stevegrant

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.

I believe Opta's definition of a "long ball" is any pass that is greater than 25m in distance, regardless of direction and elevation. Therefore a backpass from the centre circle along the ground back to Boruc is classed as a "long ball", as is a sideways pass between Lovren and Fonte who have taken up positions either side of the penalty area, as is a cross from 10-20 yards short of the penalty area. As a result, it's a highly unreliable statistic to use to demonstrate how "direct" a team plays.

The more the merrier

It will have nothing to do with the £200k, which has to be used specifically for the club's away fans.

Apparently each club was supposed to have announced what they were doing with the £200k by the end of September. I don't think we're alone in not having done so yet, and given the absolute cluster**** that is the SFC ticket office these days, it's hardly a massive surprise either.

He sat on the bench for what was basically the reserves, and didn't even warrant a five-minute run around against a Bristol City side without a win in a proper game all season. He's at best third choice left-back (arguably 5th or 6th behind Clyne, Yoshida and even Hooiveld), which is, er, absolutely no different from last season. Edit: and nobody gives a **** who you've got on ignore

Judging by the seating plan on the Man United website, we could have had block S229 as well as E230-233. That block's pretty small, though, so we're probably only around 400 seats below the full allocation.

Also suspect MLG's assertion that Matt Targett is in any way close to the first team picture is rather wide of the mark. Firstly, I've yet to see anything from him in the handful of U21 games that have been available on the various club TV channels that suggests he's anywhere near ready for that step up, and secondly he's just tweeted that he's having an X-ray on his foot this afternoon. I guess that could rule him out of any level of football for a while, depending on what it shows.

The definition of "start" is subjective at best as well. After Man United beat Liverpool in the League Cup last week, apparently it was the best start in all competitions made by a newly-appointed Man United manager since Sir Matt Busby. Given how long Ferguson was in the job, I can't imagine there were actually that many managers to beat in that period. Then after they lost to West Brom on Saturday, it suddenly changed to being their worst start to the season since 1989. It's all about what suits the narrative at the time. Right now, we're defending very well but struggling a little bit at the other end. It's possible that we might be on the verge of experiencing the worst start for 20 years in terms of goals scored in the first 7 games (I've not looked), but because we're getting positive results, the press concentrate on the good side of things (and rightly so).

The only time I can actually remember us breaking a club record was the 10 wins in a row over the end of the 2010/11 season and the beginning of the 2011/12 one. Every other time the papers have mentioned that we're on the verge of doing so, no matter how tenuous the record may be, we've then gone and ballsed it up in the next game.