stevegrant

Away draw preferable, against the following: 1. Pompey 2. Eastleigh 3. Bradford, Newport, Grimsby/Shrewsbury, Bury, Whitehawk (think they'll beat Dagenham in the replay), Oxford - in no particular order of preference.

It literally doesn't matter, you're being deliberately obtuse for the sake of it. MLG would be proud

I call the fouls VectisSaint is referring to as "taking one for the team" fouls - you know you're not catching him, but he's in a non-dangerous position so just wipe him out, take the inevitable booking and get back goal-side. The meaning of the term "professional foul" has evolved over the years, pretty much ever since those words were removed from the Laws of the Game around 15 years ago - it's pretty common for "taking one for the team" fouls to be described as "professional" fouls now - it is a foul that has roots in "game management", giving away free kicks in non-threatening positions to waste time and to allow your team to retreat to a proper defensive setup.

He'd have done well to give Costa a penalty, considering he was suspended for our game there.

Ouch

Andre Marriner

Presumably because our centre forward was still being held back 25 yards from goal so couldn't get on the end of it.

To be fair, I think the Premier League hype machine would have been stretching the realms of reality by calling our game against Stoke one of "the big games"

He knew exactly what sort of response he'd get, which is why he posted it in the first place.

I suspect it's more a case of the users of the scanners being simpletons rather than the scanners themselves being faulty - literally the only problems I've ever seen getting into the Northam is people who have print-at-home tickets who haven't folded their bit of paper so the barcode fits in the slot. Nobody else seems to have any problem at all.

I assume it's intentionally vague under a fairly catch-all banner of (in their opinion) "being a ****". There are a couple of things the club needs to do themselves, in addition to fans helping them out - firstly, they need to stop allowing away fans in the corporate boxes at the Northam end of the Itchen stand, as this is only likely to exacerbate any tension in that part of the ground; secondly, as mentioned above, while people shouldn't be bringing banned items into the ground, the club employs staff to prevent people doing so, and they're clearly failing.

Surely the fact a smoke bomb was able to be thrown onto the pitch at the Bournemouth game suggests the club's search and security procedures need improving as well as sending a written lecture to fans, most of whom won't have been involved.

A minute's silence is an appropriate means of remembrance. They played the French national anthem at Wembley on Tuesday because, I don't know if you remember, WE WERE PLAYING FRANCE. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have played it - and suggested people sing along - had we been playing Germany this week instead. This smacks of the PL thinking "****, the FA have done something pretty spectacular there, we need to do something different to the usual so we're not perceived to be less compassionate". We're not playing France, we've never even played OUR OWN national anthem at league games before. Why not go the whole hog and move all of this weekend's PL games to Paris?

There's definitely only one of those available, as a mate of mine's son (who was a ballboy at that Newcastle v Saints game) got one from Davis that night after he hit him with a stray shot in the warm-up

Just checked back, so was mine. It's usually £1 a ticket online, though. Perhaps they forgot to add it, that's happened a few times before.

And they're complaining despite being "stuck" in a holiday resort with lovely weather all expenses paid by the government. It could be a hell of a lot worse...

Is van Gaal going back to Bayern Munich in the summer when Guardiola leaves, then?

The aisle between blocks 40 and 41 is literally full of people for the entire duration of injury time, that must be at least 100 people just stood in the aisle not going anywhere. They are in absolutely no rush to go anywhere at any point. If they were that bothered about getting out first, they'd either move their season ticket nearer to the front (plenty available down there) or squeeze in next to someone near the exit - that way, they actually do make a quick getaway.

My take on it is that if you want to leave early, fine, but just get on with it. The thing that REALLY ****es me off these days is the number of people who "leave" (i.e. go from their seats) and then stand in the aisle all the way down the stand because, actually, they weren't leaving at all, they just wanted to move nearer the exit, and then you're getting in people's way.

Correct. Newcastle (away) -2 Everton (home) -3 Watford (away) +1 - 2nd place in Championship swapped with 2nd relegated team, Burnley Norwich (home) 0 - playoff winner swapped with 3rd relegated team, QPR West Brom (away) +1 Man United (home) 0 Swansea (home) +3 Chelsea (away) +2 Leicester (home) -2 Liverpool (away) +1 Bournemouth (home) 0 - 1st place in Championship swapped with 1st relegated team, Hull Sunderland (away) +3

It's £1 per ticket online.

Brits abroad making ****s of themselves? A novel concept...

As a guide, my season ticket was £628. Buying my seat on a match-by-match basis would cost: 8 Category A games @ £42 each = £336 3 Category B games @ £39 each = £117 8 Category C games @ £34 each = £272 Total: £725, £97 more than the season ticket. Assume that I buy online for convenience, which means a £1 per ticket transaction fee as well, so that's £116 more than my season ticket. It's effectively only those three Category B games that I get "free" with my season ticket. Fortunately, Watford is the only (currently) scheduled midweek home game, but we've got to have at least one game switched to a Monday night at some point this season, although that game might not be at home. The ticket exchange is only available when a game has sold out in advance - I think it's only been used for the Leicester game so far, which sold out at least a week ahead of the game. The pricing - along with a large number of Sunday games so far - has, IMO, shown the perfect balance between supply, demand and cost. I wouldn't be particularly happy paying £42 for an individual home game, but the attendances and the point at which games have sold out suggests they've got it spot on from a maximising revenue and minimising disappointment perspective.

Those games would more than likely have sold out to season ticket holders with plenty of aways anyway, so they probably won't even get down to members.