stevegrant

That didn't go particularly well, did it?

Noted, thanks

Venue details are as follows, based on an 11.00 kick-off (please aim to get there by 10.30): Parmiters School High Elms Lane Garston WD25 0UU Important to note that this venue is a 3G SURFACE, so choose your footwear appropriately, please. Unfortunately because of the time of year, they have been unable to find any grass pitches. GK: Chris Summers DF: Matt Marchant, Dan Armstrong, Mick McIntyre, Joe Menzies, "saintchris23" MF: Michael Fordham, Kevin Sim, Dave Mansell, Chris Knight ("maybe" ), Tom Johnson FW: Steve Grant, Scott Griffin, Alex Griffiths FAO "Dr Who?", if you've got a couple of mates who fancy coming along, please feel free to invite them. Defenders are the main priority, I would say Also, can't remember what position you said you play, so I've put you in midfield for now, obviously if that's wrong please let me know!

It's been a fairly open secret that the club has been looking to ditch aap3 for the final year of the contract - no idea if they've got some sort of break clause in it or whether the club think they can simply get more money from an alternative sponsor even after paying some sort of compensation. They sent out information packs to a load of companies at the end of January with a cleverly Photoshopped photo of the team celebrating a goal (Puncheon away at QPR, I think) with the targeted company's logo placed on the players' shirts in place of aap3's. No idea if they're looking within a certain industry or not, but the one I saw certainly wasn't within the drinks industry, as has been put forward as a "done deal" previously.

Considering he's been banned for sending PM threats to other users, I think you might be waiting a while

Oh good, we get to put up with Holloway's "hilarious" interviews for another year

There do seem to have been a few problems with newer builds of Chrome recently, I've not noticed a problem on here but loading times for other sites have increased massively. Due to the auto-update nature of Chrome, it's likely that hardly anyone will notice when they fix the problem, but nor is it possible (seemingly) to roll back to the last known fully-working version

Looking at that squad list, we could definitely do with more defenders

Kick-off time is confirmed as 11.00, just waiting to hear back regarding the venue. Provisional squad list: Steve Grant, Scott Griffin, Chris Summers, Michael Fordham, Kevin Sim, Dave Mansell, Brad Smirk, Mick McIntyre, Matt Marchant, Dan Armstrong, Joe Menzies, Chris Knight, Andy Porter, Alex Griffiths, "proevosaints" (can I have your real name, please ) If anyone else is interested, please let me know asap. I want to get the squad finalised before I fly out to Brazil next Friday. And yes, that is a humble brag

Similar scenario last night, scores were level but he needed 6 to get to 150 (or 2 to pass his List A record score), this time he did manage to clear the rope though.

TV county games are always poorly attended at the Rose Bowl. I think they need to revisit their pricing policy for day/night games, to be honest.

Not entirely sure how the MP would know that, tbh. The local barracks aren't saying anything at this stage, and rightly so.

Perversely, the demand for such a thing would probably drive the prices up rather than down.

Disabled tickets were £495 last season. I assume you actually get two tickets with that, one for an enabler as well.

There were around 22-23,000 sold for the 2012/13 season. As they guarantee you a ticket for home cup games as a season ticket holder (not necessarily your own seat, but "a" seat), then the maximum number of available tickets is the 32,500 capacity less corporate seating (around 1,800, IIRC), less the 4,700 maximum away allocation, so that leaves 26,000. However, I'd be very surprised if the club allowed all seats to be sold to season ticket holders, so I reckon they'll set a level at around 24,500 or so, so they've still got a couple of thousand to sell on a game-by-game basis.

I don't think they'd even considered it before this year, looking back at various articles on the excellent Swiss Ramble site, every club had been shown at least 10 times. Last season, the numbers were remarkably consistent, from 7th place down (Everton), only Liverpool (23), Norwich (11), QPR (14) and Blackburn (11) were shown more than the bare 10 times. Yes. I assume that, as a result, Sky had to stump up extra cash for each of the 14 team appearances they were short, so that's an extra £8.1m in total.

Worth noting that, for the first time ever, Sky (and ESPN to a much lesser extent) decided that rather than making an effort to show every club the minimum 10 times, they'd simply pay the requisite "facility fees" to the clubs they couldn't be bothered showing and pick a more attractive game instead. As a result, Fulham (9), Norwich (7), Reading (, Saints (, Stoke (, Swansea (9), West Brom ( and Wigan (9) were all televised fewer than the supposed minimum, but each received money equivalent to having been shown 10 times. Why? They both have much bigger fanbases and this season had "car crash viewing" potential for the neutral. Also, if you're going to go down the "well we finished above them" angle, we were below both of them for most of the season.

