stevegrant

That assumes we allow away teams to bring 5,000. Old Trafford holds more than 76,000, but they only give just over 3,000 to away fans. Firstly, they have the capability to sell those extra seats to home fans; secondly, they don't want to give any sort of potential advantage to the opposition.

Linking a Man United PL game to, say, a Wigan PL game could cost anything up to £80. Would that not be just a touch off-putting?! The "linked" game will always be unattractive compared to the main event - whether it's Carlisle in League One or Wigan in the Premier League, it's still got the same (lack of) appeal. The original technical plans for SMS allow for the Northam, Chapel and Kingsland stands to be extended, up to a maximum capacity of 55,000. The Itchen can't be expanded because of the already-massive weight of the offices and corporate facilities on the foundations. However, I would be amazed if the council granted planning permission for any expansion without the re-introduction of the public transport travel schemes that were in operation until 3 years ago - they were a condition of the original build.

I think we averaged 30k+ over the course of the 4 seasons there, and around 2002-4 I think we had something like 22 consecutive sell-outs, so if the team is doing well, the people will follow, but back then we did also have a 3-tier ticket pricing structure, so it wasn't such a hard sell to fill 28,000 seats for a game against Middlesbrough. If I remember rightly, the year we went down, we actually had a 4-tier pricing structure, with 4 games being classified as "platinum" (Pompey, Man United, Arsenal and Chelsea), which I think were somewhere in the region of £34. Knocking two or three quid off per tier, that gets you down to £25-27 for a "bronze" game back in 2005, which seems fairly reasonable, especially for someone who can't afford the top prices or isn't one of the first in line to get a general sale ticket. The membership scheme the club used to operate meant that for a long period of time, many games never reached general sale. Of course, matchday ticket prices become a bit of an irrelevancy after a while - they're important to begin with to get people through the gate, but as soon as you start selling out, all of a sudden a season ticket becomes a much more valued commodity, so there are then fewer matchday tickets available each week. At one stage, we had 23,000 season ticket holders. If we get back to (and beyond) that stage again, I would suggest that would be the time to seriously look at expanding the ground.

I'm not convinced. We didn't sell out against Man United at £30 a head, why would we do so at £45? Yes, it was twinned with the Carlisle game, but it would also get twinned with a game against a team nobody cares about if it was a Premier League game. They might get away with big buck prices for the top games if we're doing well, but can you see us filling SMS for a game against Blackburn or Wigan at those sort of prices?

I can't see how they'll take nearly half their average home attendance to an away game 150 miles away, regardless of the importance of the game. Wouldn't surprise me if a lot of those tickets ended up in the hands of Saints fans, to be honest.

Avatars are only available to full members, I'm afraid.

Walsall have an allocation of 1200 tickets, which I assume is the lowest amount they can actually segregate. What surprised me the most, though, looking on their OS, was that we hadn't sent them the tickets until this morning!

It should be relatively straightforward, give the turnstile operators a list of banned names and seat numbers and they check against them as people enter the ground. There won't be many, and as soon as one is spotted, the season ticket is either confiscated or they go to the ticket office to hand their money over. Not an ideal solution, by any means, but it's still possible to achieve if they wanted to. Well, Cortese was quoted as saying that they can't/won't implement a payment plan until there is some sort of automated entry system - whether that means the club actually plans to pay the best part of half a million quid to safeguard a tenth of that in season ticket revenue (assuming all those "defaulting" did so intentionally any not as a result of either the club taking the payments on different days each month or the card having expired before all payments were made - I know of two people who fell into the latter category, they phoned the club to sort the issue as they noticed the money hadn't been taken out, the club didn't seem to be proactive about pursuing it at all) is open to conjecture and guesswork. From what I remember of the dinner reports from a few months ago, Cortese didn't actually go as far as committing to implementing an automated solution.

I think comparing any price rise with inflation in this instance isn't really fair as what we'll be getting next season isn't like-for-like. The bigger clubs in the Championship charge anything up to £35 for matchday tickets, which, compared with £22-25 at St Mary's this season, is a pretty big leap.

I had a treble on us, Cardiff and Norwich yesterday - hardly sticking my neck out, but I'm quite happy to lose the fiver stake and potential £20 profit to see them balls it up again

Bournemouth, because they'd stand absolutely no chance of competing with us next season. With the right signings, the other three could. However, Huddersfield are clearly the most deserving of the four.

Uh-oh... here we go again To clarify, there are various ways the club can run an instalment plan. Many use an external finance company because it can be a pain in the arse registering for the direct debit scheme, and if the club were to go down that avenue, they would more than likely receive all the money up front, with the finance company receiving the instalments. Disclaimer: other finance models are available

Yeah, I prefer the "we do what we're told" alternative

If I remember correctly, the renewal price for this season was £355, so I would expect the discounted renewal price to be in the region of £400

OK, after a bit of a fail on my part for the Hartlepool game, I'm pretty sure it'll be working for the Brentford game

I suspect this might have something to do with that story and its timing - no named quotes, just "an FA source", that could be anyone.

