stevegrant

24/25 September

4 all-Premier League ties, will be a fifth if Everton get past Stevenage.

From a purely selfish perspective, I was hoping Burton would beat Fulham in that shootout last night as it's a ground I've not been to yet. Now that Fulham are through, though, I'll take a trip to Craven Cottage as it'll only take me about half an hour to get there!

Teams already through to the third round draw: Man United Man City Chelsea Arsenal Tottenham Swansea Wigan Saints Bristol City Burnley Fulham Leicester Derby Leeds Huddersfield Hull Liverpool Norwich Peterborough Swindon Sunderland Tranmere West Ham Birmingham West Brom With 7 games being played tonight: Accrington v Cardiff Aston Villa v Rotherham Everton v Stevenage Morecambe v Newcastle Nottingham Forest v Millwall Stoke v Walsall Watford v Bournemouth Difficult to see any of the 5 PL teams involved this evening losing, so looks like there will be 19 PL teams out of the 32 in the draw.

Whoops, didn't see an admin in the thread, did you?

Very odd considering how heavily he featured in pre-season, same with Puncheon.

Semi-final confirmed for Saturday 7th September (Notts v Somerset on Monday 9th), 12:45 start. Carberry unavailable, as he's been called up to the ODI squad.

Can't be any worse than Kerrigan tbf

Defending 219, could go either way. Essex are surely going to beat Lancashire, having posted 297/4, so if we lose, Essex would leapfrog us and top the group, and we'd almost certainly be out as Northants will beat Warwickshire (having posted 324 ) and Notts should chase down 196 at Kent, which would leave Northants as the best runner-up on 17 points.

On the flip side, the Premier League have ramped up their efforts to stop Saturday 3pm broadcasts in the UK, which means that pubs remain vulnerable despite the Skate landlady's supposed "win" in the courts.

Worth bearing in mind that Wigan was a "Bronze" category game, so only £30 in most areas last season, whereas I think Sunderland yesterday was a "Silver" game at £37. Add in, of course, that people have seen Sunderland play in the last six months or so and they're an absolutely soul-destroying team to watch

Wigan brought around 500 last year, Sunderland had just shy of 1900.

No, just the worst view in the ground as you have the goal obscuring your view.

"Dangerous Albert"'s ticket has already gone

I'll have it for a friend of mine, can you email me at subscriptions@saintsweb.co.uk and I'll arrange payment and delivery/handover?

Surely I can't be the only one who thought that Adams should have opened with one of the youngsters rather than sending them both out to face the new ball?

Griezmann's scored a rather decent goal for Real Sociedad in Lyon

Not especially lucky considering they're in a completely different section of the competition and couldn't draw them at this stage.

More than £18,000 saved.

I don't really see what relevance away attendance has to the subject of "irresponsible spending" or a broadcasting contract that may or may not increase or may or may not decrease in nearly three years' time. From Saints' perspective, our away attendances have improved dramatically in recent years - funny how a bit of success motivates people all of a sudden - and as a result, the club will have seen a marginal benefit from the booking fees they've charged, and I believe away clubs generally get a small percentage of the ticket revenue for away sales (around 5%), so there's that benefit. Most, if not all, clubs will take the view that if away clubs don't bring many fans and they can sell those extra tickets to their own supporters then that's a bonus for them. The trend of attendance figures suggest that, despite a supposed 10% reduction in away followings, more and more people are still pouring through the turnstiles in the top flight, so why would the clubs actually give a toss one way or the other? Scudamore came out with those comments and what has been done since? Nothing.

Your dislike of Pardew is hilarious. Definitely a **** manager, despite being voted LMA Manager of the Year and Premier League Manager of the Year by his fellow managers having got relatively unfancied Newcastle to 5th place above the team who would go on to be crowned European Champions, and despite winning promotion with both Reading and West Ham (and getting the latter to the FA Cup final and Europe the following season), and winning the only trophy a significant proportion of Saints fans have ever seen the club lift. Yes, definitely a **** manager.

This is simply not true, Phil. Average attendances over the last 4 PL seasons: 2009/10 34,142 2010/11 35,191 (+3.07%) 2011/12 34,598 (-1.69%, largely as a result of QPR and Swansea getting promoted in place of West Ham and Birmingham) 2012/13 35,857 (+3.64%) This season is likely to see another improvement. Cardiff's attendances will be about the same as Reading's (24k), while Palace (26k) and Hull (25k) will get bigger crowds than both QPR (17k) and Wigan (18k).

Worth noting the stat about this weekend seeing the lowest number of English-qualified players starting games isn't quite true. 75 of 220 starters were English this weekend, while there apparently has been a weekend in the past where there were only 62. A pretty sad state of affairs whichever way you look at it, mind you.

Murphy's alright, thought he was a massive improvement on Lawrenson on MOTD, not that that's necessarily saying much, admittedly.

That 8-year contract was for show. It's almost certainly got a fixed payoff written into it, regardless of when it's terminated or who by.