stevegrant

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.

Euros. Converts to around £9.4m now, may have been slightly less when the deal was actually done.

Yep. Yeah, saying he's talking to the Football League about it again. They told him to **** off with it a few months ago, I don't see that anything's fundamentally changed for that viewpoint to be any different now. I thought Dyke becoming FA chairman might be a good thing, he's clearly got a bit of charisma and gravitas, but all of his ideas since he got the job have been utterly insane.

The proposed rules will make **** all difference, other than the loan part of it. Players who are internationals and represent one of the top 30 FIFA-ranked nations automatically get a work permit, while players who aren't in the international squad can usually get around the rules by obtaining an EU passport from somewhere like Spain, Italy or Portugal. Part of the proposal is that any player signed for a fee in excess of a specific figure (£10-15m has been suggested) would automatically get a work permit, but that seems like it's open to all sorts of abuse, and means that English clubs are then unable to be competitive with their transfer dealings. Twente would probably have been able to hold out for £10m from us for Dusan Tadic because at that point he automatically gets a work permit rather than having to go through a testing phase (Serbia are ranked pretty low by FIFA), rather than us being able to have a much lower bid accepted.

I know everyone knew Northamptonshire were out of their depth in the first division, but today's performance really is something else. Durham were eventually bowled out this morning for 392, and in reply Northants batted twice, but lasted a total of 40.2 overs for innings scores of 83 and 90. Durham's Chris Rushworth took insane match figures of 15-95 from 20 overs, while they brought Indian seamer Varun Aaron in for this game and he only got to bowl 7 overs in the match

Seems everyone's surprised Kent have enforced the follow-on, having been out in the field for 105 overs and with the wicket turning quite a lot already.

300 up, Ervine with a masterclass in strike rotation with the last man

Well that was a disastrous morning session Still 131 needed to avoid the follow-on, needs Ervine and Tahir to bat very well for a session and a half.

Edit: bugger, was going on 8 points for a draw when it's only 5

Need to bat pretty well here, no chance of a win at this stage but we need to be looking at the 400 runs inside 110 overs target to secure both a draw and maximum batting points. That'll leave us on 221 points heading to Cardiff. Essex are going to be on 207 when they beat Leicestershire, a defeat for us (if bowled out for under 200) could leave us just one point ahead

Given his posting history, I wouldn't be so sure.

OK, I'll humour you. Which "popoluar" (sic) papers have reported that, not only is Ron expected to jump ship to a shambles within three months of his appointment, but his brother, who only came here because he'd be working with Ron, is going to stay and take over? Actually, that's a rhetorical question. No paper has reported it, and it won't happen. You're mental.

Difficult to win the title from here, but Surrey now can't catch us.

And Surrey lose Buggers up our title hopes, but still, it's now between us and Essex for second place. We have a 22-point advantage with two games to play. The title's not completely out of the question, but we'd probably have to win both games now. With the weather forecast for next week, that seems highly unlikely.

Surrey are doing their best to **** this one up 112/2 at lunch, needing only 105 to win, they're now 164/7. If they were to lose, it would mean they cannot be promoted, as they'd be 24 points behind us but with two fewer wins, and Worcestershire would have promotion confirmed.

You'd need a separate customer number for the second ticket unless you're prepared to wait until Monday.

I suspect that a lot of people have been hedging their bets in order to get tickets for people who didn't qualify for a ticket through previous away game attendance, so I'd agree that they'll probably sell plenty today and tomorrow. Will be interesting to see if it makes general sale, but they seem to have judged the demand quite well in this instance, despite there having been complaints that we didn't appear to request an allocation of 9000.