stevegrant

I see they're still more than £50k short in their crowd-begging fund for the academy. I know that on sites like Kickstarter, you don't get the cash unless you raise the full amount, does this one work in the same way?

I'm aware of that, but that is still a backwards step from the old system where you could see exactly how many tickets were left to sell.

Once you have added a seat to your basket, I think you then have the option of setting that as your favourite seat. I would have thought season ticket holders should have automatically had their ST seat added as their favourite (as you obviously can't select it for individual league games as it's already been sold), but nope, they've not bothered with that.

And the new system doesn't show how many seats are left in each block, only a vague "Availability" rating

The ECB shouldn't use the attendances as justification to not give us an Ashes Test, because of the obvious mitigating circumstances. Had it even started on the Wednesday, I reckon they'd have got 10k+ every day, plus a load of corporate sales on the Thursday, Friday and Saturday. That said, I do think the prices need to be looked at. I know they compare with other grounds, but I think every ground should tailor its pricing to its audience. There's been two Tests at the Rose Bowl now, and neither has come remotely close to selling out on any of the 10 days. The weather was absolutely perfect this year as well, and the timing decent coming right at the start of the school holidays. I saw they were offering family tickets for £99 (a very good deal, IMO) on a photo that was tweeted on Monday, but hadn't seen any publicity to that effect in the previous six months. Surely that was a great opportunity to get families in, although I appreciate that T20 is a much more family-oriented spectacle than Test cricket.

That was a fair enough point to make by Alan Cork, but it was pretty obvious what the rationale behind offering Rodriguez that new contract when they did.

My assessment is that Pochettino never rated him particularly highly (hence rushing Wanyama back to play at Fulham when he clearly wasn't fit and Cork was arguably our best player at the time), and as contract extensions for the first team squad would largely be up to the manager to decide whether to offer or not, MP opted for the latter. Now he's gone, it's now down to Koeman to decide, and naturally he wants to get a proper look at everyone before making that sort of decision.

That sounds like a "leak interest from another club to get a contract offer on the table sharpish" story to me.

I'm not sure anyone would claim that having a network of scouts and analysts is anything revolutionary - unless that person is Neil Ashton at the Mail or Ben Smith at the BBC - and I would assume that an agent might be a bit disparaging of it on account of the club having the resources to actually watch a player he tries to hawk to us rather than signing them on the strength of a YouTube compilation video. It's not so easy for him to get his players through our door as a result, so of course he's ****ed off

Tough

Update: Matt Young has signed for Sheffield Wednesday.

Another thing, this guy claims to be from Rhyl, which is about as far away from Cardiff as is possible within Wales. Locking this now, clearly garbage.

Yeah, potentially, but I don't see how that sort of situation causes a "bust-up", or more specifically something physical, which is what the term implies. Sure, they'll disagree if they're having a meeting, but I don't see Schneiderlin as the "standing up, flipping a table and steaming in" type Also worth noting that, despite that tweet having been public for the best part of 45 minutes and re-tweeted by plenty of people, there are STILL no Saints-focused journalists saying anything about it.

Two things here: Firstly, the source. This guy is the ONLY journalist to report it, and he is someone nobody's ever heard of and reports on sports in SOUTH WALES. How would someone like him get a scoop on something going on at Saints when there are so many national and local journalists who are close to things at the club? Secondly, the time: It was reported before 10am this morning, which means the event would have happened even earlier than that. I find it difficult to believe that there would be many (if any) players at the training ground 60-90 minutes before training.

I'd take Holtby, less so Dawson. Slow, error-prone, only gets any sort of reputation because he's "brave" and "puts his body on the line" (usually because he's let his man have three yards of space first).

Apparently any deal for MS and JR is miles from being done, suspect that could take some time.

Oh good

Or perhaps there genuinely is no master plan to sell. Purslow/Krueger could well be "investigating opportunities" using their connections, but that doesn't necessarily mean there's any sort of desperation to cash in at this stage. If she's said "see if anyone would be stupid enough to pay me £300m", then by all means they're looking to find a buyer, but only someone who's prepared to pay massively over the odds, in which case KL gets into "well, I'd be stupid not to sell for that price" territory.

Which is particularly strange because there is still considerable money to be made from playing in it. If you're in the group stage, you've got at least three home games to generate revenue, plus prize money for progression and any points gained.

Foolish of them, really. You'd think they'd want to take the cash of mug punters jumping to conclusions.

Manchester United are a money-making machine and their debt as a result of the Glazer takeover is rapidly being reduced these days. That'll increase speed from next season when the new Adidas kit deal kicks in. £115m a year, just in shirt manufacturer and sponsorship rights, probably more than our entire annual turnover. Even Chelsea seem to be somewhere approaching self-sustainability these days, having been given a free pass with the £1bn Abramovich has poured into the club and no FFP regulations to get in their way over the past decade. Once you get yourself to the top table in a free market, it's much easier to stay there as success breeds more success and the natural by-product of that is greater support. Now, of course, FFP has come along and turned off the tap for any potential challengers, and there's no way through for clubs like us.

The FFP restrictions are heavily tied in with commercial revenue. In a nutshell, while clubs are restricted to a moderate increase in the wage bill based purely on the broadcasting revenue, they are free to use every penny generated from increased commercial deals. That is why Man United have been signing deals left, right and centre to have an official boiled sweet partner in Thailand, etc. They can use all of that to add to their wage bill, whereas they're heavily restricted (around £4m per year increase) if they maintain the same level of commercial revenue. We are in the same boat (once the wage bill is above £52m, the restricted increases apply), but without the commercial pull to do anything about it. The Veho deal will help as it is a significant increase on the aap3 one before it, but that's still only going to pay for one player's £40k a week salary.

The Pompey approach combined unsustainable fixed salaries (many players on £70k+ a week, plus shady image rights deals) with massive performance-related bonuses, on a much smaller broadcasting contract and attendances of 20,000. Our wage bill for last season will have been around the £50-60m mark, and I expect the club's revenue will be around £100m (approx £75m of that from central broadcasting/prize money). A 50-60% wages-to-turnover ratio is not excessive by any stretch of the imagination - in fact, it's probably among the lowest in the PL. I can certainly accept that there is some adjustment to be done to ensure the Staplewood redevelopment and past transfer expenditure is fully covered, but I'm not sold on the idea that SEVEN first-teamers had to be sold to facilitate it. The wages, from my point of view, are not a problem. I'd also ask what the problem is with performance-related bonuses - surely that's the ideal situation, you pay players a basic wage, and they get more if their performances, and those of their team-mates, merit it. I'd much rather that than paying someone £60k a week who then feels he doesn't need to work hard for the club to earn big money.

IMO we have made a genuine upgrade with our manager and it's entirely possible that both Pelle and Tadic will have better seasons than Lambert and Lallana. If Koeman gets all (or most) of his targets, I'd expect us to be very competitive again, but we're not going to be able to judge that until the end of the transfer window. Clearly nobody's going to be happy with so many departures, but the cricketing saying of "you can't judge a pitch until both sides have batted" rings true for me, whether we've got a good deal will depend on who replaces those who leave. From what I've seen so far, albeit against limited opposition, Tadic and Pelle look promising.

Potentially (must confess I haven't read all of that translated article as the first few sentences made my eyes bleed), but if I remember rightly, he brought Hicks and Gillett to Liverpool. I'll pass on that one, thanks!