stevegrant

While these automatic reduction on relegation clauses are generally a good idea, I'm not entirely sure it would be legal for the Premier League or FA to make it compulsory to force a player into taking a pay cut.

Or that he's planning on spending a small fortune in the not-too-distant future on the playing staff...

The Football League is a private members' club. If it chooses to reject somebody's application for membership, it is entitled to do so.

Villa would vote against because Randy Lerner is still propping them up quite considerably. Their wage bill is astronomical, mainly because they've still got a load of rubbish wasters on £50k a week sat rotting in the reserves or limping to the treatment table. West Brom have said they're voting against because they run themselves perfectly well already without the need for regulation - if others don't have the discipline to keep costs under control, that's their problem. It's an admirable stance, although you'd imagine a club of West Brom's size would be in favour of regulation as that good management could be more likely to see them overachieve.

I don't think it makes any difference. It does remove the possibility of people whinging about him being able to find people to buy a football club but can't save his business, because he's not worked there for two years.

Led to believe 5 voted against: Chelsea, Man City, Fulham, West Brom and Aston Villa. Realistically it's not going to have that much of an effect, IMO. It's going to allow so much stuff to pass through that it'll actually prove very difficult for clubs to breach the rules. Promoted clubs are likely to not have any restrictions at all so they're not at a competitive disadvantage, and the main focus on the rules will be wage control rather than profit/loss - good news for owners, not necessarily so much for players and agents.

Pretty sure Harris left Seymour Pierce a year or two ago, by the way.

But I thought £2.75m reflected a fair market value of the property? If so, why have they increased their offer?

They're not likely to say "we're going to claim we're going to rigorously defend it but then settle out of court the day before the case like we did with all of those employment tribunals", are they?

As a player, I can't remember Le Tiss ever missing an open goal. Fair to say he's done so here, IMO, though. No problem saying that a meeting has been agreed, but while he may be correct with the other comments, they were unnecessary and always likely to wind up someone who clearly doesn't receive criticism very well.

As I said to Colin "Minister for Information" Farmery on Saturday, if the PDT had put the pledge money on Pompey to lose every week for the last 3 months, they'd probably have bought the club by now...

The Debrecen keeper in both of those games has since been banned for life.

The fact that there's so much money sloshing around in players and agents' pockets in this country makes it much less corruptible, IMO.

Unlikely, IMO. No dodgy decisions that I can remember, United put out a severely weakened team against Cluj (having only just scraped a win in the return game with a full-strength side), and Madrid were rubbish when Liverpool beat them - Liverpool won the first leg 1-0 in the Bernabeu as well. Realistically, surely the whole point of match-fixing is to win money and not get caught, so it'll probably be a really inoccuous game where the outcome wasn't actually much of a surprise, hence it all went below the radar for so long.

These are all the Champions League games played in this country since 2009 - not many in there that immediately look suspicious, really, perhaps that Chelsea v Barcelona semi-final second leg in May 2009? ARSENAL - 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009 24/02/2009 Roma W1-0 15/04/2009 Villarreal W3-0 05/05/2009 Manchester United L1-3 26/08/2009 Celtic W3-1 29/09/2009 Olympiakos W2-0 04/11/2009 AZ Alkmaar W4-1 24/11/2009 Standard Liege W2-0 09/03/2010 Porto W5-0 31/03/2010 Barcelona D2-2 15/09/2010 Braga W6-0 19/10/2010 Shakhtar Donetsk W5-1 08/12/2010 Partizan Belgrade W3-1 16/02/2011 Barcelona W2-1 16/08/2011 Udinese W1-0 28/09/2011 Olympiakos W2-1 01/11/2011 Marseille D0-0 23/11/2011 Borussia Dortmund W2-1 06/03/2012 AC Milan W3-0 03/10/2012 Olympiakos W3-1 24/10/2012 Schalke L0-2 21/11/2012 Montpellier W2-0 CHELSEA - 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009 25/02/2009 Juventus W1-0 14/04/2009 Liverpool D4-4 06/05/2009 Barcelona D1-1 15/09/2009 Porto W1-0 21/10/2009 Atletico Madrid W4-0 08/12/2009 Apoel Nicosia D2-2 16/03/2010 Internazionale L0-1 28/09/2010 Marseille W2-0 03/11/2010 Spartak Moscow W4-1 23/11/2010 Zilina W2-1 16/03/2011 FC Copenhagen D0-0 06/04/2011 Manchester United L0-1 13/09/2011 Bayer Leverkusen W2-0 19/10/2011 Genk W5-0 06/12/2011 Valencia W3-0 14/03/2012 Napoli W4-1(aet) 04/04/2012 Benfica W2-1 18/04/2012 Barcelona W1-0 19/09/2012 Juventus D2-2 07/11/2012 Shakhtar Donetsk W3-2 05/12/2012 Nordsjaelland W6-1 LIVERPOOL - 2010, 2009 10/03/2009 Real Madrid W4-0 08/04/2009 Chelsea L1-3 16/09/2009 Debrecen W1-0 20/10/2009 Lyon L1-2 09/12/2009 Fiorentina L1-2 MANCHESTER CITY - 2013, 2012 14/09/2011 Napoli D1-1 18/10/2011 Villarreal W2-1 07/12/2011 Bayern Munich W2-0 03/10/2012 Borussia Dortmund D1-1 06/11/2012 Ajax D2-2 21/11/2012 Real Madrid D1-1 MANCHESTER UNITED - 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009 11/03/2009 Internazionale W2-0 07/04/2009 Porto D2-2 29/04/2009 Arsenal W1-0 30/09/2009 Wolfsburg W2-1 03/11/2009 CSKA Moscow D3-3 25/11/2009 Besiktas L0-1 10/03/2010 AC Milan W4-0 07/04/2010 Bayern Munich W3-2 14/09/2010 Rangers D0-0 20/10/2010 Bursaspor W1-0 07/12/2010 Valencia D1-1 15/03/2011 Marseille W2-1 12/04/2011 Chelsea W2-1 04/05/2011 Schalke W4-1 28/05/2011 Barcelona L1-3 27/09/2011 Basel D3-3 02/11/2011 Otelul Galati W2-0 22/11/2011 Benfica D2-2 19/09/2012 Galatasaray W1-0 23/10/2012 Braga W3-2 05/12/2012 CFR Cluj L0-1 TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR - 2011 25/08/2010 Young Boys W4-0 29/09/2010 FC Twente W4-1 02/11/2010 Internazionale W3-1 24/11/2010 Werder Bremen W3-0 09/03/2011 AC Milan D0-0 13/04/2011 Real Madrid L0-1

