stevegrant

Sorry, my bad... fixed now

No idea whether this guy is a direct replacement or a domestic equivalent... http://www.mkdons.com/page/NewsDetail/0,,10420~2567349,00.html

For the first two years, we were fairly heavily reliant upon the cash injected by Markus Liebherr (and latterly his estate), but we've since sold Alex Chamberlain for an initial £12m - first year losses were just under £8m, second year losses likely to be less (but won't be confirmed until 31st March), with a smaller squad and bigger attendances - and are now in the Championship with much higher revenues. We now get around £5m in broadcasting revenue, compared to about £500k in League One, and our attendances are averaging more than 26,000. Depending on transfer spending this month, I'd be very surprised if we don't at least break even this season.

1967, I believe.

Whether it was posted or not, it doesn't mean it's true.

An odd sense of deja vu reading that forum... a team in the Championship relegation zone with fans discussing boycotting the club in order to force out unpopular owners/board members and a sticky thread talking about a new server

The Conference are much stricter when it comes to clubs going into (and particularly coming out of) administration. There is a standard 10-point deduction applied when the club goes into administration, but clubs exiting administration must repay football creditors in full at the time of doing so, and either repay non-football creditors in full at the time or have an agreed CVA, the length of which is restricted to a maximum of 3 years.

As has been mentioned, it's unlikely that Puncheon is a long-term option for whatever reason, but given the injury and suspension situation we now find ourselves in, we'd be cutting our nose off to spite our face to not use him in the next couple of weeks, even if it's just from the bench. He can put himself in the shop window with some good performances, and perhaps those good performances might lead him to actually stay here after all... either way, I don't see what we've got to lose, really.

I wouldn't necessarily say so. I for one won't be particularly bothered about getting a ticket at Stamford Bridge and paying £45 for the dubious privilege. Certainly, when we were last in the top flight, we very rarely sold out away games as most of the away following had been to all the main grounds countless times before. I'd expect that to change for the first season if we go up, although there might still be some games where we struggle to sell very many. Places like Fulham and Chelsea are obviously easy to get to, but they'll probably charge a fortune. Fulham's away ticket prices vary quite a lot, for games against the likes of Blackburn and Bolton it'll be £20, but they charged both Man United and Man City fans £55 this season because they knew they'd sell the tickets.

What are the viewing figures like for it, by the way? Especially interesting to see the ratio of live/iPlayer viewers and the comparison with MOTD.

I remember Lowe's (perfectly reasonable but not especially diplomatic) comments after it fell through when Bierhoff wanted £35k a week: "Oliver has to realise we are not Manchester United and he is not 27 anymore"

As mentioned above, whatever happens with the highlights, as long as they don't end up on ITV I don't think there will be too many problems. While having coverage on the BBC has been good simply for the access it provides, I don't think they've really made the most of the platform they've paid for. They tried too hard to go for the "Television 2.0" model initially by allowing fans to email and text in, providing in effect a TV blog. Fortunately they realised it was a waste of time, but instead of increasing the amount of time each game got, they simply shortened the broadcast :Picard: Whatever your views on Sky's pay-TV model, you can't deny that their coverage is excellent. As a result, I'll have no complaints if they get the full rights from next season, as long as they do offer something for the majority of the nation who don't subscribe to Sky Sports, even if that's just an online offering. I'd imagine a sizeable percentage of the Football League Show's current viewers watch via iPlayer anyway because of the time it's aired.

The rule in league games is the lower amount of 3,000 or 10% of capacity, with various caveats depending on how easy it is to segregate sections of the ground, etc. For cup games, it's 15%, although there's been some sort of row between Man City and Man United about United's allocation for their forthcoming FA Cup game at Old Trafford. In theory, they should be entitled to around 7100 tickets, but City have restricted their allocation to 5500 on the grounds of "safety".

From Southampton Central, the fare to Falmer is exactly the same as the fare to Brighton, so they're pointless.

The problem there is that anyone who does stay up to watch it isn't going to want to watch extended highlights of (potentially) 36 games. Clearly every fan wants to be able to see extended highlights of their own club's games, with perhaps some/most also wanting to see the goals from the other games. What would be quite good on Saints Player (and the other FL club equivalents) is if Football League Interactive put together the goals from all the games into a package, which would then allow each club to produce a show that has extended highlights of their own game and then all the goals from the rest of the Football League. Get the Player software running via Xbox Live and you'd then have a marketable programme which would sell many more Player subscriptions.

