stevegrant

The release time on 17th June is 9am.

We've been the best team in 2011, it's as simple as that. 61 points from 26 games, an average of 2.35 points per game. Only Brighton (2.23) and Huddersfield (2.2) have come close to us over the same period, and if we'd matched that scoring rate over the whole season we'd have finished with 108 points!

I make that 40.6% higher than our near neighbours... :vuvu:

I assume that one of them is David Norris - Ipswich have offered him a new contract, which suggests they're quite keen to keep him, and he's not out of contract yet. The "6 months" rule only applies to those moving to another country, so he would have been entitled to speak to Celtic, for example, seeing as they're always keen to snap up an average Championship clogger on a Bosman.

I assume he has been reported to the FA/Football League for illegal approaches?

The actual time period when season ticket money is taken should be irrelevant. Standard accounting practices dictate that revenue and expenditure is accounted for within the financial period that the product or service is relevant, i.e. if money was taken this side of June 30th, it would still appear in the 2011/12 financial accounts. The only entry on the 2010/11 accounts would be for pre-payments on the balance sheet.

I hope you're not surprised by that?!

:vuvu:

Got very lucky with the Plymouth game and the new idea to schedule some England games for Friday nights!

It's also pretty easy to do it if you're getting a stadium that cost the taxpayer more than £500m to build for only £40m. Sadly, short of forcing a judicial review in Stratford and relocating there ourselves, that option's probably not available to us.

Perhaps, but he's also speaking from a bit of experience there - he was involved in getting that world record-sized shirt made, which I think was done for the first game at St Mary's. It had been stored in a warehouse ever since until it was brought out and hung from the city walls a few years ago. I was one of a dozen or so people who helped hang it there, and it was a complete mess. Dirty, dusty, smelly - I assume it's probably even worse now. It's one thing those involved in the flag will have to bear in mind - it's going to need cleaning regularly, and I don't know many dry cleaners that have capacity for a 300 square foot piece of material

Speaking as a (relatively - 27) young unmarried male, while there are quite a few in a similar situation to me, I don't think I'm in a particular majority, from what I can tell. There are a lot of older regulars (either self-employed or retired, perhaps?), as well as a few families who I see together at loads of games. I wouldn't say I've got a massive amount of disposable income, but most of it does go on following Saints - that's my choice, I'm sure I could find many other ways to spend it if I wanted to. I think living in London, as I have been since October, gives me a slight advantage over Southampton-based fans when it comes to away travel. There are so many more options for getting to away games, and I don't have the added expense of travelling from Southampton to London first for the long-distance games such as Carlisle or Hartlepool. I can just go across London to Euston or Kings Cross (or Paddington, as was the case on Monday). That said, home games are now like away games, so it's swings and roundabouts really.

I didn't read that article as a dig at the idea of a flag, it was just him suggesting that in his opinion something more lasting might be more appropriate. That's his opinion, which he's perfectly entitled to. I'm quite happy with the flag idea, personally, as it's giving the fans an opportunity to contribute towards something we can all share.

Schoolboy error

And yet what are you doing, judging someone irrespective of their circumstances Strangely, 35 people managed to reply to the OP without getting offended about it - I suggest you lighten up for once. The victimised persona you seem to offer up on an all-too-regular basis gets rather tiresome, and seems to affect your ability to actually take things at face value. Occasionally, believe it or not, people don't start threads on here just to have a pop at someone living in Austria who they've never met.

When they went down to League One, they also offered fans a 20% rebate if they wanted it. One of the directors then said that for all those who don't apply for the rebate, he would donate the equivalent money to the club, which would be ringfenced for the playing squad. He eventually put in about £300k, which allowed them to buy Grant Holt. They've not done too badly out of that deal

Missed 5 away games (Sheff Weds, Yeovil, Oldham, Walsall, Colchester), done all the rest.

As horrific as that sounds, that price does include all home Champions League group games and (I think) FA Cup ties. Still expensive, but there are added benefits at Arsenal. A few other clubs are doing the same for next season - Hereford's season tickets will include home cup games in all three competitions.

There are so many differences between the "matchday experience" in Germany and the same in this country though. In Germany: Ticket prices are sensible - in fact, I'm sure I heard that there are rules in place which stipulate that at least a proportion of tickets must not be higher than a particular price. There is an even distribution of seated and standing tickets so supporters have a choice of how they want to watch the game. Supporters aren't treated like the scum of the earth by authorities. Supporters aren't treated like complete idiots by their club. Matches aren't moved en masse for television, the vast majority kick off at 2.30pm on a Saturday Public transport providers don't hike up the prices as soon as fans start buying advance fare tickets And that's just for starters. Cash is king in English football - there's plenty of money swirling around the Bundesliga, but the clubs also realise that without the fans, they have no product to market. The likes of Richard Scudamore would do well to remember that fact.

You might be right there - I know that at least part of that upper tier was added afterwards, assumed it was all of it as it looks really strange and not the sort of thing I'd have imagined being incorporated into the original design.

Not necessarily. Sponsorship is such an intangible product, and it's probably more closely linked with the press exposure the sponsor will achieve than the number of people who will see their name in the stadium.

So £40m to increase capacity by 8,000. £5,000 per seat. Repaid by 10 seasons of complete sell-outs, I guess, but still one hell of an investment if they end up going down...

And what will the new capacity be?

I think the Wolves expansion (not even 1000 seats, I think) is a temporary, uncovered section in the corner. They've got plans to rebuild at least two of the current stands, but I suspect that depends on them staying up. Sunderland's upper tier wasn't there when they first built the Stadium of Light - that was added a couple of years later at considerable expense. Rupert Lowe and Andrew Cowen's analysis of stadium expansion was always that while you could build a new stadium for around £1000 per seat, expanding that stadium further down the line would then cost £3000 per seat. That was in 2004/5, so it's probably even higher now. Adding 10,000 seats to SMS would more than double the cost of the original build of the stadium.

And of course if the worst happens and we end up getting relegated again, we'd possibly be lucky to even half-fill it, leaving us with a rather large white elephant.