Worth resurrecting the bottom six mini-league: [table=width: 500, class: grid] [tr] [th][/th] [th]Pld[/th] [th]Won[/th] [th]Drw[/th] [th]Lst[/th] [th]For[/th] [th]Agt[/th] [th]GD[/th] [th]Pts[/th] [/tr] [tr] [td]1. Saints[/td] [td]7[/td] [td]5[/td] [td]1[/td] [td]1[/td] [td]13[/td] [td]6[/td] [td]+7[/td] [td]16[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]2. Wigan[/td] [td]6[/td] [td]3[/td] [td]2[/td] [td]1[/td] [td]12[/td] [td]9[/td] [td]+3[/td] [td]11[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]3. Newcastle[/td] [td]7[/td] [td]3[/td] [td]2[/td] [td]2[/td] [td]10[/td] [td]8[/td] [td]+2[/td] [td]11[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]4. Reading[/td] [td]6[/td] [td]1[/td] [td]2[/td] [td]3[/td] [td]7[/td] [td]9[/td] [td]-2[/td] [td]5[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]5. Aston Villa[/td] [td]7[/td] [td]1[/td] [td]2[/td] [td]4[/td] [td]5[/td] [td]12[/td] [td]-7[/td] [td]5[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]6. QPR[/td] [td]5[/td] [td]0[/td] [td]3[/td] [td]2[/td] [td]5[/td] [td]8[/td] [td]-3[/td] [td]3[/td] [/tr] [/table] Alternatively, if you take the view that Newcastle are more than likely out of danger having made a load of new signings who seem to have hit the ground running, the bottom 5 table looks like this: [table=width: 500, class: grid] [tr] [th][/th] [th]Pld[/th] [th]Won[/th] [th]Drw[/th] [th]Lst[/th] [th]For[/th] [th]Agt[/th] [th]GD[/th] [th]Pts[/th] [/tr] [tr] [td]1. Saints[/td] [td]6[/td] [td]4[/td] [td]1[/td] [td]1[/td] [td]11[/td] [td]6[/td] [td]+5[/td] [td]13[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]2. Wigan[/td] [td]5[/td] [td]3[/td] [td]2[/td] [td]0[/td] [td]12[/td] [td]6[/td] [td]+6[/td] [td]11[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]3. Aston Villa[/td] [td]5[/td] [td]1[/td] [td]1[/td] [td]3[/td] [td]3[/td] [td]9[/td] [td]-6[/td] [td]4[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]4. QPR[/td] [td]4[/td] [td]0[/td] [td]3[/td] [td]1[/td] [td]5[/td] [td]7[/td] [td]-2[/td] [td]3[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]5. Reading[/td] [td]4[/td] [td]0[/td] [td]1[/td] [td]3[/td] [td]3[/td] [td]6[/td] [td]-3[/td] [td]1[/td] [/tr] [/table]

The Press Association - who provide the data for most websites that show the league tables - have ballsed up by adding points accrued on Saturday twice. Expect them to fix it tomorrow.

I find it odd that nobody else has corroborated her story that she was punched in the face while holding a child. Let's face it, something as ridiculous as that would have had MANY more comments about it, and there were hundreds - if not thousands - of people around that bridge after the game.

One rather major flaw with that claim (other than the fact it's nonsense, of course ) is that I manually activate all new users, and have done for years, so I would have noticed any username that was similarly close to a user I recognised I have found the flaw and fixed it, basically the Tapatalk plugin for mobile browsing didn't have the 3-post restriction on it - this has now been fixed. I look forward to sotonjoe renewing his membership tomorrow

Don't forget that shirt is part of the yellow third kit, which of course isn't available to buy from the club anymore

One of the reasons they're £100m in debt is because they decided that committing around £15m to Kevin Nolan over a five-year period was a good idea. £5m transfer fee plus £50k a week wages, FFS I'd imagine he's not even their highest earner, so while Sullivan can plead poverty all he likes, the reason they're still as much (if not more) in debt as they were when they took over is because they haven't exercised any real effort in controlling their ridiculous wage bill.

I don't think we named the full 25 players over the age of 21, so Forren simply slots into one of the free places. I assume MLG will be along shortly to confirm either way.

My confidence has actually increased during this window, we've not lost anybody we weren't happy to lose, we've strengthened in the key area pretty much all of us identified, our resilience and performances have improved, and none of our direct rivals (I don't think Newcastle count) have strengthened significantly enough IMO.

Yeah, someone is deleting them pretty quickly after they're posted. One of them said "Just overheard the Marketing Director (he's staying, by the way) ask 'can we shut down Twitter?'"