stevegrant

In order of MOST EXPENSIVE ticket (this doesn't include tickets which appear to be "cheap" corporate tickets - Ipswich in particular offer matchday prices of up to about £50, but I wouldn't say they were "normal" tickets, personally): Crystal Palace £25-35 (depending on opposition) QPR £20-35 (this is only Category C, which are the only prices visible on their website, but currently every upcoming game, which includes "big" games against the likes of Birmingham and Cardiff, is a Cat C game) Ipswich Town £24-33.50 (+£2.50 for buying on the day) Derby County £22-33 (+£3 for buying on the day) Wolves £24-30 Watford £23-30 (+£2-5 for buying on the day) Nottingham Forest £20-30 Cardiff City £18-30 (+£0-3 for buying on the day) Charlton Athletic £15-30 Norwich City £14-30 (Cat A* to B and "Saver" Category) Sheffield United £10-30 (Cat A* to C) Blackpool £23-29 (+£1 for non-members buying on the day) Bristol City £26-28 (+£2 for non-members) Sheffield Wednesday £23-28 (+£1 for buying on the day) Preston North End £20-27 Birmingham City £18-27 (although they do have a deal for the upcoming Palace game - midweek - for £15, but this is out of their normal price scheme) SAINTS £24-26 Reading £23-26 (+£4 for buying on the day) Coventry City £22-25 Plymouth Argyle £20-24 (+£2 for buying on the day) Swansea City £20-23 Burnley £19-23 Doncaster Rovers £15-23 Barnsley £20-22 which actually puts us among the cheapest. However, many of the other clubs have different categories for different quality/attraction of opposition, which could make at least parts of their grounds cheaper than us.

As you say, not a great deal of difference in terms of VAT: £24 tickets - non-VAT revenue of £20.43 £20 tickets - non-VAT revenue of £17.02 The bank may not have been mentioned in Nick's interview with David Luker, but I would have thought it's fairly obvious that the bank would look negatively on any move that would be perceived as gambling what is effectively their money.

There is no guarantee that lowering prices will automatically equal higher gates and more revenue for the club. For ease of demonstration, let's say the £24 adult ticket price applicable in most areas of the ground is the average ticket price throughout the whole stadium. At the moment, we're getting gates of around 15,000, which basically equates to about 6,000 matchday tickets sold. At the average price of £24, that means matchday ticket revenue of £144,000. If the ticket prices were reduced so the average price was then £20, great, particularly for those who would have gone to the game anyway. But it's not those the club are looking to appeal to, it's those that wouldn't have gone at £24. The club simply do not know how many of the stayaway fans are doing so purely because of the ticket price. There are so many different reasons why people might be staying away right now. It's entirely possible that they don't manage to entice any extra supporters back, and that then means that the club has lost £4 for every matchday sale, which would be £24k per match, nearly half a million quid over the course of the rest of the season. Even if they do entice more people in with the lower ticket price, they a) might not get enough to cover the shortfall created with the reduced price (they would need an extra 1200 fans per match to ensure they bring in the same revenue as with £24 tickets), and b) might **** off a number of existing season ticket holders as one of the main benefits of the season ticket is the financial saving you make over the course of the season, and reducing prices also reduces the saving STH's make. Without some sort of guarantee that reducing prices would bring in enough people to increase overall matchday revenue, there's not a cat in hell's chance the bank (who are basically running the club these days) would sanction any price reduction.

It's at Fleming Park, as usual. Latest squad list: Steve Grant Scott Griffin Rob Healey Chris Summers Jouls Ganley Andy Mintram Ben Rankin Luke Yeates Opkar Neil Cant Dan Kerins

I think each team plays each other home and away now

7/10 for me

There are loads of factors, each of which is a "main" reason for a group of people. Add those groups together and you get a much larger group of people each doing the same thing but for a different reason. The club have got a hell of a lot of work on their hands if they're to get most, if not all, of those people back.

Yep.

As much as I dislike Lampard and think he's generally been awful for England over the past 4 years, he did have a decent game against Croatia when Gerrard was absent, so I think Capello will have some justification in choosing the fat one ahead of the Scouser tonight.

I'm not convinced that too many season ticket holders would be ****ed off at a reduction in matchday prices. After all, even if they went down from £24 to £20, the season ticket holder is still only paying £16 per game, so they're still saving 20%. I'm also far from convinced that enough people would return in the short-term to make such a reduction worthwhile, and it is short-term cashflow that is the immediate problem. As an example, say the club needs to generate £200k in non season ticket holder sales per match to hit an arbitrary budget agreed with the bank. At £24 (and I appreciate there are many cheaper tickets but I'm trying to keep the calculations simple), that's 8,333 matchday sales required. If the prices dropped to £20, they'd then need to generate 10,000 matchday sales (1,667 more) to hit budget. If that price still fails to attract more people to games, all the club has then succeeded in doing is making it cheaper for the matchday buyers they've already got, and the club has then ****ed £33k per match down the drain, which works out at more than £500k over the course of the remaining 18 home league games this season. Having seen the club gamble on reducing prices at the start of last season (sales volume was up, but revenue actually decreased as a result), I'd say the bank are incredibly unlikely to sanction such a move again, unless of course somebody was willing to underwrite any potential loss from it.