To be honest, I think many people were surprised at how quickly they sold out on that Friday. I for one was quite happy to wait until the Saturday morning when I'd be collecting my Pompey tickets and avoid the ticket tax, but then when news filtered through that they were selling really quickly and that the queues on the phone line were horrendous, I had to send someone down there to get them.

Why? For the most popular games, surely it is those who support the team most frequently who should get first dibs? It's not as if we're Man United and sell out every away allocation we're given, there are plenty of opportunities for those who don't go to many away games to get tickets. As a rough guide, all of the following games definitely went to general sale as they weren't sellouts: Barnsley, Ipswich, Leicester, Swindon, Burnley, Cardiff, Crystal Palace, Coventry, Doncaster. I'm also pretty sure the games at Derby and Reading went to general sale, although they did both sell out, so that only leaves Bristol City, Pompey and Brighton as having sold out before a general sale period. Taking your stance, would you be happy if we got to a cup final and tickets were allocated to those who hadn't been to any games all season ahead of season ticket holders?

Unfortunately, they were never likely to be able to do the ballot that was required for this game because of the complete pig's ear they made of the Pompey game. Another brilliant piece of work by the ticket office

If they took the presenters and pundits from the Football League Show and put them on Match of the Day covering the Premier League stuff, would it make a blind bit of difference to the viewing figures? Nobody gives a flying one about what any pundit has to say, when was the last time anyone actually learned anything from one of their comments?

It was my understanding that the 6-second rule was removed? Also, I've got no real problem with the goal kick rule, as long as the ball is in the six-yard box. It's up to the referee to stamp out obvious time-wasting. I'd be in favour of a system (which would realistically only work at professional level) where stoppage time is regulated by the amount of time the ball is actually in play. According to Opta, in the Premier League this season, the ball has been in play for 67% of the time, which works out at about an hour of actual playing time for every 90 minutes. Based on that average, we can do away with the nominal addition of 30 seconds for every goal and substitution (which could clearly take more or less than 30 seconds each time) and simply play until there has been 30 minutes of *actual* play in each half. Fans are getting short-changed more and more by various time-wasting techniques employed by teams who employ methods that referees aren't strong enough to put a stop to, so this way would ensure they're getting a guaranteed amount of actual playing time.

The DLR is driverless already, although it almost always has a member of staff on board "just in case", and as far as I'm aware the Jubilee line has the capability to go fully automatic, but it's a political hot potato because of the potential safety issue with thousands of people being at the mercy of a computer system hundreds of feet below the ground.

As someone who lives in London, I can tell you that investment bankers don't even register on the scale of hatred here when public transport union members are in the public eye.

The problem with football is that so many of the laws of the game are qualified with "in the opinion of the referee". While it gives most of us extra things to discuss down the pub, it certainly doesn't help officials' decision-making that there are so many grey areas, and FIFA have often over-complicated things with unnecessary clauses, caveats and extra directives to officials. The handball rule should be simplified, much like the "foot" rule in hockey, so that *any* contact with the hand/arm is penalised no matter what the situation. It makes it much clearer. Yes, it introduces the scenario where an attacker can then play for a penalty by aiming for a defender's arm, but that's not much different from a player drawing a foul from an opponent. What also doesn't help is that pundits and commentators often don't know the rules. The offside one is obviously the main one here, and I still despair at the number of people who think there has to be "daylight" between a defender and the attacker for him to be deemed offside Also, the general bemusement of pundits when a player gets a yellow card for what seems an innocuous foul, completely ignoring the fact that that's the 6th free kick he's given away in the game. "Persistently infringing the laws of the game" is probably the most common reason for a yellow card to be issued.

How is that different from the current situation, where, to date, they have received precisely zero, zilch, nada, **** all? To be honest, I couldn't give a shiny one about HMRC, if they are happy to write off the best part of £6bn in owed corporation tax by Vodafone, £20m from a football club really isn't anything to worry about. What does bother me is that the club has made a token gesture of an effort to get itself to a situation where it might stand a chance of breaking even. It's all well and good praising the progress of the likes of Joel Ward, but then going out and spunking horrific sums of money on the likes of Kitson (and I thought *our* statue was expensive at £100k), Lawrence, Norris et al rather makes a mockery of the whole thing. I'm sure you'll now bleat on about how all your dealings are subject to Football League approval yada yada yada, as if they are actually going to run the club on Lampitt's behalf, when all of that shouldn't be necessary anyway. Why should the FL have to hold the club's hand? It really can't be that difficult to draw up a budget (hell, even Andronikou managed that part for you) and to at least make an attempt at sticking to it.