stevegrant

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.

Would be very surprised if we don't, at £26 for adults.

Important distinction here, the concept of shared gate receipts in the league that was done away with in the 70s/80s was based on the full gate takings. The commission that, say, Saints earn from a trip to Old Trafford is 5% of the money that passes through the Saints ticket office before being given to Manchester United, i.e. it only applies to tickets SFC sells for its allocation.

I think the club gets 5% of the gate receipts for an away allocation.

We're about 400 down on the full allocation at Old Trafford, I think. The Liverpool one was particularly odd considering it sold really quickly last year. Taking a reduced allocation was mildly understandable at Norwich as we didn't sell the full allocation last season.

Some excellent use of the quote function here, well done everybody...

Given that Poyet was supposedly "in talks" with Sunderland nearly two weeks ago, are we to assume that he bottled the opportunity of starting his job with tough-looking games against Liverpool and Man United?

Carlisle was horrendous, tbf. Our pies are alright, the lad stood next to me yesterday had a cheeseburger and it looked (and smelled) ****ing revolting

I know what I saw. Clyne's positioning was absolutely identical, i.e. sit back in line with the two centre-backs, and don't go wider than the 18-yard box. Clyne was barely tested as Routledge played much more centrally than usual and Lallana was much better than Davis at providing cover. The number of times Fox was left exposed on that side against Dyer and Rangel together was embarrassing - while Pochettino should rightly get praise for the Osvaldo/JWP substitution that wrestled control back from Swansea in the second half, he really should have switched the players already on the pitch around before half-time to give Fox a bit of help. The reason every Swansea attack came down that flank was because we let them do it.

Two identical incidents in the space of a minute or two, where JWP - not long on the pitch so perhaps not quite up to the speed of the game yet - was a bit flat-footed and allowed Rangel to get to the ball ahead of him. The only other option Fox had there was to hit it long down the line, but with Lambert tiring (and not a channel-runner like Rodriguez) that wasn't really viable.

It seems as if everyone's taking Fox's positional play yesterday in complete isolation and failing to pick up on the fact that Nathaniel Clyne's positioning was identical to Fox's. They were both tucked in which made our back 4 very narrow (rather like what Liverpool did against us a few weeks ago). That can only have been by design, although I'm struggling to comprehend the thinking behind it when you're playing against a team who have wingers like Dyer and Routledge in their side. As for standing off Dyer, what's he supposed to do? He knows Dyer will do him (and everyone else in our side) for pace, so if he closes him down 40 yards from goal, that leaves a ****ing massive space for Dyer to just knock the ball past Fox and run round him. It's also worth noting that Clyne got much more assistance from Lallana than Fox did from Davis. Understandable given Davis is a central midfielder and Lallana has played wide many times for us, and I would have liked to have seen Lallana tasked with supporting Fox instead, as Dyer was always going to be the bigger threat, and Clyne can probably cope better on his own than Fox can.

More or less what I'd go with, Ashley Cole instead of Baines. Welbeck, Rooney and Sturridge will all float around and interchange positions, so just set them as a generic front 3 and let them get on with it.

All well and good saying Hart should be dropped, but who do you pick instead of him? Fraser Forster is the keeper in fashion at the moment, but aside from 6 "nothing to lose against clearly superior opposition" games a season he isn't being tested on a regular basis while he's north of the border. He's not even been given a go in friendlies yet, so I don't see how anyone could justify throwing him into the two biggest games of this qualifying campaign. The last manager to do something similar was Steve McClaren, and that ended well... Oh, and Cleverley was dropped for the last game.

The intersections just don't work. Maldini, Mabbutt, Walcott, Bergkamp as women

We've got 12 now, could definitely do with a few extra bodies, fitness is always a problem

Have a feeling it's back with Cedar again now.

Yep. If the stat was "forward passes over 25m that are played above head height" then it may carry a bit more weight.