stevegrant

We seem to have become determined to pick someone who can both bowl fast and with variations. The problem is that Dernbach's variations only come off one game in ten, the rest they're picked off by half-decent batsmen. It's not even as if the runs he concedes off the bat get recouped by him in the field, he's an average fielder at best. England's thinking on limited-overs cricket over the past decade has been absolutely nuts, it's as if we're trying to play a completely different game to the rest of the world

I'd argue that Mignolet might have done better for the first goal and his positioning was awful for the third, giving Aguero the whole goal to aim at.

The clue's in the name, GOAL LINE technology.

Fortunately Surrey matched us for points in the other group, and we even managed to beat them on net run rate. Realistically, having lost that game at Essex when we basically had the game in the bag, there was no chance of qualifying from that position so it's been a case of going through the motions, giving a few fringe players a game, etc. No real surprise we got tonked by the group winners last night with the side we put out.

Which is fine, and in fact if Safe Standing sections were allowed in the Premier League and Championship, it would provide a clear definition between areas where it's OK to stand and where it's not. It's about giving people a choice, while simultaneously (hopefully) improving the atmosphere in stadia and perhaps even increasing capacity, and even first-timers to a particular stadium will know what they're going to get when buying a ticket - I know it was only a friendly, but I was amazed at the number of people who took their young kids along to the Bayer Leverkusen game and bought their tickets near the back of the Northam, thereby ensuring that their kids wouldn't be able to see a thing.

A couple of things: Firstly, I'm not sure the Conservatives have ever been that bothered about upsetting the scousers Secondly, while fans posting on forums are now having sensible discussions about it, there are a hell of a lot of people - many in quite high profile positions within the Hillsborough justice campaign groups - who still believe terraces were the root cause of the disaster and that it would be a massive step backwards to reintroduce them, despite all the evidence to the contrary and that new style terracing would be completely different to the old terracing.

We'd only be able to loan him to the Football League - not sure he'd go for that.

But Spurs are in Europe, so are almost certain to be playing 50+ games this season, with a dozen games or more in cup competitions. That gives Vorm an opportunity to play. From a "professional" point of view of wanting to be first choice, him moving to Spurs is ridiculous when he'd have probably been Swansea's number one ahead of Fabianski and Tremmell, but I suspect he'll probably get to play in the cups for Spurs, and he may think that the massive pay rise he'd have got justifies it. We could end up playing only 2 cup games all season - having spent £10m on a keeper and declaring that he's first choice, that doesn't leave an awful lot of room for a backup who wants to actually play games. In that sense, I have absolutely no problem with Boruc saying that he'd like to move elsewhere if possible so he can play regularly (I'd say you wouldn't ever want players who are "happy" to be sat on the bench every week, there should always be the ambition to play and the belief that they're good enough to do so), but obviously if that move doesn't materialise then he'll have to just suck it up for a few months, I guess.

Those games: Gazzaniga: Chelsea (away) L 1-3 (1-1 when Gazzaniga came on) Aston Villa (home) L 2-3 Man City (home) D 1-1 Newcastle (away) D 1-1 Tottenham (home) L 2-3 Cardiff (away) W 3-0 Man City (away) L 1-4 Cardiff (home) L 0-1 Davis: Everton (away) L 1-2 Chelsea (home) L 0-3 Not looking to suggest either of them are good enough, but many of those results could easily have happened with a first-choice keeper available. Chelsea, Man City, Everton - 1 draw from 5 games against those three teams, which is about what we might have expected against them anyway. The only games where our reserve keeper actually cost us points were Villa and Spurs.

That LMA statement is extraordinary. Someone was tasked with writing a statement, took all day to do so, presumably had it checked over by senior LMA officials, and they released THAT. Using the word "banter" as an excuse for discriminatory conduct is pathetic enough when it's a heat-of-the-moment response, but when it's in a considered and otherwise-bland official statement, that's staggering PR ****wittery.

England players are - in theory - very well paid when on England duty, I think their fees are somewhere in the region of £50k or so, but there is an agreement with the PFA that all of those fees are donated to charity.

Also this. If you're going to provide a magazine online, just give me a PDF of the print layout, I'm capable of scrolling through pages myself

It has the feel of an official club publication, and apparently it's done with the approval of the club, hence it's got a big interview with David Gold in it. Fanzines of the past have always had the ability and freedom to criticise and take the **** out of people at their own club - with a club-approved publication, that freedom diminishes pretty rapidly as the editors don't want to risk losing the perks. At which point, what's the point of it all, why not just read the matchday programme?

