stevegrant

Hilarious. After Nabil Hassan of the BBC broke the story this afternoon, everyone's favourite local chief sports reporter Neil Allen has whinged at the unfairness of it all, claiming (wrongly) that Hassan didn't "break" the story, he was just the quickest to transfer a press release into an article. The ****ing desperation

Well another 3-4 months with Birch at the helm is up to £1.4m ****ed away into PKF's swelling coffers.

Now all they have to do is turn those £100 pledges into £1000 cash. Good luck with that...

As good a player as he is, signing him would rather go against our policy of signing players with years of playing ahead of them. And as mentioned, the wages would be astronomical and he'll have better offers from elsewhere.

Not much Burnley could do about it, really. Howe has cited personal and family reasons for wanting to go back to Bournemouth, apparently his wife has struggled to settle up north when all their family and friends are on the south coast, and Bournemouth have almost certainly paid a small fortune in compensation. The talk earlier in the week was a release fee of £1.4m but that takes into account Bournemouth writing off the remainder owed by Burnley for Danny Ings. Still, Howe won't get another "step up" job again after this, so he'd better make another decent fist of the Bournemouth job otherwise that'll be his career over.

Didn't Wiggins finish 4th in the TdF behind Armstrong and Contador a few years ago? I probably feel the most sorry for whoever was 3rd, having to share a podium with those two

I hope all his past sponsors will be issuing legal papers to reclaim the money they paid him in good faith all those years ago. While all this stuff has come out now, he's already made his living from the sport and can quite happily sit back and live the life of a multi-millionaire. Apparently crime does pay...

No, I think everyone's quite clear that it's a shambles, to be fair

There isn't anywhere on the ticket system which shows how many loyalty points you have, and the only way the ticket office staff can work it out is by going through your order history. They've not even quoted a number of points for any potentially popular away game yet, e.g. "you need 100 loyalty points to get priority for a West Ham away ticket", they just said "season ticket holders who have been to two or more away games". Well worth bringing in that system then, they're basically making it up as they go along...

GOAL #Pompey 1-3 Wycombe. Morgan extends the lead again scoring off the rebound of a missed penalty.

Might have to shelve those plans for a return to their "second home" for a while

GOAL #Pompey 0-2 Wycombe. Dean Morgan doubles the lead inside ten minutes. Oops

:lol:

Karma was well served, though, with all three major shareholders and Barclays ending up significantly out of pocket.

The bank's continued support at the start of that season was based upon the business plan of reducing the overdraft over the course of the season down to £4m from around £6.5m. I think it had been reduced to around £4.1m at the end of March when the accounts had to be signed off, but Barclays refused to give the required assurances.

And the mysterious migration of that Barclays account manager onto the Saints account during a certain ex-chairman and significant shareholder's tenure before that, with a shared dislike of another ex-chairman and significant shareholder...

Eddie Davies has no intention of calling in the loans for two reasons: The first is that he's a massive Bolton fan, so wouldn't want to put the very existence of the club in jeopardy by calling in those loans at this stage. Naturally circumstances may change in the years to come, but I would say they're probably just about safe for now. The second is that he's still earning a pretty penny from those loans because they're being financed at a pretty significant rate of interest.

Their biggest game of the season so far, IMO - against Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League - saw anywhere between 3,000 and 5,000 empty seats (depending on how much segregation they had and that the front couple of rows don't get sold because the advertising hoardings are taller than the PL ones).

Man City are a bad example to use as a club who sell out all the time, they've only had a sell-out against Arsenal so far this season, and couldn't even fill the ground against Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League last week. Our strategy of only putting tickets on sale for home games 2-3 weeks in advance may be a contributory factor. If, a month in advance, a family have the option of going to the football or going for something else (theme park, visiting family, weekend break, etc), and they then discover they can't actually buy tickets for the football, they'll take the other option. There shouldn't really be a reason why home games can't be put on sale two or three months in advance.

The 17 will be reduced to 12 next year, and geographically we're probably competing directly with Brighton. Considering the ****athon that continues whenever anyone in the media mentions the Amex, I wouldn't hold out that much hope, to be honest.

No idea, really, perhaps when you get to a certain level, withdraw half of it and go again from that slightly lower level. That way, you're still betting with a fairly significant stake, but one low enough for the bookies to accept.

Oh, and as I've said on a related FB post, you'd never be able to get up to £10k in "dead cert" bets because bookies wouldn't let you place that much on something with such short odds. I was messing around with some spread betting on the cricket yesterday when Australia collapsed early in their innings chasing 206 to win in 20 overs and the most I could buy or sell Australia's projected total for was 16p per run. I won a whopping £1.60

Today's bets: All homes: Chelsea v Norwich, Swansea v Reading, WBA v QPR, Blackpool v Charlton, Leicester v Bristol City, Crewe v Hartlepool, MK Dons v Portsmouth, Southend v Barnet. £2 wins £84.52 All aways: Wigan v Everton, Birmingham v Huddersfield, Millwall v Bolton, Oldham v Preston, Oxford v Gillingham. £2 wins £155.68 Draws (trebles from 4): Blackburn v Wolves, Crystal Palace v Burnley, Coventry v Bournemouth, Plymouth v Wimbledon. 4 x £2 wins up to £209.71

To be fair, I'd imagine that some sellers sell more than others depending on where they're positioned. Those on the four corners of the stadium (particularly those in the Northam/Itchen corner outside the ticket office and away end) would surely sell many more programmes than those halfway along any of the stands or those inside the ground. For most fans, I would imagine it's a case of you either want a programme or you don't, and you make that decision at the first point you see a seller, which would be at one of the corners of the ground due to the access routes. The last time I heard (a number of years ago, admittedly), the club printed the equivalent of 20% of the expected attendance (therefore max 6500 for a sell-out).

The seller I know said the first he knew of the new plans was when a letter dropped on his doormat yesterday informing him that his services were no longer required with immediate effect. It does seem odd that they didn't just ask the old sellers whether they'd be happy to be a bit more mobile, I don't think any of them would have taken offence to it.