stevegrant

Some interesting similarities there, Bristol City with a crap start and massive negative goal difference (but improved in the second half of the season when Nicky Maynard returned from injury), Derby starting strongly (faded badly), all three promoted sides in the top half.

Definitely announced in the ground as 32,150, but the BBC and other sites that use the Press Association/DataCo match data now say 32,152.

They presumably stopped routinely announcing it as they got embarrassed by the 13k figures we were getting at one stage.

Doesn't help that Middlesbrough is in one of the poorest areas of the country, hardest-hit by the recession. Their away numbers are quite impressive, though.

442, apparently.

Suspect Liverpool v Norwich on ESPN will be slightly more popular, unfortunately.

Don't forget that the segregation netting takes up a few hundred seats, 40 rows x 9 or 10 seats wide isn't far short of those "missing" 500.

When you call the ticket booking line, it'll initially try to route your call to the ticket office at SMS, but if there are no lines available (on an average weekday, I'd guess there's no more than 2 or 3 members of staff), it then gets transferred to the call centre.

Point of order, we lost 3-0 in that game. Watford only had 3 shots all afternoon

I genuinely don't think they're actually that bothered. The information is important to us, but as far as they're concerned, as long as they sell the tickets, they're not fussed.

Well, let's face it, the old one will have been worn out a long time ago

See above... direct for less than £150

I did look at that yesterday as my old man hasn't got any aways on his season ticket, but the general sale process will only be open to those who have been on their database since last season. Their sales periods before that seem overly complex with members requiring 3, 2, 1 and then 0 home games this season, followed by non-members on the database with 3, 2, 1 and then 0 home games this season. I'm not convinced they'll be able to find enough skates who can understand that system to be able to sell out

Easyjet and Air Malta both fly to Valletta from Gatwick, return trip with either of them for the last weekend in November is around £150 at the moment (via expedia, but worth checking direct with each airline)

The online sales site only tracks purchases made by you. It doesn't show transactions where someone else has bought tickets using your customer number. If only it was as simple as that. A mate of mine checked a few weeks ago how many aways he had registered against his customer number this season and found out that neither Barnsley or Ipswich away had been recorded properly. Someone else had bought the tickets, and the other customer numbers had all had the tickets logged, but his had been missed off. IMO, it should be a relatively simple bit of functionality to add to the online ticket site to be able to check all transactions involving your customer number, regardless of whether you're the one who actually made the booking.

Bet they won't...

That's about a fiver less than I thought they'd charge us

It'll be interesting to see whether the Pompey fans who travel to Southampton in April will be subjected to the same restraints. If not, I for one will be kicking up a fuss. Going by coach from SMS is a massive inconvenience for me and will also cost me more money, my original plan was to get a train direct from Croydon into Fratton. As I don't wear colours to games anyway, it would have been relatively straightforward to keep my head down and get from the station to the ground.

I assume everyone will be issued with a SFC "match" ticket which will let you board the coach, with match tickets handed out by the steward once the coaches have left SMS.

While I've seen this sort of thing happen on an ever-increasing scale for derby games in the last few years, has anyone actually challenged its legality? Not only on the theory of freedom of movement, but also on an anti-competition/price-fixing angle as well. What's to stop the club charging everyone £50 for the coach, safe in the knowledge that if people want to go to the game, they'll have to pay it?

immediately followed by...

Definitely won't be Hughes, he left Fulham in the summer thinking he could get a better job. Fair to say the Fratton Park hotseat doesn't qualify there

To be fair, the only reason the home end wasn't sold out was that there was a ticket office ****-up (shock horror) where a number of duplicate tickets were posted, so in order to make sure there weren't more people in the ground than there are seats available, they had to sell fewer tickets, which left a small section of seats in the Itchen/Chapel corner vacant.

Billy Davies and Dave Jones would require hefty transfer budgets. I can't see them getting that at Pompey. O'Driscoll would be a good one for them, used to working within financial constraints, will get the team playing good football over a period of time (although will need to move on all the cloggers first). Gray is in situ at the moment, although it's possible he might follow Cotterill to Forest...