stevegrant

By their very nature, members are going to be those who are unable - for whatever reason - to get a season ticket and attend every home game. As a result, they're not all going to be buying for every home game, so of course it makes sense to sell more than there are tickets available for any one game if they can do so. There are literally no words in the membership terms and conditions that state that buying a membership guarantees a ticket for a particular game. The only way to guarantee that is to buy a season ticket.

Unfortunately, that is no longer the case. One of the things that came from the creation of the "elite" list of referees who would be full-time professionals is that the Premier League is able to effectively tell them how to referee instead of the FA, FIFA or IFAB (the committee that effectively "sets" the laws of the game). A few years ago, a pre-season briefing from the PL to PGMOL (the organisation that runs the professional referees in this country) said that too many top players were getting themselves sent off because the referees were applying the laws too literally, and that referees needed to do as much as they could to ensure the spectacle of games weren't ruined by top talent missing games through suspension or having taken an early bath.

It also didn't always serve as an advantage to the team with the free kick. If the original foul was 30 yards from goal, it gave the attacking team a genuine shooting opportunity as there's space for the kicker to get the ball over the wall and back down again the other side, whereas the defending team knew that if they delayed the taking of the kick, they'd take a booking and the ball would be marched 10 yards closer to goal, giving the kicker only one half of the goal to realistically aim at.

Sold out. No idea if they'll be getting any more in.

I think Fox's less-than-enthusiastic attitude towards it is probably a combination of having not paid very much for the rights in the first place, and the resulting viewing figures being largely rubbish. In fact, for the first five "gameweeks" this season, they averaged just 42,000 viewers per match. That's fewer viewers than can fit in more than half of the stadia in the Bundesliga, from a country home to more than 300 million people. Whether those viewing figures are caused by the league not being that attractive to Americans or Fox not pushing their coverage very well is open to debate - suspect there's a bit of both - but having PL games on NBC at more or less the same time just kills it. I saw last night that so far on NBC, our games alone have attracted average viewing figures of more than half a million people, and we have the 4th-highest average (we were second before the last round of games!)

I don't necessarily think that by reducing ticket prices you would automatically see an improvement in the atmosphere at games. You only have to look at the Villa game as an example - £12 a ticket and the atmosphere was crap. There needs to be a willingness among those who do end up in the stands to do something.

The Bundesliga is currently pulling in €628m a year, which is around £450m. That will rise to around €800m from next season (£570m). Meanwhile, the PL figures are currently £1.8bn a year (£1.06bn from the domestic rights, the rest from overseas), with the new domestic deal more or less the same as the combined total from the current deal. Taking Swiss Ramble's very conservative estimate of a 30% increase in overseas rights (domestic increased by around 70%), that takes the annual total to £2.8bn, nearly five times larger than the Bundesliga's income.

And that's a conservative estimate, based on the value of the overseas broadcasting contracts only increasing by 30% - the domestic one has increased by 70% starting next summer, and the overseas ones have generally increased at a faster rate than the domestic ones in recent years.

Pretty much exactly this. £4m just happened to also be the figure Bournemouth required to fit within the acceptable losses in the Football League's FFP rules that season...

I'm sure I read years ago that AC Milan refused to sign a player on the strength of a dental assessment, as they felt he would be highly susceptible to injuries.

On that basis, I assume you think Fonte was crap last season then?

As mentioned, you said we have a weaker squad than last year, and yet you have only compared our first team. Yes, our first-choice XI is almost certainly marginally weaker than last season, but the whole squad has been improved significantly. Players who were regular starters in the last two seasons are only making the bench this season, and there are some players who have played regular first-team football for us who sometimes don't even make the bench. In past seasons, we would only name 16 genuine first-teamers in the squad and fill with two youth players, and if we got two or three injuries at once we looked stretched to breaking point. Simply not the case anymore, and that shows genuine progress with squad depth.

So it seems as though the attitude continually prevalent at Pompey even extended as far as the stadium announcer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-34676743 Assume he'll be offering to pay 4p in the pound of that fine...

Christ, shows the fluctuating fortunes of both sides in that period that they had 61 different players in 9 games, while we also got through 45.

That soon??

Don't think Boruc has played a cup game since he signed for them, so that would have been planned regardless of last weekend's howlers. Surman's played 90 minutes in every league game so far this season (but 0 minutes in their three Capital One Cup games), so no reason to think he won't start on Sunday.

More pages, apparently.

That seems more like "More from the 'Football existed before the crossbar ceased being a bit of tape' department"

Yeah, looked a perfect tackle from where I was as well. The only footage I've seen is from the normal TV angle in real-time - could do with a different angle and slow-motion, which I suppose shows that decisions like that aren't always obvious from every angle.

Liverpool game's guaranteed to be on the Wednesday, regardless of TV picks. Fully expect our game to be picked by Sky, though, with Man City v Hull on the Tuesday.

The main problem with Targett isn't that he's not good enough, IMO - he showed in the handful of games he played last season that he can do it. The issue is that pretty much every game he's played this season has been in a game where we've either gone with a really weird formation (Newcastle, Everton) or where he's in a lineup that is rusty (last night). The common theme with all of those games is that he has been left completely exposed against the opposition wide players because either there was nobody in front of him to offer protection or because the player who actually is in front of him isn't used to offering that sort of support. If he's got 2 players running at him, he can't win - he either goes to the ball and leaves the easy pass to the other player open, or he backs off and allows a cross into the box. There's no right option to pick there, half-decent players will get past him either way.

Pretty sure it's blocked in the UK, but obviously there are relatively simple ways around it. BeIn's on SportsMania, for a start.

Oh, OK. I was under the impression they weren't showing it.

Statistically, I would assume Davis has made the most penalty saves as a Saints keeper, but part of that will naturally be down to the number of games he's played for us. It would be interesting to see if the "penalties saved vs penalties faced" ratio is available somewhere.

No and no, apparently.