stevegrant

Correct. Fixtures have arrived, embargoed until 9am, obviously. None of you are correct with your guesses so far

As I'm sure you're well aware by now, next season's fixtures will be released at 9am tomorrow morning. You'll be able to see them first on the SaintsWeb home page at 9am on the dot. Full fixture list: http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/content.php?195-Tough-Start-for-Saints-on-return-to-Championship

They could have avoided a preliminary round by keeping Fulham (who probably won't get through three qualifying rounds) in the second round, rather than give them a bye as well. We don't normally get an extra European place for the fair play league.

Mike, I would recommend getting the best deal you can with the money you have now. People have had more than enough time to donate, and clearly if you want it ready for the Memorial Cup, you're going to have to move pretty sharpish anyway, I'd have thought. It's only because Cortese said "I'll make up the shortfall" that you've set such a big target anyway, but this isn't about him, it's something from the fans.

Broken Dreams by Tom Bower, and Foul! by Andrew Jennings. Both about the shadier goings-on in football, the latter concentrating on FIFA.

I've not actually seen my ticket(s) yet, my old man has them

I doubt it, given the Biel game is on the 13th and then the Memorial Cup at St Mary's on the 23rd. Unlikely they'd then go back out to Switzerland after that...

I think those stats are for the reserves. Pretty sure he never made a first-team appearance.

He's going to have to find someone willing to pay his wages though. Ipswich would have been quite likely until they signed Chopra last week.

Only seen as far as Friday so far, Thursday looks several kinds of crap, but Friday seems alright. What are the refund procedures on the 5-day tickets, by the way?

All the Forest fans I know are delighted (all three of them). To suggest that the board interfered with Davies' job is absolutely hilarious, he constantly whinged that he wasn't backed in the transfer market, but he must have spent more in transfer fees (almost solely on strikers) in the Championship during his time in charge there than any other club.

I assume this can be closed

Nor will you learn anything by playing against opposition who will completely outplay you on both ability and fitness right from the outset, as happened in Switzerland last summer. What should be happening - and has generally always happened every pre-season other than last year - is that you build up the games against better opposition as the pre-season period progresses.

I make that 9 domestic T20 wins in a row Weather looks terrible for Taunton on Sunday, which to be honest is probably a bonus. A point apiece will do quite nicely.

http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?30674-Switzerland

In general, yes. Clubs would be encouraged to grow organically, as they always used to in the past, and of course with good management (on and off the pitch) there's no reason why a team wouldn't be able to consistently punch above its weight. There or there abouts, I'd agree.

And it'll be our problem if either the current owners want the club to be run sustainably (which I believe NC has said is part of the 5-year plan), or they sell and any new owners want the club to be run sustainably, but when we approach players to sign them, they demand more money than we can afford on the basis of "well, you could afford it two years ago, why not now?". Do we then miss out on the player because we're running the club sensibly, or do we cave in and overstretch ourselves, in which case we run the risk of ending up where we were in 2009 all over again... Ignore the short-term benefits of having a rich benefactor, that funding will not be around forever, regardless of how much we'd like it to be. There will come a time when we won't be able to call upon the Liebherr estate to subsidise us, at which point, once again, it does become our problem.

Would expect so, that was the way it worked last year.

A little from A, a little from B, I think. While many smaller clubs are envious of the situation where other clubs suddenly have loads of money to spend because they acquire rich owners, it does also create a situation where everything becomes inflated and the clubs without that sort of cash feel they have to stretch themselves to breaking point in order to keep up. In a rather perverse way, many clubs have been asking for the FA/PL/FL to impose spending rules for years, because they simply don't trust themselves not to spend more than they can afford in a gamble to gain success.

True, although they had just won promotion back to the top flight a year ago, so had fallen away quite a bit in that time.

I think they're waiting for confirmation of the second game (assuming we're only playing two, like last year) before doing so, which makes sense, I think. Biel is about 100km from Interlaken, where the team was based last year, looks quite easy to get to by train from there as well. I'm glad we've learned our lesson from last year, where we took on teams who were far too good for us at that time, given Thun were 4 days away from the start of their season and in the top flight. Right at the start of pre-season, you don't really want to be playing against teams who are going to give you the run-around, IMO.

I like how good they make us look for a 4-year period at the turn of the century

Regardless of the argument as to whether we will or won't ever have to pay back the £20m listed as a long-term liability in the group accounts, the simple answer is "Yes, we did rack up an additional £7m of debt during that period".

But they also have a legacy wage bill from the Premier League, so they still won't have much (if any) spare cash to spend.

Aldershot or Oxford for me. Hereford at a push, as it's a new ground but miles away.