stevegrant

I think that rule was quietly removed from the broadcasting contract that started last season. However, there are upper and lower limits for each of the seven packages that Sky and BT bid on as part of the current contract: Essentially, that graphic shows that Sky and BT could get away with showing a club as few as five times over the entire season, or as many as 28 (strangely, exactly the number of times Liverpool were shown last season) of 38 league games.

Also, Arsenal away has been pushed back a day to Wednesday 3rd December as a result of the Manchester City game being televised.

Games picked in Sky's first block of games: Liverpool away, now Sunday 17th August, 1:30pm Aston Villa away, now Monday 24th November, 8:00pm Manchester City home, now Sunday 30th November, 1:30pm BT still to announce their first block.

If it's on TV, as seems inevitable, we'll take the 1900 allocation tops.

You'd have to route your internet traffic through a proxy or VPN so Sky Go thinks you're in the UK.

Good start Win the toss and bat first against what appears to be a second-string Essex bowling attack (only Napier would be first choice at the moment), with the part-time dibbly-dobbler Jesse Ryder opening, and we're 30/4, FFS!

Depends what criteria have been used. If they take the cheapest adult season ticket available anywhere in the ground then we're probably quite high, but I'd expect all the London clubs to be comfortably more expensive than ours on average, likewise Liverpool and Man United, and perhaps Man City as well.

I still don't get why the club set a deadline for buying a season ticket, especially more than a month before the first home game. Why not give everyone as long as possible to come up with the money?

Have they actually signed anyone yet?

The main reservation I have with Forster is that, from what I've seen, his distribution is terrible. Boruc's is bad, but at least he throws accurately and kicks cleanly (perhaps too clean, judging by the number of long balls to full backs that end up out of play) - every time I've seen Forster play, he looks rushed with backpasses and ends up scuffing them all over the place. If we are likely to continue with the possession-based style, that could be a problem.

Snippet of info, by the way, I think they wanted to have everything done and announced yesterday, but it turns out that Tadic speaks much better English than his agent, so the club had to find a Serbian translator for all the legal stuff.

Brendan Rodgers has (rightly) realised that they were pretty fortunate last season in terms of injuries, and of course didn't have the distraction of European football. As a result his players remained fresh throughout the season. No such luck this time around as a result of finishing second, so his squad certainly needs bulking out. That said, it seems very strange that, with the exception of Lovren, he's concentrated his efforts on the attacking part of the team, with which he had absolutely no problem last season, and has done bugger all about the back 4 that shipped 50 goals. In terms of the finance, they were televised live a record TWENTY-EIGHT times last season (out of a possible 38 ), and their commercial revenues are huge. Of course, they're also selling Luis Suarez for around £65m.

I'm assuming she was reporting on a Pompey story there...

Official announcement incoming...

I think so. Used to be Mark McAdam, but I think now that Bournemouth are a moderately interesting club as far as SSN are concerned he tends to concentrate on them now.

In which case the obvious answer would be "we'll leave it, thanks". It's not "nearly impossible" to include him back in the squad, it's only us fans who will have any beef with him at all, his team mates won't give a toss - I suspect they'd be delighted to have him back.

Did you see some of the **** Martin Skrtel got away with last season??

Three runs short of another batting point, which will have been a bit frustrating, but Tomlinson got his maiden first-class fifty. He and Balcombe rather put our middle order's "efforts" yesterday to shame.

Did a clean sweep of all their Player of the Year awards last season.

If they do go to £25m, then of the three I would argue the only actual "value" signing they've got there is Lambert. Lallana and Lovren would be significantly overpriced, but in what is (in theory, at least) a seller's market, that's the way it is. I'm sure we'd have liked to have only paid £5m for Tadic, but Twente were well within their rights to demand more than that.

Perfectly acceptable.

Has Schneiderlin said anything more recently than his "I'll meet with the new manager and see what he has to say" quote? I must admit I've not been following that particular saga too closely.

As I said previously on this thread, I'm not 100% certain the quotes attributed to him in that Croatian newspaper actually came from him. I suspect his agent - or someone else working on his/Liverpool's behalf - has been authorised to attribute quotes to him with the intention of forcing this move through, but it doesn't appear to have worked very well so far. That's not to say that he doesn't want to go to Liverpool, he clearly does, but I'm far from convinced that he'd actually go on strike to force it through. He's due back next week, I believe, so I guess we'll find out for sure then.

This assumes the wage figures in Football Manager are accurate. I would suspect not. Wouldn't be surprised if he was on £40-45k with us, that seems about par for the PL these days.

The question was what's your starting XI based on the players at the club right now. Fair to assume the Tadic signing is done, so he's included. On the flipside, we know Rodriguez won't be available until near Christmas. With that in mind, I'd go: Boruc Clyne - Lovren - Fonte - Targett Wanyama - Schneiderlin Ramirez - S Davis - Tadic Osvaldo ( )