stevegrant

Yep, I'll be there for about 10:30ish. Rich, messaged you on Facebook, let me know what size boots you need and I'll ask around.

Assuming they don't get drawn into a "group of death", Belgium will go further than both Italy and Netherlands. I'm willing to put decent money on it. Don't forget, the Dutch didn't get a single point in the Euros. Switzerland were the only team to beat Spain in the last World Cup and haven't lost a competitive game for more than two years (and only 4 competitive defeats in more than 5 years). It's rather rich of you to accuse someone else of defending a viewpoint, especially when I've actually got statistical data to back up my opinion unlike your usual reactionary gibberish.

As the loan came from a public body, would information on this sort of thing be available through a Freedom of Information Act request?

That's like saying you cannot see how Portsmouth, twice winners of the old First Division title, are currently ranked 83rd in the country. Seeding is based on how likely they are to perform at the forthcoming championship, based on the statistical data from the most recent matches played.

Er, they have, it's called using the FIFA rankings system. It's not perfect, by any means, but it does measure performance over the last 4 years, with the most recent results given a higher weighting. Switzerland and Belgium topped their groups unbeaten, winning more games than England did over the same period, and in groups with (surprisingly) higher average rankings. We had two genuine minnows in our group, while Macedonia and Cyprus aren't anywhere near as bad as Moldova or San Marino. Draws get you a third of the points as wins do, in both the group tables and in terms of ranking points. Teams who play more competitive games (the South Americans played 16 in qualifying compared to 10 in most European groups) and get results will naturally end up higher in the rankings. Uruguay also got to the semi-finals of the Confederations Cup, which will have (some would argue artificially) boosted their ranking as it's deemed a competitive tournament and therefore given a higher weighting than friendlies.

No It's the Football League's own set of rules, which are significantly different to UEFA's.

There would (should) have been discussions between the clubs and the police before the date was announced - don't forget, it took a week after the draw was made for them to confirm the date, so you would assume that time taken was because they were discussing with the police whether they could play on the Wednesday as well as Newcastle (whose game was confirmed for the Wednesday pretty quickly as Sky chose to televise it). The fact it was announced as the same night suggests the police originally allowed it, but have since made a U-turn on that decision.

Yep, kit is all provided

Had a couple of dropouts so could do with a few more players if anyone's interested. Jimbo, Davey, Rich, BedfordSaint?

I'm not implying it, I'm explicitly stating it as a fact.

There are loads. Proof that PR bull**** planting does work.

That defending

Yeah, as Simon Peach said on Twitter at the time, Mark Palios seems to enjoy the sound of his own voice a bit too much to be chairing this sort of discussion. He didn't seem to get that the other three people sat alongside him were the ones people wanted to hear from.

Pompey obviously learned their tactics from Fluminense, who didn't pay their taxes for 30 years

I thought Prandelli had a strict policy of not picking players for the international team who were suspended for their clubs? One rule for Balotelli and one for everyone else, it seems... On the subject of Saints players, can't see either Lambert or Isgrove starting. Front 3 for England will be Welbeck, Rooney and Sturridge. Isgrove only got called up as a late replacement for a load of injured players so he'll be on the bench at best. Friday's a massive game for them if they want to avoid finishing bottom of the group and potentially getting dragged down into a lower seeding pot for the Euro 2014 qualifiers.

Of course, we sacked our head of recruitment a year ago when we, as a newly-promoted team, spent around the same amount and had half the points to show for it...

Seems a fairly well-rounded panel (although not convinced by the need to have two FA representatives, and Greg Clarke is a ****ing idiot), but let's face it, the Premier League were behind the setting up of the commission and then decided at the last minute that they couldn't be arsed with it - as a result, nothing will come of it.

Surprisingly not. While they've got 13 of 20 games televised, around half of those are Saturday lunchtime or evening games, so not a date change.

Surprisingly not. While they've got 13 of 20 games televised, around half of those are Saturday lunchtime or evening games, so not a date change.

Still including the "loyalty points" paragraph

Remember what happened last time the Echo reported that the club had acquired planning permission at Staplewood...

The Chelsea and Villa games are midweek, so that's a slightly misleading statistic, to be fair. It does appear as though Sky/BT would prefer to broadcast our home games rather than aways, though. And yes, that Spurs comparison is for all fixtures. Only ONE away game on a Saturday (at Sunderland) out of the first ten.

Copied from my post in the Spurs/Chelsea TV announcement thread, we'll have had 5 of our first 20 games moved to the Sunday either for TV or Europa League, so that's probably a factor, but I think season tickets have become less attractive in terms of the standard concept of buying in bulk and receiving a discount as a result. In years gone by, getting a season ticket meant you effectively got anywhere between 2-3 and 6 games free, depending on which division we were in at the time. This season, for the bulk of season ticket holders, in the wing/goal areas of the ground, you paid £604 for the renewal price, but the total match ticket price of all 19 games (6 in Cat A at £40, 6 in Cat B at £37 and 7 in Cat C at £32) is £654, which is a saving of £50, which is only just better than one free game. If you think you're likely to miss more than one home game a season, and don't go to many away games, from a purely financial perspective what's the point in having a season ticket? Despite having stayed up relatively comfortably last season (certainly more comfortably than most would have expected, I think), and having seen unprecedented investment in the first team, the club are 700 season ticket holders down on last season. Clearly there are a whole host of reasons why that may be, but price is likely to be a major one.

We've been relatively fortunate so far in that we've not been a particularly appealing prospect for the TV companies for whatever reason, despite being fairly entertaining to watch. This season, including the scheduled games up to 1st January, we've only had 4 games of 20 where the date has been changed due to TV and one for the Europa League (25% of all games), and last season 5 for TV (3 televised games on Saturdays so date unchanged) and 3 for Europa League (21%). Compare that to Spurs, who are both a popular team to be televised (12 of their 20 will be shown) and competing in the Europa League so have their following games moved even if they're not broadcast, who will have had 13 of their 20 games moved to the Sunday - come the New Year, they'll have had just FOUR Saturday matches

I was under the impression that Madejski hadn't been bankrolling them for some time. While it was obviously his money that saw them move from Elm Park to the M4, they seem to have been self-sustaining for a while, with fans often whinging that he's been too tight-fisted.