stevegrant

This. The FSF campaigned for years to get the FA and the leagues to make it mandatory for clubs to charge away fans the same as home fans in comparable areas of the ground rather than blatantly ripping them off, and now they're happy to toss that away in order to piggy-back onto the fact that the league champions kicked up a fuss after they failed to sell their allocation for a game against one of their fellow "big 4" members. Empty seats at the biggest games (if Man City as a club were so concerned at the price their fans were being asked to pay, they should have bought the tickets they were going to hand back and just left them empty - not as if they couldn't afford the £60k-odd it would have cost them) is the only way the authorities and the clubs themselves will take notice, a petition harvests thousands of email addresses for the FSF and the clubs being emailed but won't force any sort of action.

OK cheers for the heads-up, squad amended

Right, these will be the two squads: HOME GK: Chris Summers DF: Kev Thornton, Adam Moore, Andy Porter, Scott Phillips MF: Chris Knight, Stu Holloway, Ben Coombes, Brad Smirk, Mark Black FW: Steve Grant, Scott Griffin AWAY GK: Andy (Kev's +1) DF: Lee Chamberlain, Mike Florit, Ali Kilford, Simon Goodwin MF: Andy Mintram, Mike Head, Tim Mumford, David Mansell, Mark Rossi, Sam Treadaway FW: "diggs", Stuart Shaw

There's a long-standing email list which other team managers are subscribed to, so that side of things is already sorted. This game would have been fine but for the fairly exceptional circumstances with their manager.

Very, most Germans speak English to a decent level. While all the attention is rightly on the terraces in German stadia, you'll find it very difficult (or expensive via the black market - ticket touting is legal in Germany) to get tickets in the standing areas as most are sold out to season ticket holders. You'd have more luck at second or even third division grounds, and there are some big sides in the second division at the moment - Cologne and Kaiserslautern regularly get 35k+.

Oh, and where's that text from, by the way?

I wonder what happens if they don't raise the funds to buy the stadium themselves in the next five years...

Two more than Ben Thatcher got for that challenge on Pedro Mendes. Also the same as David Prutton got for grabbing a referee's arm.

Hoping it'll be more regular next season, playing games against other fans teams.

On the flipside, Branfoot got us to a cup final and didn't get us relegated.

Johnson will still play some part, I expect. Their bowling attack is made of biscuits so it's only a matter of time before they get injured.

What was wrong with the first goal? Second and third goals definitely dubious, but Bayern could/should have had 3 penalties for handball over the course of the evening. Despite the controversial nature of two of the goals, I'm not sure I could argue that Bayern weren't fully deserving of such a big winning margin. Barca basically played with 10 men from the start, Messi barely got a kick and shouldn't have played. The most startling thing for me was how mature a performance Arjen Robben put in, I don't think I've ever seen him (and Ribery on the other side, tbf) work so hard defensively, nor be as unselfish when on the attack.

I was thinking more along the lines of "The Nolan"

Latest: GK: Chris Summers, Kev's +1 DF: Kev Thornton, Adam Moore, Andy Porter, Lee Chamberlain, Mike Florit, Scott Phillips, "Lighthouse", "Nexstar" MF: Chris Knight, Stu Holloway, Andy Mintram, Jordan Florit, Ben Coombes, "Bwanamakubwa", "JustMike", Tim Mumford, Lee's +1, Andy P's +1 FW: Steve Grant, Scott Griffin, Brad Smirk, "diggs", Andy P's +1 It'll only be £3 each to cover the cost of the pitch now (we'd have covered the cost for West Brom if they'd travelled down, but obviously they're not now so the full cost needs covering). Any volunteers to referee?

Definitely this.

No, there's a block of around 20 seats right at the front of that block nearest to block 42 that is available to home fans. That used to be replicated all the way up block 43, I remember being right on the netting there towards the back for a game against Arsenal years ago, no idea why they've stopped doing it, must be another 100 or so tickets they could have sold.

There's one single seat in blocks 6 and 10, and two single seats in block 43. That's all I can see on the online system, loads of "reserved" seats which are presumably ones which have already been selected by people in the system.

They sold all the tickets they were given, surprised they had a smaller allocation as they usually travel well even for midweek games.

This must be the first time ever that there has been a mad scramble for tickets for a game involving Stoke

Entirely up to you, but I won't be washing them

Chelsea did Clattenburg a massive favour with that Jon Obi Mikel racism allegation, as it completely removed the heat from an absolutely atrocious refereeing performance by Clattenburg and shifted all the focus to the racism claim.

Yes please. It'll be enough work for me to wash 25+ shirts on Sunday without adding shorts and socks as well

What size? I think I've got a spare pair of 9s or 10s