stevegrant

Particularly weird as, for the most part, under Hasenhüttl we've been a decent enough watch, and yet last season when we genuinely were an absolute eyesore, we were televised 16 times - more than we had the season we finished 6th

Yep, that's the only distinction.

Tickets don't have names on, so you'll be fine.

Tickets now on sale to Travel Club members, who get a £5 discount on the normal prices. Members of the England Supporters Club (the free one - registrations still open) get an exclusive window from Monday lunchtime until Friday, when general sale starts if there are any tickets remaining. TICKET LINK HERE

It's more the brazen nature of it all, the fact that Liverpool felt so sure of themselves that they leaked the Blackpool meet-up to the papers thinking it would actually accelerate the process. We were absolutely right to dig in, and we should have taken it further. Liverpool were already under a transfer/registration ban for youth players because they'd been found guilty of tapping up some 14-year-old at Stoke and offering inducements to his parents. If they'd actually been taken to a disciplinary hearing I think it's pretty likely they'd have got a similar punishment for senior players too, the PL and/or FA would have had to do something over such a publicly-conducted situation. Players talk to other clubs all the time, it's a fact. I'm absolutely certain we do it as well, but the vast majority of the time the conversations are had between the club and the player's agent, who will then report back to the player - that maintains a degree of plausible deniability.

There is, and always will be, an unconscious bias towards bigger clubs. They have bigger stadia, more fans, more money, and therefore can afford to buy the best players. As a result, there is a natural thought process that, as they can afford to pay bigger salaries and transfer fees to own those better players, their weaker opponents will be a fraction of a second slower to the ball more often than not, challenges by defenders at bigger clubs will be fractionally better timed than their lesser counterparts, etc, even if in reality that is not the case. They get more penalties and decisions around the opposition penalty area because, in general, they spend more time there than lesser opponents, but it's also pretty clear that they benefit from a pretty significant "benefit of the doubt" in many situations. VAR will counter some of those, but it won't counter ALL of them. The bloke sat in the studio watching the video replays will be clouded by the same unconscious bias - the only thing he won't have is senior pros at those bigger clubs constantly in his ear, which lead to those decisions in relatively harmless areas of the pitch that don't appear to have any great consequence to them but add up to a lot of frustration. I don't think referees are consciously corrupt, but having a pally relationship with certain players at certain clubs really doesn't help their own cause in other people's eyes. This concept of "managing the game" needs to be binned off as well - their job is to apply the laws of the game, if the players aren't capable of playing within that framework then the referee should use the processes available to him (i.e. yellow and red cards). It should not be the referee's job to ensure teams keep 11 men on the pitch, it is the players' responsibility themselves.

Not sure he even goes to England games anymore, haven't seen him at Wembley since the Scotland game when Lambert scored with his first touch on his debut - used to be able to guarantee hearing that ****ing bell at every game. He was seething on his stumble back to Wembley Park tube station after that game :lol:

Usually a guaranteed win for us, tbf. They were on my spreadsheet, in Category B, I just didn't copy them across

The overall "value" will depend on how many games are allocated to each category. The prices for A* and A are mental. The Category B and C prices are what most games should be priced at. I'm not sure how the numbers stack up in terms of what the club claims you can save by having a season ticket - they claim that an adult will save on average £250 (more than £360 in premium areas), so if we assume that the "goals/wings" blocks are essentially the "average" price, with an adult renewal coming in at £530, that means we need to find total matchday pricing of £780. That's quite difficult without there being either very few Category C games, more Category A* and A games, or a combination of the two. With the Championship playoff winner still unknown, we won't know exactly who we're playing next season for a few weeks yet, and there's probably a range of categories they'd fall under - you'd expect Leeds and Villa to be in a much higher category than West Brom, Derby, Middlesbrough or Bristol City. For the sake of argument, we'll put all three promoted teams into Category C, but this is likely to change with the aforementioned playoffs and when the fixtures are released. There's no way that the final game of the season will be Category C, for example, and the club surely won't luck out with having some of the least attractive games played midweek again, as was the case with Palace and Fulham. So, assumption time, based on attractiveness of opposition: Category A* (£50): Man City, Man United, Liverpool Category A (£40): Chelsea, Arsenal, Tottenham Category B (£35): Bournemouth, Brighton, Crystal Palace, Leicester, Newcastle, West Ham, Wolves Category C (£25): Burnley, Norwich, Sheffield United, Watford, Playoff Winner The total matchday price in the wings/goals for that arrangement is only £680, £100 short of the "average saving" the club is claiming, so obviously we're going to have to shift a few teams around. Perhaps they deem the Bournemouth game as a bigger game, so bump that up into Category A. That's only £5 extra. Maybe Watford aren't unattractive enough to be Category C, so let's move them up. Another £10. Let's assume Leeds win the playoffs (given their abysmal playoff record, that's highly unlikely, but whatever...), they'd probably go straight into Category A, so that's another £15. I hope they're not looking at "big away following" as a metric to decide what category each game fits into, considering they'll all be paying £30 (or £25 for Cat C) regardless, so that means the likes of Newcastle, West Ham and Wolves wouldn't automatically be more attractive. Maybe Brighton goes up one, and then Spurs get bumped into A*, so that's another £15. So we've already moved 5 teams up a category, but only saved season ticket holders another £45 - still £55 short of what the club claims! Let's look at the premium prices instead, where they claim "value extending to over £360 in premium areas". So a season ticket in the Itchen Premium is £759 for renewals, which means we need to find matchday pricing of at least £1,119. Using the same original category placement as above, that comes to £1,030 - £90 short. Making the changes as detailed, that alters to £1,085, still £35 short! So despite the extra categories, it seems as if matchday prices must be skewed pretty heavily towards the top categories, because otherwise the savings that the club claim fans would make by buying a season ticket just aren't accurate.

