stevegrant

"Official Line" as in "what's written on the OS" is that it's 20 loyalty points, but "official line" as in "what whoever is responding to emails into the ticket office has told a friend of mine" is that it's priority for round 4

There's certainly infighting among the fanbase at large, which I assume is what he actually means, which suggests that he basically thinks he's up against the entire fanbase with the PST bid

They're definitely making it up as they go along. Still no way of anyone (whether it's us as customers or the ticket office staff themselves) to see the total "loyalty points" earned by an individual without looking at the purchase history and working it out from that, and apparently the official line from the ticket office is that if you buy for tonight's game, it'll give you priority for the next round if we get through, but nothing more than that

I agree, but if people are that desperate to go to a particular game, they'll find a way. They always do. While it's completely untrustworthy, the online system was available for Arsenal sales if anyone couldn't get to SMS that morning, or perhaps ask friends who are local and available to queue on their behalf. Someone I know queued on behalf of about a dozen people, they each gave him a few quid on top of the ticket price by way of a thankyou.

As I clarified afterwards, if you really wanted an Arsenal ticket that badly, you'd have put in the effort to do so by queueing up at stupid o'clock like many others in the same situation did.

To be fair to them, the FL rules about what constitutes somebody who is required to take the Owners and Directors Test also includes "a person who exercises or is able, legally or beneficially, to exercise Control over the affairs of the Club". Depending on your interpretation of how Chainrai/Portpin came to be back in control of Pompey when CSI went into administration, that could potentially rule Chainrai out. However, as we know from experience, the FL do tend to ignore the letter of their own rules when it suits them...

It's an absolute abomination of an idea, but it's one that will more than likely get enough support from the nations who perhaps have one or two large stadia but nowhere near enough to host a full tournament themselves, because this will enable them to be involved. There are only a few European nations who would be able to host the tournament in its new ridiculous 24-team format anyway, as you'd need at least 12 stadia with a capacity of 35k or more. England, France, Portugal, Germany and Italy are probably the only realistic individual hosts - co-hosting obviously allows more in, but that introduces more logistical problems. Platini has done an incredible job of completely ruining a brilliant tournament. 16 teams is the perfect size considering the number of nations in Europe and the relative level of the best teams. There are very few really weak teams who qualify (Ireland this year are probably the one exception, but they were expected to at least put up a fight) in that format, but with 24 teams they're basically allowing half of UEFA to qualify, and with seeding ensuring the best teams more or less avoid each other in the group stages, there will be more one-sided games in the tournament. Based on the current FIFA rankings, the likes of Slovenia, Norway, Hungary and Slovakia would qualify, while the two highest-ranked nations to just miss out are Wales and Scotland, both of whom are terrible teams these days.

To be fair, that £167,000 would be plenty to kick things off for a phoenix club...

It's been there for ages, but it's not intuitive at all.

Making it up as you go along

Might have been worth them making that clear on the OS article, but that would bring an element of thinking into the process, which is clearly beyond their capability.

McGoldrick missed the first one. How the keeper never got sent off for conceding it, I'll never know

Oops.

Rasiak also missed one but scored from the rebound. In shootouts, Chris Marsden missed at Bolton in the league cup, Michail Antonio missed against Norwich in the JPT (think someone else missed in that one as well) and of course Leon Best and Inigo Idiakez at Derby in the playoffs.

If you'd got there earlier, you would have got one. Those that went to the greater effort (either by forking out £50 for City away or queueing up from stupid o'clock) were rewarded.

Stung from the Man City game, I expect, by taking (and having to pay for) the full allocation in the misguided belief that we'd still have 3000 people willing to part with £50 for a game that's on Sky. See how the land lies in terms of how quickly we shift the first batch of tickets and get the rest after that. SFC ticket office in unbelievable "sensible ticket policy" shock Like the Arsenal game, if you're a season ticket holder and you want a ticket, you'll get one.

Convenient timing with his FA hearing starting tomorrow Purely in footballing terms, England will miss him. The contrasting defensive performances in two games against Ukraine in the last few months demonstrates what a good centre-back he is.

Liverpool. Always Liverpool.

It's incredible that a player who's scored 44 goals from midfield in the last three seasons does so often look like he's never taken a shot in his life when he gets into great positions

You're basically suggesting we play a game of GK-Factor, with our Premier League status at stake. That's utter lunacy

True. I can't say I saw anything from the Stevenage game that suggested he was in a position to challenge Davis for a first-team place yet though.

He may well be, but he's played twenty games in League Two, his sum total of league appearances in his career. While he's clearly an upgrade on Forecast, is that really the situation we're in, where we feel like we have to throw him into a Premier League game? Davis is far from perfect, we all know that, but he's played the best part of 100 games with Fonte and 30-40 games with Hooiveld and Fox. Surely that experience has got to be better than a few months of training sessions.

He didn't just say it, he demonstrated it with various freeze-frames at the start of each of the moves for the open play goals in the first half at Arsenal. In each of them, the back 4 were in good positions and the midfield 5 lined up in front of them, which Neville said was exactly what he'd be looking for. It was only as the moves developed that things went wrong for us, which was a combination of good play by Arsenal and bad decision-making on our part. For the first and fourth goals, Clyne's body position had him facing inside rather than outside, which meant that he couldn't keep an eye on Gibbs overlapping. By the time he'd turned, Gibbs was gone and there was no way he'd be able to get back to block his shot/cross. For the third, as the play moved over to our left wing, Fox was near the touchline and Yoshida just inside him, covering the areas you'd expect them to be covering in that sort of situation, but Fonte didn't move over as well, which left a 30-yard space between him and Yoshida, which Gervinho ran into to score.

Cox is usually pretty astute but I think he's wide of the mark here, especially considering the bits in bold were highlighted by Gary Neville on Monday night as the complete opposite, i.e. the shape is excellent and there's plenty of protection. What's cost us is a combination of excellent opponents and momentarily brain-farts from our defence. Hooiveld diving in to give away two penalties, Clyne having his weight the wrong way giving Gibbs an extra split-second, Fox's header at City, Fonte not keeping the gap between him and his CB partner at the right distance, failing to mark van Persie at a corner, etc.

Just done a quick tally and there are now less than 800 tickets available. As you say, mostly in the Itchen/Chapel corner and a small block low down behind the goal, but the 50 or so tickets still available in the Itchen are all single tickets. If you're buying for a group of 3 or 4 of you, you've no chance of getting a ticket there, so chances are those tickets will remain unsold. I guess that's the trade-off when you allow users to select their individual seats, there can be no "management" of available seats to ensure there are as many "blocks" of 2,3,4 seats left right to the very end to cater for people buying for a few people.