To be fair, both of those summer departures were out of his hands - they were out of contract and were only going to sign a new deal if they went up.

A recommendation for those who have used thetrainline.com - don't! Use one of the train operators' websites, it doesn't even have to be one of the operators who are running the trains you're planning on using, but you won't get charged a card handling fee and you'll get exactly the same fares - they use the same data.

Morning all I've been working on getting the live text commentary feature working a bit more reliably, and I think I've pretty much cracked it. Not only will you now get the live text commentary from the Saints game, you'll also get latest scores and commentary from the other games in League One. You can access it at http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/live-scores Once you have loaded the page once, there should be no need to press F5 at all, both the latest scores box and the commentary should automatically update. There may still be a few teething problems when trying to switch between games, which I'll try to iron out during the week, but otherwise it's all good to go. Let me know if there are any major problems. I have noticed that if you are not a full member or are not logged in (i.e. you get adverts) in Google Chrome and anything goes wrong with the adverts, it won't display properly, so if you fall into that category, I suggest you use a different browser to view it until I've fixed the problem.

5-1... ****ing hell Cardiff v QPR tomorrow, if Cardiff fail to win that leaves Norwich with automatic promotion in their own hands. What an unfathomly good job Paul Lambert's done there - I expect most Norwich fans would have been happy with a top half finish after promotion last year. When was the last time a team got automatic promotion from the third to the second to the first tier in successive seasons? I know Watford went up in consecutive years in 98 and 99, but at least one of those promotions was via the playoffs.

I went to the Charlton and Newcastle ones - 5-0 and 4-0 defeats respectively

I'm more surprised that Harding's in there, to be honest. Ultimately, Davis has been in goal for the whole season where we have the second-best defensive record in the division. Expect it was close between Davis and Ankergren in the voting.

A fair point. I guess I'm thinking from a "removal of any lingering doubt" perspective. I had absolutely 100% faith in Markus Liebherr. With his estate in probate, by its very nature, it does bring in an element of uncertainty. We know that the purchase of the club was his decision and his alone, taken using his own money, not that of his wider family, who we assume will be in charge of his estate for the forseeable future. We've heard nothing from them other than via proxy, nor are we likely to, nor do I necessarily want to, but we have no idea as to whether their goals match that of the late Markus - a conversion of that debt, and therefore removal of the potential for them to call the loan in, would be a very strong signal that either their goals do match, or at the very least they're happy and willing to see it through. Before someone () jumps on that statement, I'm not "demanding that the Liebherrs convert the debt to equity because otherwise it definitely shows they're not interested and will strip this club before throwing it to the wolves". Sad state of affairs when I feel the need to add that disclaimer, really

I would counter that you are the one with an "agenda" (as you're so fond of using the word, I'll have a go as well) - strangely, whenever I post something that has the faintest mention of club finances, there you are, having a pop at me. I bet you never even read the original post, saw my name and the word "accounts" and assumed it was having a pop at Cortese. I repeat what I wrote in my last post - I offered absolutely NO opinion on the figures in the original post, or any of the subsequent ones. Yet apparently I have an agenda against Cortese... brilliant You appear to be confusing me with a newspaper. How do I "give them a headline"? I didn't provide a link because a) I know that it costs money to download documents from Companies House (a whole £1 per document) and it would be fair to assume that most people wouldn't bother doing so, and b) I was made aware that the Echo had the figures and were in the process of writing about them. What's the point in me - not a journalist, not paid for writing - doing all the legwork when one or many people at the local paper are going to do exactly the same as part of their job? I wasn't perusing the Companies House website at all - a friend of mine emailed me asking if I'd seen the figures, I'd not even given it a moment's thought. :lol: Yes, because the fans having a negative attitude is my fault Nurse! Yes, but let's face it, that was never going to happen, was it? Again? Last time I checked, we DID go into admin. It would have been one almighty ****up if we managed to get into admin again so soon after the first time - even Pompey haven't managed that one yet. Very much so. Not read ANY of the rest of this thread then? £20.4m is owed to the Liebherr estate, whether you or I like it or not. Personally, I'm actually quite comfortable with it at this stage, although would like that debt to be converted to equity at the soonest available opportunity. I believe most would share that viewpoint, at least in terms of the conversion of the debt. Utter ********. Not once have I "disrespected the dead". The only time I mentioned Cortese was in response to someone who claimed he was earning £650k and I looked to either prove or disprove that claim - as it turns out, it's not far wrong. Once again, utter ********. How about you ACTUALLY READ WHAT I'VE ****ING WRITTEN for once. Stop seeing words and expressions THAT DON'T EXIST. If you have an interest in the club's finances, continue digesting what others are saying. If you don't have an interest in it, which is entirely your prerogative, leave this thread and let those of us who DO want to discuss it do so.

Blackburn and any other two for me - won't be too bothered, it'll still mean profit. Managed to get 8/1 on Blackburn going down the week after they sacked Allardyce.