stevegrant

Draw numbers: 1. AFC Bournemouth 2. Derby County 3. Fulham 4. Liverpool 5. Milton Keynes Dons 6. Sheffield United 7. Shrewsbury Town 8. Southampton 9. Stoke City 10. Swansea City 11. Brighton & Hove Albion 12. Chelsea 13. Crystal Palace or Newcastle United 14. Manchester City 15. Tottenham Hotspur 16. West Bromwich Albion or Hull City

I'd share "Kick It Out"'s concern if there was any evidence that suitably qualified non-white applicants were being overlooked for jobs. As it is, there are only around 200 UK residents with the UEFA Pro Licence, and of the 24 on the most recent course, only three are non-white. It's easy for the likes of Jason Roberts and Sol Campbell to sit there and whinge when neither of them has shown the slightest inclination to get the qualifications that would make them suitable, and it's an attitude issue for ex-players of all races, colours and creeds - many of them feel that the game still owes them (despite it having made them all multi-millionaires in recent years) and that they don't need to put in hard work to get a coaching or management job. Paul Ince is a perfect example of one of the issues, he was appointed as the Blackburn manager in 2008 and had to be given special dispensation by the Premier League as he didn't have the Pro Licence (which has been a PL requirement for a decade now). He is one of the three non-white candidates on THIS YEAR's Pro Licence course - it would appear that he just assumed he could get a job at the top level without the requisite qualifications. For someone who clearly put in the effort as a youngster to become a professional footballer in the first place, it seems odd that he would appear to be unwilling to put the same level of commitment into becoming a manager. Gareth Southgate was another promoted way above his qualifications at the time - he didn't even have the UEFA "B" Licence when he was given the Middlesbrough job, and that's the third-level qualification! Until the FA and various leagues start actually enforcing their own rules about coaching qualifications, people will always assume they can get by on their name alone, and clubs will continue to foolishly employ people on the same basis.

Yep, Essex crept over the line in the end for 300, looked at one point like they might fall short. It was interesting to hear on SSN last night that the pitch inspectors were called in after Worcestershire's innings...

If Worcestershire can bowl Essex out for less than 300, that means Essex miss out on three batting points, which could be crucial. They'd only be able to get 21 points in the game with a win, meaning we need 12 to go up. We've already got 4 from yesterday, get 9 wickets in 110 overs in this innings and draw the game and it's done

250 up, so the gap is back to 9 points, while Essex are now 3 wickets down.

Excellent afternoon session, 142 runs with no wickets down

If Essex were to be bowled out for under 200, that would mean they could only get a maximum of 19 from the match (the 3 bonus points already secured for bowling Worcestershire out, plus 16 for the win), which would then mean we only need 10 to secure promotion. Assuming we can bowl Glamorgan out inside 110 overs, that requires only 2 batting points (250 runs) and a drawn match. Worcestershire's abject display this morning also offers the chance for us to snatch the title...

And a batting bonus point

41 wickets in the morning session. I think attacking is the way to go, Vince and Ervine both tend to score quickly, and if they're going to get a delivery that does a bit in the air or off the pitch, they might as well have added a few quick runs beforehand.

Not sure it really matters at this time of the year, runs on the board I guess. If we can bat a full day, that's probably a winning position. Looks like Worcestershire will be all out before lunch

35 wickets have already fallen in the 8 games starting this morning. Proper justification for the season continuing until the end of September

53/5

Debuchy was about £12m, Tavernier and Amalfitano would have been bugger all, Wigan haven't spent much this summer and Dijon are a French second division side so they've got no money either. Estimates suggest Newcastle had a net spend of about £20m this summer, which is about even from the sale of Cabaye in January. Ashley is still about £120m down on his Newcastle investment, he took over their debts personally to save on the interest payments. I see no problem in him gradually recouping that money over time, to be honest.

I've read that article four times and I still can't find Adrian Durham's usual "edgy" (i.e. contrary for the sake of creating an argument) angle. I think I need a lie down...

It's only generating more income if the seats are sold. We're not selling the ones in the current ground at the moment despite having just had our best season in nearly 30 years, and even last season the Man United game - usually the fastest-selling home game of the season, also doubling up as the last home game of the season - went to general sale. The stadium would be worth about the same as it was before - not much. It's a revenue-generating property, obviously, but only as a football stadium (or a sports stadium if you want to make it a bit more varying and generic) with a club able to attract 30,000 supporters on a regular basis. If Southampton Football Club wanted/needed to sell St Mary's, there's not a great deal of value in its current form - SFC is the only club in the area able to attract anything greater than 1500 fans, and even Eastleigh's support seems to be something of a novelty value - and it's not exactly prime real estate for a property developer. it's realisable value is probably no greater than what we sold The Dell to Barratt Homes for.

A lead of 10 points over Essex going into the final game.

You'd have to ask them. Spunked a hell of a lot of money to increase the capacity by 2,000, on a stand that they now never fill because they've been relegated twice since it opened. They haven't "added" seats, they were part of the original plan for the stadium when it was first built. They had to get it open as soon as possible because of the obvious restrictions at the Withdean. It's the same with the original plans for the new White Hart Lane, build most of the stadium, get it open and then finish it off in the following year. It's very easy to sit there and say "we should expand the ground", but you're not the one having to finance it. The cost of finance for something that significant won't be cheap, it's not like a bank will give the club a mortgage at a nice 2.99% fixed rate like they would for you and I buying a house. If we take the example from 2003 where it would have cost £30m, that's not even the "true" cost once interest and other charges are factored in, the security required on that finance would be onerous because the constructed assets wouldn't be worth as much as we were paying for them (like when you buy a new car, as soon as you drive it off the forecourt it depreciates in value heavily - how much would SMS be worth if we were to sell the land today? "**** all compared to what we paid for it" is the answer), and of course the likelihood of it ever paying for itself over time.

The rest of my post that you presumably didn't bother to read. At least £30m for 10,000 extra seats that may only be used 7 times a year doesn't even come close to being a sensible investment.

Well done, Tahir, just what the situation needed, hammers Tredwell for six and gets bowled the very next ball, presumably trying to do it again

The Hampshire Twitter feed said there was a minimum of 30 overs left to bowl when the 8th wicket fell. Lose two for the change of innings, but Smith and Tahir/Tomlinson probably need to bat out at least 10 more overs. 100 ahead with 15 overs to go on a raging turner should see us OK. Just about.

But therein lies the problem, they can't be installed at an acceptable price, as far as I can tell. Even a decade ago it would have cost £3k a seat, so a 10k upgrade would cost £30m, pretty much the cost of the whole stadium when it was first built, and that's not allowing for inflation or potential fluctuations in the cost of steel and other raw materials.

My main question would be "what's the point?" If I remember rightly from those graphics, it would involve buying up the land on Melbourne Street which I would expect to be prohibitively expensive based on a "when can the club expect to see a return on the investment?" basis. What are they going to put there? A bigger megastore? We can't sell half the crap they put on sale in the current one for a whole host of reasons.

I thought the 90-minute rule had been removed with the new EPPP academy category system, and that as a Category 1 academy, we could recruit from wherever we like?

Heavy rain at the moment. Pretty much ensures the draw, barring a Northants-esque collapse this afternoon.