stevegrant

And yet you have a pop at other people for "talking on behalf of others"... the hypocrisy really is astounding.

I genuinely don't see why this is an issue. David Luker, presumably one of his many contacts within the club, would be the first port of call for many on here with ticketing issues. Why wouldn't Nick use what he perceives to be the most efficient way of resolving (or at least getting some sort of explanation for) his problem?

If it had no credibility at all, do you think so many people would have an opinion on it?

Actually, I would say those who can't determine that the actual picture is a shade of grey rather than the black or white they're being fed with are the more "simple and suggestible" ones.

I would assume this is on the basis that the Premier League is a global brand which markets itself worldwide and has the majority of its consumers abroad. It's an angle I hadn't considered before, and worryingly, he may actually have a point... one hell of a can of worms, that one

I've been to pubs, clubs, etc in the past which have seemed great with half a litre of vodka inside me but then turn out to be utter shíte when I'm sober - I'm sure most of us have had similar experiences No argument that it was a shambles, no spirits available at all, seemingly very little beer or cider on draught, and then charging the same amount for a can as they were for a pint of draught earlier was a complete sham. However, while Nick and co were promoters, and will ultimately take responsibility as the "point of sale", I find it difficult to levy blame on him for the venue's inability to have enough stock or staff behind the bar.

If I were you, I wouldn't be getting too cócky about it just yet - there hasn't been a fans forum yet, after all...

Clearly I can't answer as to why they didn't reply, you'd have to ask Nick himself. I think there was an apology of sorts on the UI site, although can fully understand if people thought that wasn't sufficient.

Of course, everything people write on the internet is true, and not part of a macho internet character building exercise From what Nick told me both before and after the event, he and a couple of others were merely acting as promoters for the event. The venue took the majority of the money, with some sort of middleman (presumably this Pompey connection?) taking a cut. Nick then paid commission to the people he had selling tickets. Doesn't seem to leave an awful lot left over, really. As I said to him the day after, it probably wasn't worth the hassle, really. A decent enough idea badly and somewhat naively executed, sadly.

And did he?

Not really, what you're suggesting is that, despite being debt-free (to external finance providers, at least, ML will rightly want a return on his initial investment over time), if ML gets fed up and sells the club, we're up **** creek again. The simple fact is that, unless we go on a Pompey-esque spending bender between now and that point, we wouldn't be.

If ML did take that route and sells up, he's got to find a buyer. Alternatively, he could give it away. Either way, I don't see how that situation would require a "Saints Aid II" that you're suggesting

Yep, if they're too much in the middle-ground all the time then I would assume nobody would buy the paper as it would be a bit boring. I don't think they've been particularly starved of good stories in the last year, the fallout from the takeover and Wembley events alone probably filled a month's worth of copy between them. They've also had plenty of ammunition to print a hell of a lot more negative stories than they have done - obviously there was the Pardew situation at the end of the season which ran for a while, but aside from the Echo ban, that's the only negative story they've run with as far as I can remember.

That's not quite true when you look at more local media stories, particularly sport-related ones. Certainly in the nationals, scandal sells many more copies, but at a local level, success sells more. I would imagine the editions featuring the Liebherr takeover and the Wembley win were the Echo's biggest-selling editions in the last year or so, by some distance.

Without wishing to fight Stu's corner (or anyone else's for that matter), I'm pretty sure he said at the time (and has repeated enough times since) that he had 15 peoples' season tickets and therefore got two each, as every season ticket holder was entitled to...

Well they should concentrate on releasing a product that is as bug-free as is practical on the day of launch, like every other software house, first and foremost. While I appreciate the relatively time-sensitive nature of this particular game, any other product's release would be held back until it was actually ready. The next one's called Football Manager 2011, so what's the big deal with actually releasing it in 2011 if it enables the developers enough time to iron out all the problems? And then, even if it's essentially last year's game with updated data, but near-enough bug-free, they'll still shift enough copies just on the strength of the brand name alone. They don't tend to implement a "big" new feature every year anyway, the 3D match engine probably took at least 3 or 4 years of development in a separate project before it was even put forward as a new feature for FM09, so they don't need to concentrate on a "headline" new feature, just get the game working out of the box.

They've always done so before with no issue... why not now?

Ignoring the bug that made FM10 unplayable then, I take it? Knowing how software is developed, I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of code for FM is re-used (or tweaked at the most) year after year. They are not rewriting an entire game from scratch every year. As a result, the actual development time should be fairly minimal - or at least it would be if the legacy code actually worked in the first place, hence they probably spend a large amount of time each year fixing the bugs that went into the last release, and then don't have time to write the new stuff, test those bits individually and then test everything together. As for SI employing a large number of internal and external testers, that doesn't mean a great deal unless those testers know what they're looking for. How many people do you reckon apply to beta test FM solely on the basis that they'll get to play it before anyone else does? The answer = ****ing loads. That's why they have to employ so many, because it's impossible to tell which ones know how to test a game properly.

Of course most games have bugs, but most games also have a full QC testing cycle rather than relying on its customer base to provide bug reports after the product has already been released. Memory leak using the 3D match engine on OS X. 3 games in, the game crashes. And don't say "don't use the 3D match engine then", as that's one of the main features of the game

Early in September, I think Radio Solent said a while back...

Not that I'm aware of, I haven't been on there for ages though. I was having a decent discussion with a couple of people on there a while back and then a few of the resident mongs waded in and I got bored of it all.

Not true They could remain in administration for the whole of this season if necessary without any penalties from the Football League.

Except for lots of bugs.

:vuvu:

Sheffield Wednesday issued with a winding up order by HMRC...