stevegrant

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.

As it's a bank holiday, kickoffs will vary quite wildly, I suspect. There are televised games at 12:30, 15:00 and 17:30, but wouldn't be surprised to see some 13:00 and 19:45 kickoffs in there as well.

It does indeed. Both broadcasters have announced their schedules up to and including 1st January.

According to the Premier League website, the Chelsea game will remain at 3pm. Excellent.

Spurs moved to Sunday 22nd December, 1:30pm kickoff on Sky. Chelsea still on New Years' Day, on BT Sport, time doesn't appear to have been confirmed by the club or BT yet.

Considering it's a 5:30 kickoff, probably not that well.

I wonder whether the difference between the prices we charge for Category A games and those we charge for Category C games isn't great enough to encourage people to attend the lesser games. While in theory everyone goes to watch Saints, not the opposition, there is a much different feel to the whole thing when you're going to Saints against Man United compared to Saints against Norwich, and at £32 compared to £40 for the top games, is £8 enough of a discount to watch what should be a much poorer game in terms of quality? Arguably the club could still sell out games against the top teams if they charged £45, while a reduction for the lesser games would give a better chance of a sell-out for those games as well.

Not true. Capacity at the Dell once it became all-seated was 15,200, with averages in the last 3 seasons at 15,136, 15,132 and 15,140. The home stands were always sold out - I know that because my dad always struggled to get a ticket if he made a relatively late decision that he wanted to go.

While I broadly agree that the prices as they are now seem to be right on the line of what people deem acceptable, there were only 830 tickets unsold in home areas for Sunday's game, according to the online ticket system. Swansea only sold 1500, so that left blocks 43 and 44 empty, which accounts for just over 2000 seats, and neither of those two blocks were released to home fans. We sold 5600 matchday tickets to home fans, which is more than were sold for both Sunderland and West Ham, and only 500 less than the Palace game, which was obviously boosted by a full away end.

Looks like it's about 10 miles or so.