stevegrant

Yeah, that's been standard practice since we got promoted, and makes a certain degree of sense. That said, I'm not sure the club would necessarily allow you to return a purchased away ticket so having bought it, you're committing to attending.

3 different takers as well

The rubbish Spurs have turned up tonight in the first half, which means it'll once again be down to Christian Eriksen to score an 89th minute winner against the run of play.

AFC Wimbledon's pitch was in much better condition as well.

On this occasion, yep!

You know Sunderland will somehow scramble a jammy equaliser in the second half though. That's just what they do.

Evans was released from prison 83 days ago, and it's taken him this long to say that?

No we haven't, QPR are only giving away teams the upper tier, has been the case since after the first game of last season (Sheffield Wednesday had the whole end on the opening day, but they changed their policy after that game).

Palace is the only other one, I think.

Sunday late afternoon on TV, £46 tickets, shortly after a busy Christmas schedule which will have stretched wallets, there are a whole host of reasons.

Most teams wouldn't sell 7600 at Old Trafford anyway so I'm not sure that rule is actually much of a problem.

There wasn't really a consultation as such, fans were simply told that the police had said the Northam/Itchen corner was most convenient for away access, so the away section would be in blocks 43-48. Everyone basically went where they thought it would be best, but even in the relatively short time we've been at St Mary's, the demographic in different parts of the ground has changed so much, people move around quite a lot. I've been back and forth between the Northam and Itchen corner loads of times. That freedom of movement, for want of a better phrase, means that if there was a concerted effort to organise something and have a whole stand that stood and sung all game in the Chapel, it would be pretty easy to achieve, I reckon. It just requires the will of the people, which is probably where it'll come unstuck as most people just can't be arsed.

Because Arsenal have a massive fanbase who will watch the game, giving the BBC a big audience share and therefore justifying the use of part of the licence fee to acquire the FA Cup broadcasting rights at great expense. You could easily make a case for any of the three games being televised that night, even Bradford v Millwall on the basis that the winners get to go to Stamford Bridge. They'd probably get Chelsea fans watching it for that reason.

The rule is the home team has to offer 10% of the saleable capacity or 3,000 tickets, whichever is the lower. Hence, at grounds with capacities larger than 30,000, we get a maximum of 3,000 tickets, give or take a few hundred either way for segregation and ease of access. We give up to 3,150 for away teams in the league, which is technically more than we need to (3,000, obviously), especially considering the club is allowed to reduce the away allocation for any segregation that needs to be put in place - in practice, this means that we could offer a maximum league allocation of around 2,600, with around 400 seats blocked off for segregation from the actual allocation of 3,000. The problem with doing this is logistics and safety legislation. The reason we give slightly more than we need to is that, with the current full away allocation, the segregation netting is placed pretty much right down the middle of block 43 - safety legislation dictates that no seat should be further than [X] seats from an aisle to enable a quick evacuation if necessary. I don't know what the [X] is, but basically if the netting was to be placed at the far side of block 43, reducing the away allocation to 2600, the club would still only be able to sell around half of the block to home fans, not the three-quarters that would in theory be available.

You might catch the playoff finals for the Conference North and possibly the Northern Premier. The regular season ends on 25th April in the Conference North, and the playoff semi-finals will be the following weekend and then the midweek after that. The final is at the ground of the team who finished higher in the league.

It would be great if someone could buy him a ticket for the game.

Fair to say that the draw's not opening up for a mid-table side this season like it did last year... if every tie went with the highest-placed team going through, there would be 13 PL teams left in out of 16, with two from the Championship and one from League One. Looking much tougher than last season already.

I think Inter are picking up all of Osvaldo's salary, same as Juventus did last season, in exchange for no loan fee being payable. Not sure with Ramirez, but I think Hull paid a fee for the season, so that'll offset anything we're still paying there. The bonuses situation will be interesting to monitor, especially if we qualify for Europe. Apparently those whose contracts were signed during Cortese's reign have VERY lucrative bonuses built in for high league positions (but not much for domestic cup success).

Alex Crook seemed to think Jose Fonte is our highest earner (current players - Osvaldo and Ramirez are both at least £20k more) on £45k basic. Not entirely sure I believe Fonte's our highest earner, but the figure's probably about right.

Yeah, the idea that Atletico are "holding out" for £6.2m is a complete red herring, we'd wire the money today if that was the case. The commonly-held belief is that that fee is already agreed, but Atletico have a £1.5m get-out clause in the deal. It could be that they've seen how well he's done and think they can get a bit more for him (obviously not worthwhile if it's not more than £7.7m), which unfortunately is probably true. As ridiculous as it sounds, £75k a week shouldn't be that big a deal for us, especially for a player as good as him. The likelihood of him staying for the full duration of that contract would surely be pretty slim, as a club able to offer him regular Champions League football and £100k a week would probably come knocking eventually, so paying that sort of salary for a year or two could be seen as good business.

The only ones in terms of current league position were Brighton (15 places below), Cambridge (10), Leicester (10), Preston (19) and Rochdale (21).

Today's results: Barnsley 0-2 Middlesbrough Blyth Spartans 2-3 Birmingham City Bolton Wanderers 1-0 Wigan Athletic Brentford 0-2 Brighton & Hove Albion Cambridge United 2-1 Luton Town Charlton Athletic 1-2 Blackburn Rovers Derby County 1-0 Southport Doncaster Rovers 1-1 Bristol City Fulham 0-0 Wolverhampton Wanderers Huddersfield Town 0-1 Reading Leicester City 1-0 Newcastle United Millwall 3-3 Bradford City Preston North End 2-0 Norwich City Rochdale 1-0 Nottingham Forest Rotherham United 1-5 Bournemouth Tranmere Rovers 2-6 Swansea City West Bromwich Albion 7-0 Gateshead

Half-Times: Barnsley 0-0 Middlesbrough (delayed 15 minutes due to suspected gas leak) Blyth Spartans 2-0 Birmingham City Bolton Wanderers 0-0 Wigan Athletic Brentford 0-0 Brighton & Hove Albion Cambridge United 1-0 Luton Town Charlton Athletic 0-1 Blackburn Rovers (delayed 15 minutes due to floodlight failure) Derby County 0-0 Southport Doncaster Rovers 0-0 Bristol City Fulham 0-0 Wolverhampton Wanderers Huddersfield Town 0-0 Reading Leicester City 1-0 Newcastle United Millwall 1-1 Bradford City Preston North End 0-0 Norwich City Rochdale 1-0 Nottingham Forest Rotherham United 1-1 Bournemouth Tranmere 0-1 Swansea City West Bromwich Albion 2-0 Gateshead

West Brom with an absolute robbery just before half-time, 2-0 up. Blyth also 2-0 up against Birmingham. Just as well we get to watch Arsenal v Hull and Everton v West Ham on TV...