stevegrant

The £52m limit and associated restriction on increased wage spending is only applicable if all other club revenues remain the same (i.e. it's only connected with the broadcasting revenue). If the club's commercial revenue increases (which it will do, significantly), all of that can also be put towards the wage bill.

So two (relatively) unknown players being signed from clubs he has been associated with in Holland can't be attributed to him, and it was purely a coincidence that we signed them? Really??

Agreed, just because the focus of the media and fans is (rightly) on the first team squad, that doesn't mean that the rest of the club stops what it's doing. It's often said that if you stand still in football you'll actually be going backwards because other clubs will overtake you rings true at all levels of the game - if we don't make sure we're doing everything we can to recruit the best talent, you can bet your house that another club will get in there ahead of us.

We won away at Notts on our way to winning the whole thing two years ago, no reason we can't do so again.

I would expect that, with the new EPPP stuff, as a Category 1 Academy we can more or less do what we want.

If they are doing their accounting properly ( ), the season ticket money for the forthcoming season won't have been included in the profit/loss calculations for last season, regardless of when the money was received. Or at least that's what my Accounting A-Level told me 14 years ago.

They managed to lose to a team worse than the side that Newcastle pumped 4-0 as well. An impressive start to Fat Sam's "Operation Aesthetically Pleasing"

I meant all of the media leaks referring specifically to him moving to Liverpool. I would guess that the Chelsea stuff came from us to perhaps force a bit of a bidding war, although it's conceivable that it came from Lovren's agent to get Liverpool to pull their finger out and get it done. After all, no deal = no commission for him.

As far as I'm aware, there's still been no bid accepted. All of the media leaks have been from Lovren's people (with authorisation from Liverpool) with the intention of forcing the move through as quickly as possible. All this talk of "the expectation is that he'll be a Liverpool player by the weekend" only holds any water if they actually submit an acceptable bid - I repeat, that still hasn't happened yet, and the original bid wasn't as much as the reported £20m. Because of Lovren's attitude, the balance of power has probably been shifted to us. Koeman won't pick him for friendlies while he's got that attitude, so he's getting no match fitness in preparation for the new season which is now just over three weeks away. Liverpool obviously want him to join up with their tour of the US as soon as possible so he can start playing some games, but that obviously can't happen until we accept an offer, so both Liverpool and Lovren's people will start getting more and more twitchy about the situation and I suspect it'll end with Liverpool eventually giving us what we want. As far as I'm aware, Chelsea aren't in the running at all.

He genuinely won't give a flying **** that a handful of gobby teenagers on Twitter and Instagram have been giving him a bit of stick. He's getting what I assume will be a tidy pay rise and a move to a team playing in the Champions League where he can be found out again, the opinion of a few fans of a club he's barely been at five minutes isn't going to bother him in the slightest.

That's the name of the game these days, though. As soon as any bid is received and the selling club knows they're probably going to have to accept a bid at some point, they'll be leaking the story left, right and centre to encourage a bidding war. Can you imagine us sneaking through a deal like we did with Keegan back in the 80s in the modern era? It would be impossible.

Don't know for sure, but I'd like to think he'll be back here for a bit. Would probably do him good to play one of the two friendlies coming up.

Correct.

Highly unlikely. Kenya haven't even qualified for the qualifying group stage yet, they're 1-0 down after the first leg in Lesotho. If they were to overturn it early next month, they'll then go into a qualifying group with Burkina Faso, Angola and Gabon, all of whom are ranked higher than Kenya. Edit: As DuncanRG managed much quicker than I above!

They've expanded it since that photo was taken. The corners are filled in all the way around now, and the stand opposite the main stand has an upper tier, I think.

Not sure our poor conversion rate is particularly recent, we missed a hell of a lot of good chances last season.

The reports were inaccurate. £18m is what they've offered so far (or at least, that was the case a week ago), with SFC demanding £25m.

That's a point, what's happened to him?

We had a 60-odd point lead over Surrey a couple of months ago. That's going to be down to 5 after this game, with 4 games to play, them in great form and us falling to bits. ****s sake.

The club is bound by a contract regarding Saints Player, so there has to be a certain amount of exclusive content on there. That will include highlights from competitive games, which they almost certainly won't be allowed to put on YouTube until those end of season review videos.

4-0, Steven Davis

3-0, Billy Sharp penalty

2-0 right on half-time, Calum Chambers.

Season ticket holders get a discount in the club megastore, and many Veho products will be available there, so I guess that's similar if not exactly the same.

As a guide, here's a list of the published "commercial revenues" of all of the PL clubs from 2012/13 (our first back in the PL, and the most recent where all club accounts are available): Man United £153m Man City £143m Liverpool £98m Chelsea £84m Arsenal £62m Tottenham £57m West Ham £20m Sunderland £19m Newcastle £17m Aston Villa £16m Everton £14m Norwich £13m Fulham £11m West Brom £10m QPR £9m Southampton £7m Swansea £6m Reading £5m Stoke £5m Wigan £2m Clearly those figures will have increased for the clubs who are still in the PL. Largely, that is as a result of the Financial Fair Play rules put in place which have prompted clubs to dedicate much more time to increasing their commercial revenue. I wouldn't say it's inconceivable that we might double that figure to £14m by the end of this season. My understanding is that the Veho deal is worth around £2m per year basic, with various revenue-sharing add-ons with the merchandise. However, the long and short of it is that we're small-fry compared to the likes of Man United. From 2015/16, their kit manufacturing deal with Adidas alone - ignoring the actual shirt sponsorship deal with Chevrolet - is worth £75m a year to them, with Adidas supposedly budgeting to make £150m a year out of it themselves. Terrifying numbers, really.