stevegrant

Richly deserved - nobody in the country matched us for form over the last 15 games of the season. It does also make a change for Richard Bevan to not be whinging about another manager being sacked.

Regular England international, fits into the home-grown quota for domestic and European competitions, can play in more than one position, has blistering pace... plenty of key attributes ticked off there as far as a top club is concerned. Considering someone like Andy Carroll - a similar age but with far less experience - went for £35m, if there was widespread interest in him Arsenal could probably name their price. However, he's not a player whose future has been subject to speculation, so I would assume he's not the sort of player who would necessarily fit into the system employed by other clubs.

I don't see any particular problem with the relatively quiet transfer window, the vast majority of the players we have signed in the last two years have been with a view to playing in the Championship anyway, so they should all be well-suited and perfectly capable of making that step up. The only position I feel we're a little bit light on at the moment is at centre-back, Fonte's a guaranteed pick, but there are a variety of pros and cons when you look at his potential partners, and it would appear as though the club is in agreement there having left the number 5 shirt vacant.

Spot on.

Most games don't actually have 10-15 minutes of "highlights", so all that ends up happening is you get even more replays from even more obscure angles of the highlights you'd already seen. The best feature of the whole thing - assuming it's still there, I've not had a subscription for a few years - is the archive where you can go back and watch highlights from games that took place years ago.

Bit of a scrappy game tonight, really, they were clinical when one genuine chance came their way whereas we were not. Lallana and Chamberlain probably should have scored in the first half, Jaidi was unlucky to have a header cleared off the line and then Doble should definitely have scored when put clean through in the last minute. Another decent workout though. Cork and Schneiderlin look an impressive partnership at the moment, which does make me wonder whether the team captain will actually start the season as first-choice... Also, while many people have a gripe over ticket prices in general in this country, it pales into insignificance compared to the Swiss prices. CHF30 for tonight (about £23), with no child concessions However, they do have bratwurst

2+2=5, presumably, much like most rumours. FWIW, Lawrence's agent has been touting him around to any club who'll give him the time of day since January. However, Pompey appear to be in a position where they wouldn't have to accept a knock-down fee for him at the moment.

Highlights of every game on the BBC and online...

Especially considering that's half what it costs to stick your company's logo on the segregation netting I really hope there are no takers for the substitution sponsor

We've got the option to include Facebook integration, so I will have a look at that when I get back from Switzerland.

That was a pathetic batting display

I thought we could only have one overseas player for the CB40 competition?

Correction, we HAVE qualified. I boringly spent half an hour yesterday compiling a spreadsheet to check. Somerset can, and probably will (their last two are against Gloucestershire and Middlesex), get to 20 points, so they could still finish above us on net run rate, while Essex can only get 18 points after our win against them on Wednesday. Sussex, Surrey and Kent can all get more points than us at the moment. However, all three of them have to play each other, and as a result, the worst-case scenario for us is that two of them also get 20 points, with us losing all three remaining games. The worst that could happen is that we finish 4th on net run rate. A win tonight will guarantee a home tie in the quarter-finals.

I think Sarah Draper is now in charge of ticketing. Using the club's usual email format, that would mean her email address is sdraper@saintsfc.co.uk

Strange, that's what I've done. What browser are you using?

If you hover over the small video player that pops up on the normal TV guide page, in the bottom-right corner there are two options, one for full-screen and one for a pop-out player. You'll need to make sure whatever popup blocker your browser uses is disabled for that page, and then click the pop-out player button. It'll load a popup window, which you can resize to whatever size suits you.

From what I can tell, this isn't anything to do with a cosy local relationship, it's a contractual issue from when we signed Aaron Martin from them two years ago, where as part of the deal we agreed to send a "strong" squad for a friendly every pre-season for the duration of Martin's initial contract with us (3 years, IIRC). In theory, if we break that agreement, Eastleigh could get the Football League to place a transfer embargo on us, as we have technically reneged on a transfer contract.

The pop-out screen is an improvement on the old Sky Player system, as you can then resize the video to however big you want it, rather than being stuck with either the fixed size they gave you or full-screen. However, the reduction to 2 PCs is ****.

I'm expecting numbers to be roughly the same. Some will not renew as they can't afford to do so, some will not renew because last season they were free under-8s season tickets that weren't actually used by under-8s (I suspect this is the reason they're being so proficient regarding checking ID for concession tickets this time around), and there will be a number of new ST holders. Still a bit baffled as to why the whole process has taken so long, but "meh" really, from a selfish point of view it helped me out as I didn't have to find a lump sum at the same time as forking out for loads of away games in the last six weeks of the season.

If we have an option of signing Maynard for £4m on £15k a week or Nugent for nothing on £15-20k a week, I'd go for Nugent. Basic economics, a sensible business decision. Both are proven at Championship level, and I would be slightly wary of spending a fortune on a player who fairly recently had a cruciate ligament injury.

Somerset and Sussex both got beaten tonight (quite heavily as well), so we've got a 4-point lead, and a game in hand over Somerset. Below us, there are 4 teams tied on 14 points with Surrey a point further back. With Sussex, Essex and Surrey still to play, we're going to have a pretty big say in who joins us in the quarter-finals. Looks like being a big crowd at the Oval on Friday night, I really struggled to get two seats next to each other on their online booking system.

I wouldn't trust MacAnthony as far as I could throw him, to be honest.

The Peterborough chairman said on Friday that he expected CMS to sign for Leicester over the weekend. Fair to say this has come as a bit of a surprise, and perhaps demonstrates a lack of ambition on the player's part? Guaranteed a starting place at Brighton, whereas would have competition at QPR, West Ham and Leicester. A rumour I heard this morning was that he had agreed to join QPR and then their board pulled the plug on the deal at the last minute. Given the characters involved there, that seems plausible.

Other than your ambition to become the world's most proficient pedant, I'm not sure what your point is.

You can't have it both ways, either debt to a benefactor who isn't likely to demand it back any time soon is a debt or it isn't, make your mind up.