is generally 45% per club (42.5% for replays), so a 20,000 crowd at £20 a ticket is £180k - not a great deal in the grand scheme of things, but you can assume the prices will increase as you get further into the competition. 25,000 at £25 a ticket is around £280k, 30,000 at £30 is £405k, and if we got a game at Old Trafford, for example, 75,000 at £49 a ticket is £1.65m. Once you get to the semi-finals, the gate receipts of the two games combined are split, with 58.5% of the total being divided equally between the four clubs (e.g. 80,000 at £50 a ticket for both games would give each club around £1.1m). No gate receipts are earned from the final. That little lot - six games - would earn the club in the region of £7m, and that's not counting the intangibles like extra merchandising, more interest in home league games, etc. Not bad for a competition supposedly nobody cares about because there's no money to be made from it...

One place higher in the Premier League = around £1.2m 45% of gate receipts from Wembley final (assuming average price of £50), as per the Competition Rules = around £2m 45% of gate receipts from home semi-final (assuming average price of £25), as per the Competition Rules = around £350k 45% of gate receipts from away semi-final (same assumption, will vary depending on opponent) = around £350k (more if it's a bigger ground) The actual prize money for the League Cup is crap (£100k for winners, £50k for runners-up), especially in comparison to the FA Cup (£2m winners, £1m runners-up), but to say there's no financial incentive for clubs to go far in the competition is nonsense.

This is already happening from next season. No real merit in giving a Champions League place to the FA Cup winners, IMO - the CL should be a reward for performance over the whole season at the highest domestic level, not for putting together a run of 6 wins, potentially all against lower-league opposition.