stevegrant

I'm not convinced it's quite as sinister as that. This season, they have been receiving season ticket funds (paid for by card) from Barclays on a pro-rata basis as each home game is played. That means that a month with only one home game (as they had in December because of the crap weather) leaves them rather short in terms of cashflow. Most clubs' season ticket holders will generally renew at the earliest opportunity in order to make the biggest saving. If Pompey can persuade the vast majority of those to pay by cash or cheque (i.e. methods that see the money go straight into the bank account of PFC Realisations Ltd), they've got all that cash up front and don't have to worry too much about the pro-rata releasing of credit card funds over the course of the season. Of course, this could all backfire horrendously if the fans decide they can't/won't renew with cash or a cheque and will wait for the second sales stage and pay by card. Of course, the card merchant will take a percentage of all transactions anyway...

Usually for away games, the club doesn't have much (if any) control over which tickets you're allocated. The home club will often specify in what order tickets are to be sold/distributed.

I'd never heard of it before, but it seems as though the Football League takes 3% of all gate receipts. Whether it applies across all three FL divisions or not, I don't know, although I would be very surprised if it *only* applied to the Championship.

I don't think people are moaning about the sponsor, per se, more that quotes attributed to the chairman heavily hinted at a household name. As a result, it's understandable that many might be somewhat underwhelmed. Personally, I couldn't give a toss whether it's a big name or not, as long as the deal is bringing the right sort of money into the club.

Interesting line in there: Good to see that they took into account all potential costs when they drew up the season's budget...

I guess it's possible that Barclays (or whoever - think it was Barclays this season) have said they'll only take card payments for season tickets under the same restrictions as this season, i.e. they'll release the money to the club pro-rata. The club have therefore gambled that the majority of STHs will renew in the discounted period, and that if they all pay by cash or cheque, they've got all the money up front rather than having to wait for most of it over the course of the season.

I'd also like to know what this levy payable to the Football League's all about...

I'm most intrigued by the fact that credit card payments WILL be accepted for non-"early bird" ST purchases. Seems very odd.

There are international games on the 26th and 29th, hence the game being called off in the first place...

The proposed academy ruling will never come to fruition. The most interesting thing to come from Late Kickoff tonight was that on the East Anglia version, Dion Dublin claimed that Norwich have agreed a deal of up to £3m for Craig Mackail-Smith, which includes him joining them on loan immediately. If that's true, while I'd be disappointed to have missed out on signing him in the summer, it gives us a massive boost for the rest of this season that the team I see as our main rival for second place have lost their best player.

Thought I'd pick this up again... Since I started the thread, every team's played a further two games. Rochdale lost both, so I've removed them from the list, and replaced them with MK Dons. Brighton, Saints, Peterborough, Huddersfield, Dons and Orient won both games, while Bournemouth lost both. Bournemouth's stumble puts us in second place in terms of results since the new year: Brighton 2.43 (34 from 14) Saints 2.14 (30 from 14) Peterborough 2.13 (32 from 15) Orient 2.07 (29 from 14) Huddersfield 2.06 (31 from 15) Bournemouth 1.94 (31 from 16) Taking those scores and putting them into the remaining games (bear in mind we've got games in hand over everyone except Brighton and Orient, the latter probably only fighting for a playoff spot realistically anyway), the table would finish something like this: Brighton 100 Saints 87 ----------------- Peterborough 85 Huddersfield 83 Bournemouth 80 Leyton Orient 80 ----------------- MK Dons 78

It's on the to-do list, but as it's pretty time-consuming, I'm afraid it's quite low down that list. Depending on which browser you're using, there are ways of turning off images, styles, etc. In Firefox, install the Web Developer Toolbar, and on there there are options to disable CSS (the colour scheme and layout, essentially) and images.

How do you know we "leave all the others alone"? You have no way of knowing whether a user's been given an infraction unless that person reveals it themselves.

Considering your proficient use of the "report post" button, usually because you simply just don't like the person who's posted, I really wouldn't be complaining about people reporting your posts.

Probably because he's the one online when the (countless) reports about your posts flood in.

Us and Colchester are the only two teams not to have lost a game when scoring first. We've won 12 and drawn 3 games (Orient at home, Yeovil and Peterborough away) when doing so. Surely that's a contradiction. Either we remember we're in League One, and therefore accept that we have no divine right to be "walking the league" regardless of resources and adjust our expectations accordingly, or we act the billy big ******** and then whinge that fans of Brighton and Bournemouth don't like us for some unknown reason.

Taking out any emotional attachment to any particular result, particularly thinking about Tuesday's defeat at Walsall, and ignoring the actual "performances" in terms of fluidity, cohesion, consistency, etc, and solely looking at the end results and the points accrued, I'm confused as to why so many people are so concerned about our current situation. Since the new year, we have picked up 24 points from 12 games, an average of 2 points per game - comfortably promotion form, in normal circumstances. The only problem - and it's something almost entirely out of our control - is the form of other teams. Brighton have averaged 2.33 points per game in the same period (albeit only 4 points more in total) and Bournemouth have averaged 2.21ppg. Leeds went up last season with 86 points, but based on form since the new year (at least 12 games), there are SEVEN teams who would end with more than that over an entire season: Brighton 2.33 (28 from 12) Bournemouth 2.21 (31 from 14) Peterborough 2 (26 from 13) Southampton 2 (24 from 12) Huddersfield 1.92 (25 from 13) Leyton Orient 1.92 (23 from 12) Rochdale 1.92 (23 from 12) Ultimately, we can only do what we can. 2 points per game is exactly where we should be aiming at over a long period of time (26 games between 1st January and the end of the season), and that's right where we are at the moment. We can only affect the performance of the other teams when we actually play them. In games against the current top 6, we've taken 11 points from 6 games, so not quite up to the 2pts per game target, but a win at Bournemouth next week would fix that in an instant.

There seems to be no consistency to it, one minute it's lightening quick (like loading this thread just then), the next it'll take 10-15 seconds. Haven't noticed it any slower than that though, and no DB errors, so that's a big step in the right direction.

Carlisle

Currently disabled, it's quite a heavy query to run.

The page load speed has been quite variable during the first half (although found loading the match thread much quicker than loading the main board itself), but the speed has really increased at half-time, strangely, when I'd have expected it to grind to a halt with people posting their half-time views. 418 people online at the moment, by the way (329 logged in). Would expect at least 600 around full-time.

Latest update: We are now running the site on the new server, with the database remaining on the old one. So far, everything looks a lot quicker and smoother, but the real test will be when there are 700-odd people online at full-time this afternoon. I haven't made any config changes to the "web server" bit of the new server yet, so it's possible there may be some further adjustments needed, but it's difficult to test that without actually being in the real life situation of loads of people adding posts to the database. I've tested concurrent users online with decent success, but the process of writing to the database is much more resource-intensive than reading from it. In short, we'll see how we go this afternoon...

I think we're back...