stevegrant

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...

For the broadcasters, it's all about the ratings. Sadly more people will watch Arsenal v Hull than will watch Blyth Spartans v Birmingham, which is why the BBC picked it. They have to justify the cost of the rights by pulling in the viewers.

Full list of games: Friday Cardiff City 3-1 Colchester United MK Dons 0-1 Chesterfield (2nd round, match replayed after Chesterfield fielded an ineligible player in the original tie, which they also won 1-0) Saturday 3pm: Barnsley v Middlesbrough Blyth Spartans v Birmingham City Bolton Wanderers v Wigan Athletic Brentford v Brighton & Hove Albion Cambridge United v Luton Town Charlton Athletic v Blackburn Rovers Derby County v Southport Doncaster Rovers v Bristol City Fulham v Wolverhampton Wanderers Huddersfield Town v Reading Leicester City v Newcastle United Millwall v Bradford City Preston North End v Norwich City Rochdale v Nottingham Forest Rotherham United v Bournemouth Tranmere Rovers v Swansea City West Bromwich Albion v Gateshead Sunday 1pm: Dover Athletic v Crystal Palace (BT Sport) Queens Park Rangers v Sheffield United Sunderland v Leeds United 3pm: Aston Villa v Blackpool Manchester City v Sheffield Wednesday Southampton v Ipswich Town Stoke City v Wrexham 3:30pm: Yeovil Town v Manchester United (BT Sport) 4pm: Chelsea v Watford 5:30pm: Arsenal v Hull City (BBC) Monday 7:45pm: Burnley v Tottenham Hotspur 7:55pm: AFC Wimbledon v Liverpool Tuesday 7:45pm: Everton v West Ham United S****horpe United v Chesterfield

Agree with the retrospective action part, and on the flipside of that players should be able to have incorrect yellow cards rescinded as well. Fast-tracking ex-players can only work if they achieve suitable qualifications and assessment ratings - similar to coaching and management, there have been too many ex-players given jobs way above their qualifications simply because of who they are, which prevents most people from grassroots football progressing to the top levels of the game. If an ex-pro wants to become a referee, that's great, but they shouldn't be able to do the same course that I did 17 years ago and then get on the Elite List. Also, I can't actually imagine many ex-pros being willing to do the job for the amount the top referees get paid. I think the likes of Howard Webb would have "only" earned just into six figures in years when he had lots of European and international commitments as well as domestic appointments. Can you imagine a current Premier League player - average annual salary approx £1.5m - being prepared to put up with all the **** that goes with the job for such a relative pittance when they could just sit in a studio at Sky, spout their inane platitudes and get paid much more?

Officials simply need to improve. While it is true that decisions are scrutinised at such intense levels these days, that's no excuse for what is pure incompetence. The Rob Green handball yesterday was incredible. While the referee might not have the best view in terms of knowing Green's position, his assistant was barely 20 yards away with a perfect unobstructed view of the incident, and should have flagged for the handball - the referee would then have made the pretty easy decision to send Green off. One thing that must be a bit frustrating if you're an assistant referee at the top level is that you're pretty much stuck with being an assistant for the rest of your career, despite having got to that position in the first place because of their performances as a referee at lower levels (I believe it's generally the case that you can run the line at a level one level higher than you referee). That to me seems like a bit of a waste, when let's face it, they couldn't possibly do a worse job than the current lot. Having professional full-time officials was supposed to allow them more training time which would ensure that performances improved. If anything, it has bred a culture of complacency and arrogance among the elite list of officials, knowing that they're largely undroppable. The worst that happens is they get assigned to a Championship game for a week. Hardly a massive loss for them, really.

While he's largely right, it's rather hypocritical of him to have a pop at referees making mistakes when he was one of the worst for doing so when he was still active.

Ipswich will make changes, Mick McCarthy's already said that Bartosz Bialkowski won't play as he wants Dean Gerken to be match sharp in case BB was to get injured. According to McCarthy, they have a first-team squad of 20 senior players, and that many of them who haven't played recently will get a game this weekend. Suggests the likes of McGoldrick and Murphy, their main two strikers, might not feature either. Connor Sammon is fit again, so he'll probably play instead.

This amused me

They would have to stop at least once on each leg of the journey for a trip of that duration, by law coach drivers can only drive for a maximum of 4 hours at a time.

Everton's fanbase is certainly bigger than ours, but looking at their most recent financials, they don't seem to be any better off than us. Their 2013/14 revenue increased to £120m, but best guesses would place ours not too far behind. In terms of long-term, they are a club that we should be aiming to overtake with sustainable growth, academy production, etc. Liverpool are a huge worldwide brand and we've next to no chance of consistently outperforming them. We may have occasional seasons like this one where we do well and they struggle (relatively - I'd still expect them to finish above us in May), but they have resources way beyond our means, especially with the Financial Fair Play regulations now in force.