I would also add the sense of entitlement from those who have played at a professional game that they should be able to walk into a top management job with absolutely zero experience and, in many cases, qualifications. Another problem with coaching is that in order to get on the UEFA A and B courses in this country, you pretty much have to already be employed at a club where you are then able to do the requisite practical hours that are required by the course, but for most clubs they want to employ people who already have these qualifications. But of course they'll make an exception if an ex-pro applies because they're a big name and may be able to attract players higher than the club's stature to play for them.

****ing typical that within an hour of the club confirming this, Sky Sports go and **** over the fans again by getting it moved to the Friday night.

Not sure why we need Tahir for the last couple of games, Briggs seems to have bowled well this year and Dawson will get picked on his batting alone, so it's not as if we need more spinners.

No, which would suggest they seem to be making a habit of posting the tickets in the week immediately before the game. I ordered a Liverpool ticket on the Thursday and they only arrived the following Thursday, three days before the game!

I see no reason why the club couldn't show the latest scores on the big screen, even going as far as highlighting when a goal is scored in another game. That would largely negate the need for wi-fi or even 4G.

You've been watching too many Barclays adverts

For a club of our size, I don't think you can ever just write off millions of pounds worth of core revenue like that without some sort of clear plan to recoup that money in the long term, but at the same time they need to actually think about what they're doing. The club needs to remember that there isn't one single reason why somebody would choose to not renew a season ticket - whether it's based on price, likelihood of being able to attend all the games, the perceived direction of the club/first team, other personal circumstances, etc - some of those reasons, the club can't do anything about, but some of them are very much in their hands. In theory, having seen a net drop of around 700 season ticket holders for 2013/14 (the actual number of people not renewing would have been much higher, but offset by new season ticket holders), you would think that the club would be concerned by that, but (to use very raw figures which won't be remotely accurate) 19,300 paying £600 is still more than 20,000 paying £575, albeit only by around £80,000 - certainly not a massive amount in that context. The problem comes with a summer like we've had, where there's been a large cloud of negativity lingering for months, right in the middle of the season ticket renewal period, and the realisation that you could buy a ticket for every single home game last season without any issue - even the Man United game went to general sale to those on the club's database. I suspect the club found the optimum price/attendance balance last season, not in terms of what would guarantee a sell-out, but in terms of what people were willing to pay. Now they've added another £2 onto every home ticket, I'm not convinced our attendances will hold up as well as they did last season, especially as the "big" games are concentrated in a clump from the end of November to New Year's Day. While the club obviously has to factor ticket sales into its overall budget - and ticket sales make up a much bigger percentage of revenue than every one of the teams who finished above us last season, so it's vitally important - there's surely got to be a bit of room for a combination of common sense and creativity. A price freeze on season tickets would have been a start, perhaps they'll do half-season tickets at Christmas, maybe they could have encouraged early renewals with a 50% discount on the new shirt if they were going ahead with the price increase, so at least people felt they were getting something tangible for the extra £24 or whatever it was. There must be loads of little things they could come up with. Hell, why not bring back a membership scheme for first dibs on tickets after season ticket holders, for those who are willing to pay £10-20 for the privilege? Ultimately, while many of us will do our damnedest to renew our season tickets more or less regardless of how much they try to squeeze out of us, everybody has a limit of what they deem fair and reasonable. Once the club crosses that line, I'm not sure it's entirely likely they'll ever get those fans back as season ticket holders again, and it seems far-fetched to imagine that those people would genuinely go on a per-game basis paying the going rate and end up even more out of pocket, so the overall revenue from those people still goes down.

Just checked the database, you predicted a 3-1 Saints win. The prediction page does state in pretty big capitalised letters "SAINTS SCORE FIRST".

Excellent. How about the nipper? Looks like we've now got something vaguely resembling a squad

Surrey have still got Stuart Meaker on, he's taken 4 wickets so far, but he's bowled 20 of the 52 overs and has gone for 133

Surrey have still got Stuart Meaker on, he's taken 4 wickets so far, but he's bowled 20 of the 52 overs and has gone for 133

Not a clue, don't know what the rules are in terms of when the official close of play is on the final day when some play has been lost due to the weather.