Think you can buy up to 4 (for some games at Wembley it's been 8 ) in a single transaction, but you need to assign an individual to a ticket (you'll need their FAN number and date of birth to do so)

Nope. There are around 11,000 members of the travel club, but it's probably fair to say that not all of them will take up their allocation - away games haven't tended to be oversubscribed that often in recent years, so going to all the home games hasn't been quite as important as it used to be. There are then nearly 800,000 "members" of the free England Supporters Club, who get second dibs on tickets. I have no idea if they'll hold any tickets back for general sale, so I would recommend anyone who is intending to try to get tickets for this game does so by registering for the England Supporters Club. You will only be able to get one ticket per registered member.

Nah, losing in the semi-final would be more amusing, as they wouldn't even get the "big day out" at Wembley.

We'll get at least a full season out of him. Ultimately, if he succeeds with us next season (definition of "success" is debatable, obviously), then bigger clubs will take notice and may be looking at him. If that happens, I'm sure he'll move on. Infinitely better to have other clubs interested in your players and management because it shows that you're doing well, rather than the last couple of years where nobody's been remotely interested because we've been crap.

Well that escalated quickly Extraordinary innings by Vince, and we added 114 in the last ten overs.

Some pretty damning statistics which may shape some of Ralph's priorities over the summer: 25 points dropped from winning positions this season (by contrast, we have earned 4 points from losing positions - Palace and Spurs at home) 14 goals conceded in the last 10 minutes of games (5 goals scored) 15 points dropped as a direct result of those late goals (4 points earned, Arsenal and Spurs at home) You're never going to be able to completely eradicate those stats, because there's always another team on the pitch, but if we can halve those numbers (rounding down for argument's sake), 12 extra points would see us 9th in terms of the raw numbers, and possibly higher because 4 of the 25 have been dropped against Watford in 7th.

We have already exhausted our supply of slow cumbersome centre halves, thanks. Dunk and Duffy are getting praise now because Hughton's decided to go back to boring the living **** out of everybody in order to try to get the 0-0 draws they think will keep them in the league this season, and plonked all 5 midfielders directly in front of them, so all they'd have to do is head crosses away. It was only a week ago when they'd been torn a new arsehole in consecutive home games by us, Bournemouth and Cardiff. Defenders who have high "throwing yourself in harm's way" and tackling stats aren't good defenders. They only make those challenges because they were so far out of position in the first place. That's why the likes of (ugh) van Dijk are so good, because they read the game so well and are always in the right place to intercept rather than rely on desperation.

Saints - 44 points (13th) Relegated - Brighton 34pts (although that'll change if they bin Hughton at any point before their last three games) Champions - Man City Other two CL spots - Arsenal, Man United Automatic Promotion - Norwich, Leeds Playoff Winner - West Brom FA Cup - Man City Champions League - Spurs v Barcelona, Barcelona to win Europa League - Chelsea Pompey - 4th place, lose playoff semi-final

Literally copy and pasted the address above...

Sounds like a pretty flat deck this time. New ball due fairly soon, so hopefully we can get something with that, otherwise Root and Ballance could bat for ****ing ages.

Have emailed

Yes, but those season tickets are only available if you phone up or go to the ticket office in person.

Afraid so

I have an over-65 ticket available. Don't know how strict they'll be on the turnstile validating whether you actually are over 65...

This is mostly true, I think, albeit with a few obvious caveats that there is still a line that most people will set for themselves in terms of either what they can afford or what they are willing to pay. If I remember rightly, this season's prices aren't even the most expensive we've had since we came back up - there was definitely a reduction of around £70 or so a few years back when the £30 away price cap was first introduced, with the club proudly claiming they wanted to ensure that home fans were paying the same as away fans in the same stand (and then two weeks later it was announced that our club sponsor was going to subsidise those away tickets down to £20 so in actual fact, we were paying 50% more than the away fans stood to our left). To be honest, I do share the cynicism of ErwinK1961 above that this new £399 ticket seems to be a double-play by the club to: a) fill seats that have often been empty so show up on TV; b) move themselves up/down the various "Price of Football" surveys that get released every year. Manchester City did something similar a few years ago, they have a section of around 500 seats where season tickets are around £300, and that price gets quoted in the press. As I said a couple of days ago, they could easily have reduced the prices across the board by a more significant figure and recouped most of the money back in extra catering and merchandise sales. With the "new applicant" prices remaining pretty much the same as this season (as far as I can tell), I don't see them picking up many extra new season ticket holders from those prices. As long as you've got a purchase history from the last year or so, it's easy enough to get tickets for pretty much any home game.