stevegrant

Saints will get blocks P5, P6 and P7, so obviously P4 will be the closest to the main away section.

The lower part of block 43 is now available, an extra 350-odd seats. Would expect the upper part to be available for any walk-ups, although there are still loads of seats in the Chapel end.

Agreed, and suspect this is why we saw very little speculation about the futures of the likes of Schneiderlin, Lambert, Lallana, etc during the summer. I do fully expect Shaw to eventually go to Chelsea (two reasons: firstly, he and his family are massive Chelsea fans; secondly, they're one of the very few clubs who could afford him), but with the transfer fees we're able to demand these days, I don't see anyone being prepared to pay. While we are able to offer the players first team football and have the team competing at a high level which gives them international (and possibly continental club) experience, and can also ensure they are suitably well-rewarded for doing so, I think we'll be able to keep hold of the vast majority of them. Also agree with what's been written about our summer transfer business - we clearly identified three areas of the pitch we wanted to strengthen, and signed players who were clearly better than other players in the existing first-team. At this level, you generally have to pay a good price for that. I'd far rather this strategy than fall into the trap of bulking up the squad with players who are no better than we already have, as that breeds complacency and a lack of competition for places. Osvaldo has come in as the marquee attacking signing, and yet Lambert and Rodriguez have (with the occasional crap game every now and then) stepped up their game and largely kept him out of the side, taking advantage of the settling-in period he probably needs. Lovren's arrival made Fonte up his game, which has resulted in Yoshida not playing a single league game this season, when many would probably have expected it to be the other way around. Of course, having started from a relatively low base at the start of last season, you could argue that only signing three players at the start of this term has meant that we're a little light in terms of squad depth, which is a fair point. We were relatively fortunate last season in that I think we only had Cork (at the start of the season) and then Lallana (over Christmas) out injured for any length of time - all of a sudden we're starting to pick up a few knocks at a time when the games come thick and fast, and against superior opposition we've looked a little bit jaded. To be expected, and I don't see any reason to panic after narrow defeats to two of the title favourites. If Villa were to beat us on Wednesday without us mustering a shot on target then I'd be a bit concerned, but I see no reason for that to happen.

The fixture list for that round of games is: Arsenal v Crystal Palace Cardiff v Norwich Everton v Aston Villa Fulham v Saints Hull v Tottenham Man City v Chelsea Newcastle v Sunderland Stoke v Man United West Brom v Liverpool West Ham v Swansea Man City v Chelsea and Newcastle v Sunderland are certainties to be televised, which leaves a potential 3 further televised games.

Fulham is a slightly odd club in that they have a "neutral" section which is in the same stand (Putney End) as the away allocation, and is not segregated from the away section, so it basically merges into one big away end when the visiting team has a big support. Register on the Fulham online ticket site (Link) and then you'll be able to buy tickets in the Putney End when they go on sale to home/neutral fans. Their site currently has all of their home games up to the one immediately before our game there on sale, so I would imagine they'll put those tickets on sale in the next couple of weeks.

With two home games in 4 days, the other against one of the title favourites, I can't say I'm particularly surprised. If you're going to pick one or the other, City would be the one most would pick, I imagine. I think it's quite telling that a third of the tickets remaining for the Villa game are in the family section. Midweek at the beginning of December isn't ideal if you want to take your kids along to a game - it's the sort of situation I suspect many would pay the extra few quid and watch the higher-profile game on the Saturday instead.

Er, I did.

Still loads available elsewhere in the ground so no point opening that section up yet. It's much cheaper for the club to have a whole block of segregation than to employ extra stewards etc.

Where did you get that from? It's absolute nonsense. Still more than 1500 tickets remaining, and that's from a total of around 6500 available on a match-by-match basis (essentially, we've still got around a quarter of the tickets left to sell). Worth noting that Villa have only taken an allocation of 2200 (and haven't sold out), so there's a reasonable chance this'll be our lowest league attendance of the season. Less than 300 left for Man City, half of which are in block 43 in the allocation returned by Man City.

Tickets now on general sale. For any season ticket holder who has missed out on the more popular games this season, this is a perfect opportunity to move yourself up that priority order.

I'm sure I don't have to remind people to tread very carefully here

That's **** all in footballing terms.