It could, but a lot depends on how tough UEFA are, or if they're even allowed to impose these restrictions (hence the legal challenge), and of course we won't have a clue how tough they're going to be until a big club's numbers are too far in the red. It's easy enough for them to come down hard on a club like Malaga, it would be a very different situation for Platini to take a swing at Chelsea, for example.

I expect so - the Premier League had to at least make it look like they were vaguely interested. As a result, I'm not entirely sure why Cortese was against the regulations when they're not going to come close to affecting us. The UEFA ones are much more stringent, so the likes of Chelsea and Man City (less so Arsenal and Man United as their spending is largely organic) will have a bit of a job on their hands to meet the requirements. As I said, they've banned Malaga from next season's competitions already because of financial irregularities, but the key test will be whether Platini goes after someone like Man City or PSG.

That's the UEFA version of it, which has already seen Malaga banned from European competition next season. They're taking the ban to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, while a group of European agents are hoping to take the overall concept to court because they believe the effect of FFP regulations will be to restrict their players' (and, as a direct result, their own) earning potential. Clubs are allowed to make a cumulative loss of £105m over the first three-year reporting period (starting from 2013/14 through to 2015/16), which for most clubs won't be too prohibitive. In fact, using the operating profit/loss figures from 2011/12, only 4 clubs would be in trouble if that season's figures were replicated over the following three years: Aston Villa, Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester City. There are also various things a club is allowed to spend money on which get disregarded when it comes to calculating their FFP compliance. For example, investment in facilities (like, say, a full renovation of the club's training ground) and any debt incurred as a result won't be affected - although that sort of thing wouldn't appear on the profit and loss account anyway. The other key thing is the club's wage bill, and this is where we have a bit of a free pass at the moment. Clubs whose annual wage bill is £56m or more can only increase that wage bill by a limited amount per year over the next 3 years, and that amount is £4m per year (£12m in total, as I think clubs' compliance is only measured over three-year periods, not individual years to allow for natural fluctuations). For clubs whose wage bill is less than £56m, Saints of course included here, they can do as they please with their wage bill until such time as they reach the £56m threshold. However, this limit comes with a MASSIVE caveat. Clubs whose wage bill is above the threshold CAN increase their wage bill by more than the £12m over three years if that increase is covered by an increase in commercial and/or sponsorship revenue. Hence why you've probably seen bits in the news in the last year or two about Man United signing all sorts of "minor" sponsorship deals. It's all with a view to FFP compliance. Of course, it's important to remember that transfer spending isn't immediately accounted for when it comes to the profit and loss account. The amount paid for a player is divided equally over the duration of the player's contract, so to use an obvious example, Gastón Ramírez cost a reported £12.6m and signed a 4-year contract in August, but the payment of £12.6m won't be recorded in the 2012/13 accounts - only a quarter of that amount will be shown, with the rest accounted for equally over the following three years (unless he is sold or signs a new contract in the intervening period). Clubs like Manchester City and Chelsea, who have spent a fortune on transfer fees in recent years, will find they're still effectively paying for those players in the next few seasons, so they'll probably be keen to operate with a significantly smaller squad than they have been used to, as the revenue from transfer sales is accounted for immediately, so offsets the money spent years ago.

Villa £35, Chelsea £49/51, Everton £32-38, Man United £45, Norwich £37, Stoke £25, Swansea £35, West Brom £20. I think.

I'm after a list of how much we were charged for away games this season, seeing as the ticket office have helpfully wiped the majority of my order history from this season The ones I've still got listed are: Newcastle £26 Wigan £20 Liverpool £42 QPR £30 West Ham £39 I also remember the following: Arsenal £26 Tottenham £37/41 Sunderland £36 Man City £49/51 Fulham £35 Reading £40 So that leaves these: Aston Villa Chelsea Everton Man United Norwich Stoke Swansea West Brom Any ideas?

I assume you're happy for me to pass your details on to the police and the club? Excellent.

Every club has grand intentions of "getting our business done early" but it very rarely pans out like that. You only have to look at the number of deals that are done in the last few days of the transfer window to see the evidence of it, and it's because of that the transfer window should close the day before the season starts IMO. The problem is that, while teams want to sign players as soon as possible, they don't want to sell them early, so there's a massive chain reaction when one team finally blinks and releases a player for transfer which then allows a load of other transactions to take place.

I haven't got any venue details just yet, other than it'll be in the Watford area. Because of the time of year, finding a venue that still has football pitches marked up is pretty tricky. In terms of extras, if they're Saints fans then by all means invite them along - ideally they should be registered to the forum as well. If not, I'd ask you to hold fire for the time being.