stevegrant

As I'm sure you're all well aware by now, in an effort to arrest the decline of away attendances at games, the Premier League announced that each club would receive £200k each season for the next three seasons which was to be used to assist away fans. As far as I can tell, there were no hard and fast rules as to how it had to be spent, other than it being geared towards away fans. 18 of the 20 PL clubs have announced what they're doing with the money, with many clubs using it to reduce the cost of away tickets for their fans, laying on free or subsidised travel to away games, etc. It turns out that Saints are spending the vast majority of the money on redecorating the away concourse at St Mary's. They also spent a portion of the money on that "Family Fun Day" before the Fulham game, which seemed to be just a couple of old fairground rides that looked like they'd fall to pieces if you gave them a nudge. The two-faced nature of the club's attitude towards its fans beggars belief - on social media they praise our travelling support to the hilt, and yet in practice they treat them with such utter contempt.

Depends how much the tickets are, I guess. Who in their right mind is going to want to get up at 2am to get a coach, whether it's free or not?!

I'm going to trial a day or two without the sharing features. I'd rather keep them for the functionality (and traffic) they bring, to be honest...

Our away game at Sunderland on Saturday 18th January has been brought forward to a 12:45 kickoff for TV coverage on BT Sport. Glad I hadn't already booked a train up there, almost certainly would have booked one to arrive for 1:30ish!

Likewise

The battery size is a (slight) step up from the Nexus 4, so it's a step in the right direction. Would have obviously preferred a 3000 mA one, but hey ho. Ordered mine on Thursday night, got the dispatch email from Google this morning so should be with me on Monday, I reckon.

The rules have changed. As part of the Premier League's realisation that, while attendances overall are increasing, away attendances are falling, they have also realised that the "guaranteed sale" rules have made clubs whose away attendances are variable take an unambitious approach. I was told by somebody who sits on the "Football Fixture Panel" (yes, there is such a thing) that the league had decided to just ban "guaranteed sale" allocations. Looking at the Premier League rulebook for this season, that's not quite the case, but the rules do certainly seem much more relaxed than in previous years. Essentially, the home club will give the visiting club a list of potential allocations based on seating blocks where the home club can reasonably segregate between home and away fans, and the visiting club has to decide 4 weeks before the game which allocation they want. Once they've done that, and if the visiting club requests an allocation that is below the maximum, the home club can start selling tickets in the block(s) the visiting club has rejected, so there's no scope for increasing an allocation after that point. The visiting club have to pay for all of the tickets requested in that allocation, with the following caveats: 1. if the visiting club fully sells out all except the final seating block, they do NOT have to pay for any unsold tickets in that final seating block; 2. if the visiting club wishes to return an entire block of tickets, they must do so at least 10 days before the game, and if the home club cannot sell them, the visiting club must pay for that block of tickets (with the price determined based on the ratio of adult:concession tickets actually sold by the visiting club). So basically, if the club believes we'll sell the vast majority of the full allocation for a game, even if it's not the entire allocation, they will not be liable for any unsold tickets. They just have to have sold 50% or more of the final block. As a result, it makes a mockery of their decision to take reduced allocations at Norwich, Liverpool and Man United. Not so much at Chelsea because of the circumstances of the game. They've seen even fewer goals this season than they did under Pulis, so I can't say I'm that surprised. A game against the team who have seen the lowest number of total goals in their games so far this season isn't likely to be much of a selling point

Is it? Has he posted on here with a link to where anyone might be able to obtain said "stolen" software?

I thought you had him on ignore? At least, that's what you usually say when you reply to him...

As was said at the time of his appointment, keep him away from any sort of coaching or first team management and leave him to administration and planning and he'll do alright, he's always been very highly regarded in that area.

