stevegrant

I think he's coaching at Skonto these days.

I've just tried it online and the charge is now applied as soon as you add any tickets to your basket, so I would assume it was just a mistake which led some people to being able to buy online without the fee.

That's the thing that baffles me, the club have brought in the matchday surcharge to encourage people to buy in advance, but then bring in the booking fees that mean in many cases it's cheaper for people to take their chance with a big queue before the game than to buy in advance online where it's more convenient for everyone.

I must be missing the point here, but where has anyone complained at the season ticket pricing structure?

But he's not said "Markus has funded our spending this season, we're still a loss-making business". He's said that Markus has allotted funds for this "5-year plan" (let's not forget, certain people on here were adamant that there was no such plan not too long ago), which obviously implies that there is a pot of money that is available - I don't dispute that - but I would imagine that money won't be used while they can run the club self-sufficiently in League One. They'll have to spend more on players in the Championship, so that'll be when that fund comes into play, IMO.

That doesn't mean he's funding us right here, right now. With a midtable Championship wage bill, but a high-end Championship revenue stream (based on the attendances), even with the transfer outlay last season, we should still have been breaking even - particularly with nearly £1m made from the JPT final alone. Once we get into the Championship, that is when this "fund" might be required, as the transfer spending will have to be a bit more substantial.

I'd agree, but it seems the club doesn't, for whatever reason. I would think it's pretty unlikely that we'll be getting any big name club coming here on the 24th for a TBT game now, mainly as all the top clubs will have had their pre-season schedules packed weeks or even months in advance, which is a great pity from an anniversary-celebration perspective, and also I personally like seeing us tested against the top clubs in Europe, even if they do ultimately end up winning comfortably. We gave Ajax a very good game for 45 minutes last year. The only time we've been completely taken apart was against Lazio. Off the top of my head: Jan 2004: Bayern Munich D 1-1 Jul 2004: Chievo W 3-1 Jul 2005: Anderlecht W 3-2 Jul 2006: Panathinaikos D 1-1 Jul 2007: Lazio L 1-5 Jul 2008: West Ham D 2-2 Jul 2009: Ajax L 1-4

FA Cup weekend. In League One, we don't get a break for international games.

In contradiction to the evidence placed in front of them, the payment plan situation being one. The main one, though, is the Pardew job security issue, but I'm not willing to expand on that for various reasons.

Not really, but they've been doing so without it sounding true for months, so they might as well at least make a token effort once in a while.

It was the Monday after the weekend of the 4th round (we'd entered the competition in the 3rd round) when we played Bayern Munich in the first TBT game. Bayern were on a winter break at the time.

I'm sure they could come out with something credible. After all, even stuff that's barely credible gets swallowed whole by many on here. Something like "Alan Pardew feels that a game against top European opposition would not provide the right style of opposition to enable the team to gel and hit the ground running in League One this season". Again, they could use the Reading game as the TBT game, there's nothing to say that they have to have Champions League opposition for it. Didn't we play West Ham in a TBT game a couple of years ago?

Introduction of pay-and-display parking in the stadium car parks (seemingly 7 days a week) as well as an increase in the price for the "satellite" car parks on matchdays.

It's scheduled for "early September", according to Solent's Twitter feed a while ago. Watch this space, I guess.

Well the wall of silence from the club is hardly helping to get rid of the speculation, and with only three weeks before the only remaining free Saturday in the pre-season calendar, if there is going to be a TBT game, they're leaving it pretty late to organise and sell tickets for. If, as the case may be, it's because Pardew doesn't want us playing top European opposition for fear of getting spanked (I would argue that it's a good test, and that the players naturally raise their game against quality opposition, as they did against Ajax last season before running out of steam in the second half) then fine, but why not come out and say so? And as Saint_clark says, why not then use the Reading game as the TBT game? Barely any additional effort needs to go into it as the game's already been arranged.

From what I can tell, the car parks at St Mary's are pretty much exclusively used by staff, corporate customers, guests and disabled badge holders on matchdays, and they're usually full or not far off being full.

Christ. I said to someone about six weeks ago or so as a joke that the next thing they'll do is bring in pay-and-display in the car park so they're getting extra money from you even when you go to the ticket office in person. I didn't think they'd actually do it

The two mentioned doctors are Dr Richard Peace and Dr Greg Warner, who are both partners in Nightingale Surgery in Romsey. Both are avid Saints fans, Warner (and his wife, also a GP at the same surgery) regularly goes to games home and away. As the article above mentions, the money a football club would pay a club doctor would not make it worthwhile (or even viable, possibly) financially for them to ditch their GP work to go full-time for the football club, hence why they've presumably had difficulty finding someone else to fulfill that role. I've no issue with the club wanting to find someone full-time, but you'd have thought they'd have found someone before ditching the current part-time doctors - assuming that has actually happened, of course. The part-time arrangement didn't seem to do us any harm when we were in the Premier League, and I would imagine the medical support staff at the club would take care of most of the health-related tasks.

Portadown were 1-0 up until the 92nd minute as well

Er... http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/n/norwich/8754639.stm

Not harsh that Xabi Alonso's one was retaken at all, there were at least 3 Spain players well inside the area when the kick was taken. Paraguay's one should probably have been retaken as well for the same reason, so while Spain got away with it on Cardozo's one, they didn't the second time. The keeper's challenge on Fabregas from the rebound was also a blatant penalty

To clarify, ALL predictions should have the Saints score first, regardless of whether we're home or away. I have emphasised this on the "My Predictions" page as it wasn't clear. Ponty, the reason I've done it the way it now appears (i.e. you submit one result at a time) is to avoid the situation we had last season where you might only predict one actual score, but the rest would be entered as a default 0-0, meaning if we ever did draw a game 0-0, those who couldn't be arsed to actually make a prediction ended up with full marks This way, if you don't predict a result for a game, you won't score any points.

I don't see the big deal about the handball really, I'd expect any player to do the same in that situation... last minute of extra time in a world cup quarter-final, if it goes in, you're out, if you keep it out with your hands at least the keeper's got a chance of saving the penalty and keeping you in the competition.

The stupid thing about the handball is that he could probably have just headed it off the line Cost me loads of fantasy league points, -1 for conceding the penalty, -3 for the red card. I did get a surprise bonus though, +1 for a save

Apple are now saying that the signal fault that people have been experiencing isn't a fundamental flaw in the design of the phone itself after all (despite Apple saying last week that you could buy a case for £££ that would fix it ), it's actually a ****up in the algorithm used to calculate the signal strength. Er, yeah, ok, so something that's worked in every previous version is now suddenly broken. Forgive me for not being convinced.