stevegrant

Interesting...

Difficult to tell because stadium design has evolved a lot in the decade or so since St Mary's was built, new stadia these days tend to have a lot more curves and intricacies than the fairly standard Barr-built design we and a number of other similar-sized clubs have got. As a guide, Brighton's half-finished effort cost in the region of £90m (although knock a few million off for the public inquiry that dragged on for years - we wouldn't have needed one if we were building that stadium where St Mary's is), plus however much they're spending on the extra seats this summer. Given the old design would have cost roughly three times as much to extend as it did to build in the first place on a per-seat basis, it seems reasonable to assume that extending St Mary's with a more modern design on the extension would cost a lot more.

Double-edged sword really, on one hand they surely won't be as lucky as they were at times last season with teams missing 10-15 clear chances per game against them, but on the other hand their own clinical finishing will come in handy.

No doubt now all their plastics have come out of the woodwork again, we'll only get about 2000 tickets up there, when halfway through last season they couldn't wait to give teams 4000+

And presumably it's still an absolute ****hole

SWT do offer discounted advance fares, but not on trains between key stations. Southampton Central and Southampton Airport are both among their key stations on the Waterloo to Weymouth line. It means it can often be cheaper to buy an advance ticket from Waterloo to Brockenhurst than it is to buy an advance ticket from Waterloo to Southampton

Sort of. The integrity of the SPL clubs appears to be intact, as it's they who have voted against letting Rangers Newco into the league. However, the SPL themselves - in tandem with the SFA - are ****ting themselves because (somehow) the various commercial and broadcasting deals they have seem to stipulate that both of the Old Firm clubs need to be present, otherwise they have get-out clauses. As a result, Neil Doncaster (who you may remember was CEO at Norwich when they were financially in the **** at the same time as we went into admin - he also had a place on the FL board - and was key in getting the FL to ignore their own rules and deduct us 10 points) is trying to get them into Division One rather than starting right at the bottom. He's claiming it "would be unfair on the 41 innocent clubs" for Rangers to be put in Division 3, presumably because the clubs will lose out financially as a result of these contracts being cancelled. However, you'd like to think each of them had actually thought this through when they voted against Rangers keeping their place in the SPL in the first place...

As far as I'm aware, the link to merchandising purchases isn't in place yet, the recent refit only just saw them install chip and pin machines

OK, the quiz topic is on the Saints team from the last non-Premier League top-flight season. You are hereby denied your season ticket

Email me at steve@stevegrant.co.uk Given we're playing them on New Years Day, though, I find it highly unlikely a) any game would get played because of the weather, b) any facilities would be open, or c) we'd actually get enough sober bodies together

They're basically trying to entice you to spend loads of money on it... "here, have some more free money, only it's not free really" When they put your limit up, they're supposed to write to you to let you know they've done it. There's usually a phone number to call where you can refuse the increase. Most card companies will reduce your limit at any time you like anyway.

I'll probably have a look at adding a links section on the site, perhaps pulling in links to all latest articles etc.

http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/sport/pompey/pompey-past/birch-fears-pompey-points-deduction-1-3988134 What's that I hear? Is it the sound of the penny dropping?

£17, I believe.

Again, you are taking a drawing and assuming that it is a fact that we will be expanding the stadium. It is no such thing. Of course the club will be looking at all avenues when it comes to growing revenues, just like all good businesses do, but that doesn't necessarily have to involve a stadium expansion at all. It certainly won't involve a stadium expansion if we fail to sell out games this season - our first back in the top flight for seven years - as I fear we might if the club don't get the matchday pricing right.

You'd think people might have learned their lesson by now.

They have a lifelong fan with more money than sense throwing some of his own cash at the club. If we are being run as a sustainable business - as has always been the claim - we won't be doing the same without the figures adding up.

In theory, a club could be shown just 5 times under the terms of the new deal, up to a maximum of 26 out of 38 games. However, in practice even the bottom clubs get around 10 games, simply because a lot of those games will be against the top clubs, who themselves have generally been televised between 18 and 22 times over the past few years. Obviously there are more games in the new deal (worth remembering we'll only see the benefits of it if we stay up this season), but not by much. Only an extra 16 games per season.

Aware that the conversation's moved on from here, but I'd like to drag it back just to point out that the Amex already has the space for the building work they're embarking on at the moment, hence why it doesn't look like much. When we went there in January, it was clear that it was unfinished. Dragging it back again to the more recent points about an "upper limit" that St Mary's could be expanded to, I have vague recollection of the figure being (a completely unrealistic) 55k, with the Itchen being the only stand unable to be expanded due to the weight of the offices, corporate facilities, etc on the foundations. However, stadium design has changed substantially in the 11 years since SMS was built. I'm not entirely sure whether the more modern structures with more curves are lighter or heavier, but I'd say for certain that the 55k figure would no longer apply if any expansion were to be along the lines of a new-look design rather than simply an extension following the more dated Barr identikit pattern. Also, a friend of mine who works in geotechnics was of the opinion that the foundations could be modified anyway - as with many things, it's basically a case of how much money you want to throw at it that will determine what sort of an impact you can make.

Not to mention the fact that the club couldn't even be arsed to put them on their own website

Yeah, that was a fantastic waste of 15 minutes of my time earlier. Lesson learned.

That bit of it looks like the hideous things that have been built at Old Trafford cricket ground:

Without any detailed knowledge of stadium construction I'd only be guessing, but that guess would be that it would be very difficult to do in one go, especially considering the fact that there's only usually 3 months of the year when there's no football being played there, and therefore only 3 months when there wouldn't be tens of thousands of people milling around at a time. That said, I remember when West Ham built their main stand about a decade ago, they built it behind the existing stand, which didn't seem to cause too much disruption at the time. The problem with expanding rather than replacing (as I guess we'd assume will happen - they surely wouldn't knock the whole stand down and rebuild it from the ground up) is that the roof needs to be removed/lifted at some point, and with the current design, the roof is an integral part to the whole stadium's structure. Also, for reasons of working space, they might see an expansion of the two ends as a better starting point.

Anyone can do some pretty drawings and stick them in the public domain, tbf. Loads of clubs have released similar artist's impressions in the past only to not follow through with any building work to that effect (or even so much as a planning application). This particular design would, as Colin has alluded to, also require the purchase and subsequent demolition of at least three sites that adjoin St Mary's in its current guise. If, for the sake of argument, we assume the club proceeded with this, the timescale involved would surely be a minimum of 5 years, perhaps even 10, simply because of the complexity and scale.

Perfect advert to accompany the article as well...