The problem with going to a smaller provider is that, in general, they won't be as competitive on price because they can't get the same deal on wholesale. I'm with EON (largely forced on me as they run an on-site energy centre at my place which provides the heating to my flat), but they've largely been pretty good since I moved here. I've even managed to buck the trend of escalating energy bills by reducing my annual electricity bill by a whopping £14 next year

Very good

I've been trying to find a solution to the annoying double-posting bug and discovered that there was a (fairly new) setting within the admin system that allows a time limit to be set to prevent double posts. However, it turns out that the intention of this wasn't to prevent duplicate posts, but to merge consecutive posts together (apparently some vBulletin customers actually requested this "feature"), so I've since turned it back off again. The bug with duplicate posts still exists, frustratingly, and as yet vBulletin don't seem to have found a solution to it. It's been suggested that changing the "minimum time between posts" setting can have an effect, so I've tried that to see how we get on.

Maximum is 3,000 - at those prices I'd be amazed if we didn't take the full allocation. Sold it out in quick time last season, no reason to expect any different this year.

It's around 1500 or so, same as we took up there for that hastily-rearranged midweek game in January. One thing with this game, though, for those ST holders who struggle to get tickets for the more popular games, this one (and Stoke on Saturday, which has been on general sale for 2 weeks) is the ideal opportunity to move yourself up that priority list.

http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?47380-Chelsea-away-tickets

Upper Tier: Adults £50 Over-65s £23.50 Under-18s £23.50 Lower Tier: Adults: £47 Over-65s £23.50 Under-18s £23.50 Interesting that they are giving first dibs to those with five or more away games this season (we'll have only played 6 by the time they go on sale), which suggests they've taken the smaller allocation. At those prices, I can't say I'm that surprised. Monday 4th November: STHs with 5 or more away games Wednesday 6th November: STHs with 3 or more away games Friday 8th November: STHs with 1 or more away games Monday 11th November: All STHs Wednesday 13th November: General Sale Eligible away games: West Brom, Barnsley, Norwich, Liverpool, Man United, Stoke.

Correct. In every transaction for away tickets, you must be buying one for yourself. I can see the logic in that, to be fair, as it leaves the system (even more) open to abuse. I've bought mine already, but if I could then log on later and use somebody else's customer number to buy tickets for a (non-eligible) friend, that would be ridiculous, although clearly that scenario already exists when you're buying for yourself anyway. The system should really send an automated email to everyone whose customer number is used in a purchase to inform them, and that if it's been done incorrectly/fraudulently/whatever then they can tell the club immediately and get it stopped.

First two rounds of the League Cup (including the round that we enter) are seeded, based on the previous season's final league position. No idea what how we do things domestically makes any difference to what happens on the international stage in competitions run by completely different organisations though.

I like the like-for-like result comparison, but the "projection" is meaningless.

No.

Always replayed, I believe. IIRC, a game between Swindon and Tranmere was abandoned with only a few minutes to go because of a floodlight failure and it still had to be replayed in full.

One of the main problems with having opted for something so big is that when there's a big crowd (i.e. pretty much every PL game), it makes it a logistical (and health and safety) nightmare, even if you just want to do a quick pass over peoples' heads. At Wembley, the FA have brought in a big England crest flag for pre-match, and there's a team of around 8-10 specially employed stewards to oversee the whole operation, and that flag's tiny in comparison to the Liebherr one.

One of the main problems with having opted for something so big is that when there's a big crowd (i.e. pretty much every PL game), it makes it a logistical (and health and safety) nightmare, even if you just want to do a quick pass over peoples' heads. At Wembley, the FA have brought in a big England crest flag for pre-match, and there's a team of around 8-10 specially employed stewards to oversee the whole operation, and that flag's tiny in comparison to the Liebherr one.

Fulham used to have a particularly bad reputation among the smaller academies in the area for failing to bring their own players through, preferring to nick the top players from the likes of Wimbledon, Aldershot, Brentford, etc instead of being a bit more thorough when scouting players at a younger age. As yet, I think the only player they've brought through in recent years is Matthew Briggs. He played a lot in Europe a few years ago, but hasn't kicked on at all. Went on loan to Watford last season where he was largely dreadful, according to a Watford-supporting friend of mine. The only other young players have been bought in, e.g. Kacaniklic, Kasami, etc. Meanwhile, Jol persists in preferring to sign players who are 30+, the likes of Sidwell, Parker, Karagounis, Bent, etc, so even if the youngsters were any good, they're not getting any sort of an opportunity.