Not sure that's necessarily true. Word on the grapevine was that Whittingham was only on a salary of around £75k. I'd be very surprised if even a club like Crawley couldn't afford that amount for arguably the most important person at a multi-million pound company.

That's 50% of turnover for clubs that aren't in a babysitting process like they are. Also, their current spending is 30% of turnover that includes a £10m parachute payment. I would be amazed if their wage bill isn't comfortably the highest in the division.

According to Factless, Appleton's agent has already approached Pompey, but they've told him to bugger off. I'm amused that they think they can do better.

Better-than-expected income, it may have been, but it's still not anywhere near enough to prevent the transparent-as-mud fan-owned-when-we-don't-have-to-make-any-decisions super-club from making a sizeable loss.

Of which 50 will be the usual "lolz, look at me applying using my Football Manager 2013 CV, aren't I funny and original" ones.

Don't forget that clubs generally count season ticket holders within the attendance figure even if they don't show up...

I'm highly amused by Lloyd Isgrove RT'ing this:

Top top performance

And the fact that, in print, one sentence probably covers 4-5 lines.

2014 fixtures: April Sunday 6th - Wednesday 9th: Worcestershire (Home, LVCC) Sunday 13th - Wednesday 16th: Gloucestershire (Away, LVCC) Sunday 20th - Wednesday 23rd: Derbyshire (Away, LVCC) Sunday 27th - Wednesday 30th: Surrey (Home, LVCC) May Monday 5th - Wednesday 7th: Cardiff MCCU (TBC, Friendly) Sunday 11th - Wednesday 14th: Glamorgan (Home, LVCC) Friday 16th: Glamorgan (Home, NWT20) Sunday 18th - Wednesday 21st: Leicestershire (Away, LVCC) Friday 23rd: Sussex (Away, NWT20) Sunday 25th: Middlesex (Away, NWT20) Friday 30th: Essex (Home, NWT20) June Sunday 1st - Wednesday 4th: Derbyshire (Home, LVCC) Thursday 5th: Kent (Home, NWT20) Sunday 8th - Wednesday 11th: Worcestershire (Away, LVCC) Friday 13th: Somerset (Away, NWT20) Sunday 15th - Wednesday 18th: Essex (Home, LVCC) Friday 20th: Gloucestershire (Home, NWT20) Wednesday 25th: Glamorgan (Away, NWT20) Friday 27th: Surrey (Away, NWT20) Saturday 28th - Tuesday 1st July: Surrey (Away, LVCC) July Friday 4th: Kent (Away, NWT20) Saturday 5th: Somerset (Home, NWT20) Sunday 6th - Wednesday 9th: Gloucestershire (Home, LVCC) Friday 11th: Middlesex (Home, NWT20) Sunday 13th - Wednesday 16th: Essex (Away, LVCC) Friday 18th: Sussex (Home, NWT20) Tuesday 22nd: Essex (Away, NWT20) Saturday 26th: Derbyshire (Away, RLODC) Sunday 27th: Lancashire (Away, RLODC) Sunday 27th - Thursday 31st: England v India Test Match Thursday 31st: Gloucestershire (Away, RLODC) August Wednesday 6th: Leicestershire (Home, RLODC) Friday 8th: Northamptonshire (Home, RLODC) Monday 11th: Worcestershire (Home, RLODC) Wednesday 13th: Essex (Away, RLODC) Friday 15th - Monday 18th: Kent (Away, LVCC) Thursday 21st: Yorkshire (Home, RLODC) Sunday 31st - Monday 3rd September: Leicestershire (Home, LVCC) September Monday 15th - Thursday 18th: Kent (Home, LVCC) Tuesday 23rd - Friday 26th: Glamorgan (Away, LVCC) Key: LVCC = LV County Championship Division 2 NWT20 = NatWest T20 Blast RLODC = Royal London One-Day Cup

Probably engineering work on the Overground. Options to get to Fulham Broadway are from Wimbledon or Victoria.

He's been made a bit of a scapegoat for their struggles but if you spend that much on a centre forward who scores a lot of goals by running onto crosses made by genuine wingers who go on the outside of the full backs, it's an absolute nonsense to then play inverted wingers who cut inside all the time and full backs who get forward but can't cross to save their lives.

What a through-ball that was