Gerrard will probably be dropped. I'd expect England to line up as follows: James Brown - Ferdinand - Upson - Bridge Walcott - Lampard - Barry - Wright-Phillips Rooney Heskey

Seems they've done away with the regional draw for next year and it's completely random, which is good for us given the presence of the likes of Sussex, Kent and Essex in relatively close proximity. We're in group A, along with Ireland, Nottinghamshire, Worcestershire and Leicestershire. Top 2 qualify for the quarter-finals, and with that opposition I'd expect us to get through. Full draw: Group A: Ireland, Hampshire, Nottinghamshire, Worcestershire, Leicestershire Group B: Scotland, Warwickshire, Kent, Somerset, Middlesex Group C: Surrey, Durham, Gloucestershire, Yorkshire, Sussex Group D: Essex, Glamorgan, Lancashire, Derbyshire, Northamptonshire

Don't suppose anybody's got a link to that article? That's probably a fair assumption. Not sure I entirely agree with that, although it's certainly much more likely with the crap attendance figures we've been getting so far this season. A bit harsh to pin it all on Wilde given that all three of the main shareholders made it pretty clear that they were against it. Quite possibly the only time the three of them have been singing from the same hymn sheet. If it had happened a few more times over the last 3 years, perhaps we wouldn't be in such a mess... I would be very interested to know, given that they apparently received a private response from SISU answering their questions, what was in those answers that ensured they maintained their "against" stance.

I'm not convinced being a PLC is either an advantage or a disadvantage in terms of prospective buyers knowing the full financial picture. Any buyer worth their salt would insist on carrying out full due dilligence on the accounts regardless of whether there were publicly available summaries or not, and at the end of said period of due dilligence they would (should) have a clear picture of how the finances stack up, again regardless of whether the bottom-line figures are public knowledge or not. In terms of the Premier League broadcasting revenue, I'm not convinced that's going to be affected by the "credit crunch". Viewing figures abroad are increasing at a ridiculous rate and there are likely to be more than just Sky and Setanta bidding for the next domestic contract when it all begins again early next year. The likes of BT Vision and ESPN are likely to want to get a piece of the action, and, in much the same way as Setanta have done, they are likely to use the Premier League rights as a loss-leader in terms of getting subscribers on board which can then lead to other revenue streams. While Sky's profits fell from £750m or so to £60m last year, there's not a cat in hell's chance that they won't do all they can to keep what is basically their flagship. If Sky didn't have the majority of the exclusive Premier League coverage, I think their business model would start to fall apart.

As far as I am led to believe, they did respond privately to the public questions raised by Wilde, Lowe and Crouch. If they never had any intention of taking us over, they wouldn't have gone to the trouble and expense of making an indicative offer.

Unfortunately, bad news is (on the whole) much more newsworthy than good news.

Except for last season and at WorldNet... Squad at the moment: Steve Grant Scott Griffin Rob Healey Chris Summers Jouls Ganley Andy Mintram Mike Florit Ben Rankin Luke Yeates So needless to say, we could do with a few more players. Not heard back from Cooper so we don't have a keeper yet.

Meh. Exhibit A

A hedgehog.

Football365's Mediawatch section noticed that strange bit of history re-writing today as well. I'd say I'm surprised, but given that he's probably still banging the "I took over Pompey when they were fourth from bottom and kept them up" drum (despite the fact that they were actually 16th when he took over and they ended closer to the bottom 3 that season than when he took over), that would clearly be a lie.

Does Mrs Darling know about this? :smt050

You might be right there, I wasn't aware there was any sort of limit or restriction on when the CCA applied.

Am I right in saying that the bailout is basically a complicated loan agreement between the Treasury and the banks, whereby the banks will have to pay the money back when they have recovered sufficiently? If so, the actual exposure to the taxpayer should, assuming the financial sector does recover sufficiently, actually be nil in the long-term and in fact may even generate a profit for the Treasury. Pretty sure that's the plan in the US bailout anyway, I noticed both Bush and Obama have made comments along the lines of they hope it'll actually turn a profit eventually rather than costing the countrry anything.

No real surprise there - it is called "retail banking" for a reason

But in the banking world, it's entirely possible that a transaction may make the company £x million over the current financial period, but then cost the company ten times that amount in the future. That is why so much of a fuss is being made about banker bonuses, because they gambled on the sub-prime market remaining relatively stable for long enough that they would qualify for a bonus big enough to retire on safe in the knowledge that they wouldn't have to face the pressure of recovering the situation when it all went tits-up.