stevegrant

To be fair, as we were rising through the leagues we'd always get a bit of a mention. More so than most other Football League clubs, certainly.

I guess it's one of those situations where it was always highly unlikely they'd be able to catch Northants (who only needed 5 points anyway, even if Essex won the game with maximum bonus points), and they've got a lot of fringe players playing for contracts next year. Bopara, Masters and Topley are big players for them, and the management know what they can do, so give an opportunity to others in the final game to stake a claim for next year. Fair to say they've not taken that opportunity. Saj Mahmood's figures in our innings are hilarious. 15-0-112-2 (7.46 per over!) with 13 no balls and a wide thrown in for good measure

Ugh, what a **** draw for anyone who doesn't live within an hour or two of Sunderland

Only Burnley, Leicester, and Birmingham. The rest: Saints, Tottenham, Hull, Man City, Sunderland, Chelsea, Norwich, West Ham, Fulham, Man United, Newcastle, Stoke, West Brom or Arsenal.

Probably shown on both. Definitely on SS1 though.

Fulham away

The Man United game last season was the one that emphasised that the most. It was sold out two weeks in advance, and yet throughout the game there was a massive block of at least 100 seats empty at the front of blocks 3 and 4. I emailed the club asking about it, and their response was that they were tickets that were sold (or season ticket holders) but the ticketholders simply didn't turn up for the game. "********" was my initial reaction.

As of this morning, we'd sold just over 5,000 matchday tickets. Added to the 21,631 season tickets and 3,100 away fans, that's just shy of 30,000. Add on corporates, etc, and it'll comfortably be over 30k.

170/7 at tea. Essex need 400 inside 110 overs to still be in with a chance of promotion. Anything less than that and Northants are up.

This is definitely true, and you may have a point regarding the Mourinho return factor, but I guess with so many managerial changes this summer, particularly with each of last season's top 3 having new managers, it's only natural that they would be more cautious initially. I saw a stat a week or two ago which showed that the PL was miles behind the other top leagues in Europe in terms of goals per game. While the weekend just gone had plenty of goals, I suspect it's still lagging some way behind. Chelsea, especially, haven't been anywhere near as entertaining this season as they were in previous years - they've gone back to Mourinho's old "get in front and then stifle the game completely" mantra. To a large extent that's worked for them, but by contrast, the two games they've fallen behind in this season (Basel in the CL and Everton last week), they've been unable to recover. Our games have certainly been duller, but at the same time it's hard to argue with the return of 8 points from our first 5 games and only 2 goals conceded.

That seems remarkably low for the sort of product they'll be selling to produce "commercial" revenue. Stuff in the club shop, for example. The home shirt's on sale for £35, a 33% margin would suggest they're having to pay £26 per shirt, which seems insanely expensive from wholesale.

We're around 700 short on season ticket numbers this season, not a massive amount in the grand scheme of things, but presumably those 700 aren't going to be buying for every single game so they've got to be replaced somewhere along the line. The games this season seem to have had a spike of sales in the week leading up to the game - I guess that given the opposition in the first few home games, people know that they're almost certainly going to be able to make a fairly late decision and buy a ticket a few days in advance, whereas the home games in the latter part of last season were selling out very quickly (Liverpool sold out in about 6 hours IIRC). Couple that with the usual early season stuff like holidays, weddings, lower away attendances (West Ham were almost 1000 down on last season), higher ticket prices, etc, and you've got a whole host of reasons. One thing that struck me in the week leading up to the West Ham game was the priority (or lack of) the club seemed to place on selling tickets for the game, particularly via social media. On Twitter, they posted something along the lines of "Don't forget the game is on Sky, get your subscription here" when the game wasn't anywhere near selling out, and then seemingly as an afterthought posted "Oh, by the way, tickets still available for the game here". While I fully accept that the broadcasting revenue dwarves gate receipts these days (around 4:1), it amazes me that there hasn't been more of a "hard sell" for the three home games so far, nor the two forthcoming games.

Naturally, but let's be realistic, going a season conceding less than 30 goals is highly unlikely to happen, particularly for a club of our size. To put that into context, here are the champions' defensive records and the records of the best defence in each of the last 10 seasons: 2012/13 CH: Man United (43), DEF: Man City (34) 2011/12 CH: Man City (29), DEF: Man City (29) 2010/11 CH: Man United (37), DEF: Chelsea, Man City (33) 2009/10 CH: Chelsea (32), DEF: Man United (28) 2008/09 CH: Man United (24), DEF: Man United, Chelsea (24) 2007/08 CH: Man United (22), DEF: Man United (22) 2006/07 CH: Man United (27), DEF: Chelsea (24) 2005/06 CH: Chelsea (22), DEF: Chelsea (22) 2004/05 CH: Chelsea (15), DEF: Chelsea (15) 2003/04 CH: Arsenal (26), DEF: Arsenal (26) As that suggests, there's a bit of a trend developing that defences, even at the top of the league, are getting worse (or, conversely, attacks are getting better, depending on which way you want to look at it). It would take something very special indeed to concede as few as 30 in a season.

To be fair, the defence had already improved immeasurably over the second half of last season. First 10 games, 28 goals conceded, 2.8 goals per game; remaining 28 games, 32 goals conceded, 1.1 goals per game. The signing of Lovren has (considerably) strengthened what was already a pretty tight back 5.

http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/sport/pompey/pompey-delight-at-finance-figures-under-new-ownership-1-5522516 What particularly strikes me about this article is this bit: Now, correct me if I'm wrong here, but £1,296,000 instead of £543,634 would be a 138% increase rather than a 58% increase. Impressive figures if true, but of course the devil is in the detail. Further on in the article: So they have forecast increased commercial revenue by £752,366 but that will only lead to a reduction in losses of £251,279? What have they spent the other £501,087 on then?

Got a mailshot from Hampshire regarding 2014 membership, some of the prices are an absolute joke £215 for the most basic membership that gets you into every county game. Even Surrey's equivalent is only £188

This, tbf. With only 24 flats, that means you only need to get 13 of them to agree to it for the management company to proceed. I've been having a similar issue at my place but with a fibre-optic broadband installation (a communal dish was fitted when the place was built), slightly trickier when there are 224 flats

Age is no big deal, we've got at least one 40+. Fitness is always handy, but we're likely to have a few subs.

Briggs and Vince are in the Performance Squad that will be in Australia until the end of the third Test as well.

Sacked

Usual Redknapp bluster when a player chooses to sign for a different club, suggests that the player priced themselves out of a move and that they're running things sensibly, when everyone can see that's clearly not the case.

They have, but Sharp can do that for 90 minutes whereas Le Fondre appears only capable in the last 10 minutes of games.

I go and watch Sutton United occasionally, they're in the Conference South and it's £12. Absolutely ridiculous price considering the standard, but the lower leagues really feel the effect of Premier League pricing, as the players each level down think they should be earning more, and the ticket prices are increased in order to pay for it.

That transfer seems to have been inevitable since the middle of May, no idea why it's taken so long.

Win confirmed, by 180 runs