stevegrant

Shouldn't you have been concentrating on flying the plane rather than banging the cabin crew?

This win was without Carberry or Dawson, two of our key batsmen, as well. Even Joe Gatting got some runs!

You say "definitely" and yet don't provide any evidence of it, Nick. The two highest-profile former players who fell out with Cortese are Le Tiss and Benali. Le Tiss paid his own way whenever he had the opportunity, while Benali was banned from the stadium so didn't have that chance.

No, I meant when did anybody kick off about not receiving free tickets? I've seen people (you, mostly) constantly refer to it over the last few years, and yet I've seen pretty much zero evidence that anybody complained that they weren't given complimentary tickets by the club.

When did this happen?

Liverpool also took quite an amusing approach when it came to the £40m buyout clause that Suarez had in his contract - their attitude was "well, players don't seem to be too keen to honour contracts they sign these days, so why should we bother honouring this one?". Ballsy, legally dubious, and could easily have blown up in their faces if Suarez had dug his heels in, but it ultimately had the desired effect.

He will almost certainly have signed a non-disclosure agreement as part of his departure. That said, NDA's are nigh on impossible to enforce.

As subtle as a sledgehammer.

When did I say that employment law doesn't apply? Of course it does, it would be ridiculous to suggest otherwise.

Unlikely, IMO. The way contracts tend to work on the football side of things is that you either have a fixed-term contract or a rolling contract, as opposed to being a "permanent" employee. Suspect Dodd's is an annual rolling contract, but in order to terminate that contract, the club must pay compensation (in the same way as if they sacked the first team manager). The legal situation will more than likely just be negotiating that compensation.

The club probably can't say anything yet until whatever legal stuff is in progress has been completed.

But that's the point, everything falling apart in the six months to a year immediately after his departure only accentuates his own standing. "If only that nasty Katharina Liebherr had let the genius have full control of her money, they could have avoided all of this and embarked on a period of world domination", etc. Yep, absolutely true.

Make no mistake, those in charge at the club are well aware of what's going on and aren't happy, but realistically what can they do?

I'm guessing he probably doesn't, to be honest.

We're an easy target, especially with a disgruntled former employee providing them with bitesized chunks of bull**** that they can churn out in the name of "inside information" at regular intervals.

I doubt Ashton's ever been to St Mary's, to be honest. The Mail tends to send one of their rank and file sports journos (I think Sam Cunningham's been their main reporter down here this season), or even sometimes not even bother and just use Simon Peach's PA reports.

Meltdown

I wasn't aware that it was a prime requirement for someone in a coaching/management role to be at the peak of fitness.

What this place really needed was another Luke Shaw to Man United thread.

Another part of the sanction is that they're not allowed to pay a transfer fee for any player in either transfer window next season who they want to register for the Champions League, so unless those players are happy to sit it out for a season, that's not an option.

The fine is much of a muchness, as you say, they can afford it. The squad reduction is a pretty tough punishment, though. The UEFA competition rules state that clubs have to name 8 "home-grown" players - four of which are club-trained (3 years between 15 and 21), four of which are country-trained. If they don't have enough players to make the numbers up, they lose a place in their squad. They already faced that situation this season, and as a result could only name 23 players in their squad list for the Champions League. Next season, the maximum they can name is 21 rather than 25, and if they can't make up the 8 home-grown players, it'll be even fewer than that (i.e. if they can still only name 6 home-grown players next season, they'll only have 19 players for the Champions League). The end result is that they're going to have to name at least 4 fewer non-UK-trained players. Some of that will be covered by players who leave, the likes of Lescott and Richards, but the kicker is that those two made up a third of their home-grown quota this season!

Osvaldo didn't even make Italy's provisional 30

Not 100% sure either Croatia or Uruguay have confirmed their final 23s yet either, tbf. The last I saw was that Uruguay had named 25 and Croatia 30.

I assume that includes standby players as well?

So considering the definition of "fan-owned" clubs now seems to stretch rather further than what we assumed the benchmark to be, i.e. a controlling majority stake owned by the fans, which club by their own definition is now the biggest fan-owned club in the country? Do Swansea count? The supporters trust there owns 20% and has a seat on the board. Of course, with 20% they don't actually have enough to block anything the other 80% want to do, so perhaps it's not them. Crystal Palace are owned by a consortium of four men, each with a 25% stake: Steve Parish is definitely a Palace fan, as is Martin Long. There's nothing I can find that suggests that either Stephen Browett or Jeremy Hosking are Palace fans, though, so that's only 50% fan ownership. Norwich fans Delia Smith and her husband Michael Wynn-Jones are both Norwich fans, and have 53% of the shares in the club, so perhaps they are the biggest fan-owned club? Newly-promoted Burnley have their three largest shareholders (72% in total) on the board and are all lifelong supporters of the club. Then in the Championship playoff positions, there is Brighton and Hove Albion, wholly owned by Tony Bloom, a lifelong fan who has invested at least £100m of his own money into the club. Take your pick from any of those, but it sure as hell isn't Pompey...