stevegrant

I was surprised as well, but on the online ticket system there are only 22 home tickets available in block 43, which is the same number as was available for the Palace game.

Just over 2500 left. Looks like Swansea have taken the full allocation, which is mildly impressive considering it's a Sunday lunchtime.

230-232 now sold out, 233 on sale.

Aesthetically, and in terms of a gut feel of how we're playing, I'd be inclined to agree. I missed the Palace game, unfortunately, but I've seen all the others and Liverpool away is probably the only one where we've genuinely looked good. There have been spells in the other games (except Norwich where we were absolute turd from first whistle to last) but nothing yet - apart, oddly, from the results - to suggest our plan of world domination is likely to bear fruit in the near future. That's clearly not what he said.

Indeed. It's also quite interesting that Arsenal are actually three points worse off than they were last season in the corresponding fixtures. You'll probably be unsurprised to know that we're the most-improved team compared to last season's results, having collected 11 points instead of 2 against the same opponents.

Rouse seemed to be rated very highly at one point, but I guess the signing of Adam Wheater had a knock-on effect for him as well as Michael Bates.

Depends which way you look at it, I guess. Aim for 4th and finish 10th? Is that a failure or is the fact that we improved by 4 places seen as a success?

And they'll end up looking ridiculous as a result.

Christ, Factless Allen's been shortlisted for "Digital Journalist of the Year" at the forthcoming London and South of England Media Awards.

I thought we were skint!

Not an awful lot to rant about at the moment, which can only be a good thing.

Am I right in thinking we've already got a deal to sign Coles for next season after his loan spell?

Ultimately if Phillips has said that, what is Adam Leitch supposed to do? Make up a different quote that says "they've been ****s to me ever since I left so I'd love to shove it down their throats one last time"?

Finally a done deal

The "one sentence per paragraph" thing does seem to be the norm these days.

Difficult to co-ordinate, unfortunately, since I moved to London. Baj has a recording studio set up in a room in his house, which is where we used to record them, but it's difficult (not to mention expensive) to carry on with that if I have to travel down on a weeknight to record it. We could look at some sort of Skype-based recording, but the sound quality on that is notoriously unreliable.

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.