stevegrant

No it won't. It'll take a number of years of crap performances by English teams in Europe, coupled with one of the other leagues who currently get 3 CL places (most likely Italy or France) improving consistently over the same period, for England to lose a CL place. The Bundesliga has outperformed Serie A for years, and it's only this season that they've taken the 4th CL place from Serie A

City can rightly point to having a tough group, and they got 10 points and still missed out - I'm not sure that's ever happened before. United have absolutely no excuse, they had a ****-easy draw and should have had qualification wrapped up with games to spare, but Fergie's decision to treat the group stage like the Carling Cup by picking reserve sides for the early games, showing a complete lack of respect to the other teams in the group (fair enough, pick reserve teams when you've already qualified, but don't be so arrogant to just assume you'll still do enough), means they thoroughly deserve everything they've got tonight.

I don't think (m)any people have a problem with how the tickets are allocated. Season ticket holders who wanted a ticket have got one, job done. After that, you could argue the toss one way or the other in terms of whether STHs should be allowed another one ahead of a non-STH who has done 3 aways, I guess, but it all seems fairly straightforward. As indeed does the process that common sense would suggest takes place when actually checking the applications. However, it would seem as though a lot of that common sense hasn't been used, which is what has annoyed a lot of people, along with the enforced collection of tickets (if they're bothered about tickets going missing, send them recorded and add a quid to the transaction value) and complete randomness of information that has been given whenever different people have asked what's going on. There is absolutely no way they should be in a situation whereby someone who handed their application in on the first day they were accepting them (17th October) could still be waiting for the email confirming they've got a ticket - yes, they may assume so as they were in the first ballot, but they might have made a mistake on the application form without realising, and I'm fully expecting that any void applications were simply chucked in the bin. Remember the FA Cup semi-final at Villa Park in 2003? We had 3-4 weeks between the draw being made and the game being played, and yet the club managed to get application forms sent via post to all season ticket holders (and members, I think), processed the forms for nearly 20,000 tickets and had the tickets posted well in advance of the game. Looking back at how manic that situation must have been - with sell-out home and away games around that time as well - puts the current situation into perspective. They've made a complete pig's ear of it all.

When did they email you? It seems as though they only started sending them last week. My application was handed in on the 12th November, appeared on my online account on the 27th (10 days after the ballot closed, what were they doing in that time?!) and I got the email on the 2nd December, a day after they'd said "if you've not heard by then, you've missed out". And it sounds like mine was one of the earlier ones!

So this notion that all transfers and new contracts were going through the Football League for approval is a load of gubbins then? Thought as much...

Attwell wasn't the ref for the Bristol City v Crystal Palace game, it was Rob Shoebridge. I thought he was perfectly within his rights to send Cahill off on Saturday. Difficult to tell whether Kaboul would have got across to cover the run of Parker had he not been fouled (Gary Neville's analysis on Monday night showed that Kaboul was flat-footed to say the least, and facing the wrong way, so probably wouldn't have got there in time), and usually the appeal panels tend to give referees the benefit of the doubt in situations like that.

I'm not entirely sure I buy the line that it's the police that have forced these "restrictions" on the club as far as who gets the tickets is concerned. After all, in the second ballot, anyone who got a ticket first time around could then buy an extra ticket. If the police were restricting who can and can't buy a ticket, that simply wouldn't have been allowed to happen. IMO, the club were right to do a ballot, and were right to prioritise season ticket holders who have been to the most away games (although as it appears to have turned out, any season ticket holder who applied in the first ballot got a ticket regardless of the number of aways), but they've ballsed up the process of allocating tickets to applicants completely.

Also not forgetting the original article when the ballot was announced stated that anyone not receiving an email confirmation from the club by 1st December has not been successful. It's not beyond the realms of possibility that many have assumed they haven't got tickets for the game, so have spent their money elsewhere, and could be in for a nasty shock when they next check their bank statements

Their own fault for being so ****ing stupid as to wait until the deadline had passed before checking applications for eligibility. It beggars belief how ballot applications that were handed in up to seven weeks ago STILL haven't been processed.

Under Stuart Gray's outstanding spell in charge, June 2001 to October 2001.

7 home defeats in a row, with only one goal scored in that time Away record is second only to leaders Charlton, though...

To be fair to him, he's actually done a reasonable job at Hartlepool, and looking at a Hartlepool forum, most of their fans seem quite surprised he's been sacked.

My thoughts entirely.

I'm genuinely amazed that they've managed to make such a pig's ear out of what should really be a very simple process. How can they have not finished even processing the first ballot, which ended more than two weeks ago and for which they were receiving applications more than six weeks ago?!

Sorry, Phil, you often speak a lot of sense on here but every single word of that is garbage.

The scary thing about his choice of words is that, if he was given the same brief as I was, he will have taken time to consider his words and write them himself. I was asked to write 250 words explaining my opposition to the bubble, with Burrows doing the same from the opposite viewpoint, and my words would be used verbatim.

If we take the prudent approach and assume that the club is being run without any additional injection of funds from the Liebherr estate, my estimate (and that's all it can be without actually seeing the accounts, and now the club is in private hands that information is always more dated when it's released) is that a decent chunk of the Chamberlain money will have covered the losses from the previous two seasons (£8m-ish in 09/10, undisclosed as yet for 10/11), with the rest being used to offset a wage bill that is almost certainly above the "ideal" wages/turnover ratio of 60-65%. However, we have clearly been in discussions with clubs regarding players of significant worth, so I do think there will be *some* money to spend in January, but I'm pretty sure it won't be all of the £12m Chamberlain money.

FSF are already aware

http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/features/newsreview/9402439.Are_police_plans_for_Saints_vs_Pompey_match_going_too_far_/ As the thread title suggests, our celebrity Superintendent Rick Burrows has used the disasters at Valley Parade, Hillsborough and Ibrox in the 80s as justification for sticking us on an enforced convoy of second-hand double-decker buses. Something of a PR own-goal, I'd say

The article will be on the Echo website, hopefully without a horrendous photo of me from about 7 or 8 years ago, shortly, apparently.

That could be one of two things: 1. We have sold out and therefore they missed out due to having no away games; 2. Their application was refused because the article on the OS said that the criteria for the second "ballot" was those already successful who wanted an extra ticket or fans on the database with 4 or more away games. If they've simply refused them a ticket because they've got no aways, but we've not sold out, that's ****ing ridiculous. However, seeing the way they seem to operate these days, it also wouldn't surprise me.

The club have provided conflicting messages throughout (or just no message at all), so I'll be taking no notice of any "the ticket office told me..." stories for this one. We'll see how many we've got when we get to that ****hole next weekend.

Odd. Just received a second copy of the email, but this time with Mark Long's letter attached:

Given the mess they seem to have made of the application process, do you really think anyone there knows how to do a mail merge?