We could, but it's a chain reaction thing. If one player is getting that much, the rest will want a slice of the pie as well.

It's not a completely unreasonable point, tbf. They had an AGM barely a month ago, and now all of a sudden the chairman's been replaced without a proper election.

So that's Micah Hall, parachuted into some way-above-his-pay-grade PR role at PFC by Williams and friends, complaining about what I assume has been a democratic process executed by the supporters trust. You couldn't make it up.

2013/14: 8th (i.e. no change) 2012/13: 7th 2011/12: 7th 2010/11: 5th (on goal difference, with +19, ahead of Spurs on +9) 2009/10: 8th 2008/09: 6th (on goal difference ahead of Villa on +6) 2007/08: 6th 2006/07: 5th 2005/06: 7th 2004/05: 4th 2003/04: 4th 2002/03: 6th 2001/02: 7th 2000/01: 6th

The future plan for the site is that the design will be fully responsive, which means that it scales properly on mobile devices, which will render Tapatalk unnecessary in order to use the site fully on mobiles/tablets.

Yes, this tactic seems to be commonplace among clubs at all levels these days. See this article as an example, Arsenal's attendances were - ON AVERAGE - more than 6000 down on capacity last season despite the "Sold Out" signs being up for nearly every game. One attendance at Old Trafford apparently had a discrepancy of 25,000 between tickets sold and turnstile clicks

Was the first approach before then heading south to the coast (presumably to dump a load of fuel) not just a case of getting in the vicinity of the airport where engineers would be able to have a half-decent view of what the problem was from the ground?

I think the actual saleable capacity has been reduced fairly significantly since we got back up. In the Kingsland stand, either side of the TV gantry, there are what I think are additional media seats in the rear handful of rows, so that's probably knocked a couple of hundred off, plus there's the segregation between home and away fans which we simply didn't bother with for that Coventry game which set the new record. The club wanted to go the extra mile to cram as many people in as possible, so I think there was just a line or two of stewards instead. Difficult to know how they count the attendance in the corporate areas as boxes can fit up to 10 but a company who had a box for the season might have reduced numbers in there for some games.

He'll be here for the rest of the season unless someone (PSG, Arsenal or Man United) throws genuinely silly money (£30m+) our way, and even then we might hold out until the summer. I've no doubt that he'll be gone in the summer, even if we somehow finish in the top 4, and I'd find it difficult to begrudge him that move - someone will pay him the best part of £100k a week, and we can't come close to matching that. I think I'd prefer him to go to PSG where he can't hurt us further down the line!

Never a massive fan of year-long compilations as they stretch over two seasons, but meh, I was bored. Premier League Record Home: P20 W10 D5 L5 F38 A21 Pts35 Away: P18 W8 D3 L7 F22 A20 Pts27 Total: P38 W18 D8 L12 F60 A41 Pts62 All Competitions Record Home: P22 W12 D5 L5 F44 A24 Away: P23 W11 D3 L9 F29 A25 Total: P45 W23 D8 L14 F71 A49 Goalscorers (all competitions) Graziano Pelle 11 Jay Rodriguez, Rickie Lambert 8 Adam Lallana, Own Goals ( ) 6 Morgan Schneiderlin, Nathaniel Clyne 4 Victor Wanyama, Jack Cork, Shane Long, Sadio Mane 3 Sam Gallagher, Jose Fonte, Maya Yoshida, Dusan Tadic, Ryan Bertrand 2 Dejan Lovren, Guly do Prado, Steven Davis, Toby Alderweireld 1 Home Attendances (PL only) Highest: Chelsea, 28th December, 31,641 Lowest: West Bromwich Albion, 23rd August, 27,598 Total: 609,374 (20 games) Average: 30,469

The state of that pitch

Lallana signed for Liverpool on July 1st, Boruc didn't join Bournemouth until September 19th.

BBC got the full landing... pretty standard, albeit a slight bounce.

Not sure about that part, tbf. They've spent way beyond their means in recent years but their Russian owner has been happy to write that money off, converting it to equity rather than debt.

Bournemouth haven't been afraid to throw money at the team, you would imagine they'd do so again if they went up. Nagging feeling that they might just fall away when it comes to the crunch as they don't have a great deal of experience, but on the flipside that might work to their advantage. It seems we could play a fairly key role as well, as Boruc has been on a short-term loan deal, I don't think they're able to extend it, so they might have to sign him permanently.