stevegrant

You've started a thread on this already.

I'm sure there's a massive secondary market for tickets to Saints against Stoke City.

Interesting timing of this suggestion given his monumental ****up last night for Man City's equaliser He's been decent, but I'd imagine if we're looking for another keeper, it'll be one who can pass short and long distances - difficult to tell from his games for Sunderland whether he is capable of that.

Very difficult to tell, and to be honest you'd never be able to make a direct comparison, but as a guide, most German clubs generate around 40% of their revenue from commercial activities. A fair amount of that is sponsorship, but every club's retail operation is massive. Of course, because their TV deal is nowhere near as big as ours (€700m a year compared to £1.8bn, but did grow by 70% in the last tender) that means they have to focus on other areas, commercial and matchday being the other revenue streams. Bigger grounds allow for a stream of more money coming in that way, but while you see the headline figures of €109 season tickets at Bayern and Dortmund, that price is solely for the terraced areas with the corporate areas and premium seats on the halfway line subsidising those cheap prices. A lot of it is a culture thing - German clubs have had smooth retail operations going for decades, while it's arguably still not caught on properly in this country - and where the vast majority of clubs are at least 51% owned by the fans, there's a mutual appreciation for the need to supplement the matchday revenues through the megastores. Over here, we're much more cynical when it comes to merchandise, I think largely because historically it's been such **** quality and yet still sold at a premium price. Clubs have been desperate to squeeze the biggest margin possible out of these products on the basis that they've generally not been able to sell them, so you get a chicken and egg situation that they then won't pay for quality goods because they don't sell enough of the **** stuff, but they'd sell more if the quality was better.

Which makes our attitude towards the cup competitions even stranger, IMO.

But pretty much all of those issues were issues a year ago as well, and yet last summer Pochettino stayed (when he probably gave stronger hints that he'd leave than he has done this time around, oddly), all of our top players stayed, and we strengthened the team with three big-money signings. In the meantime, we've improved dramatically in the league, made progress in (and then needlessly tossed away our place in ) the cups and four of our players have been capped by England with the strong likelihood that three of them will be going to the World Cup. The absence of a raft of "I'm happy here and I don't want to do" quotes is arguably down to Cortese leaving and not forcing the media department to ask leading questions in Saints Player interviews that result in endless "I love it here and the chairman is doing wonderful things". For me, I don't necessarily think the players need to constantly remind everyone they're happy here, the evidence is there in front of our eyes.

A win Carberry hits his last two balls for six to win the game and seal his century. Unbeaten third-wicket partnership of 101 from 10.2 overs

Tidy partnership between Vince and Carberry, 76 runs at just 8.94 an over. Vince has 50 off 31 balls

If anyone could **** it up, it's us. 72 runs needed, 8 wickets (realistically 7 wickets due to Wheater's injury) in hand, around 45 overs to bat, on a wicket that's tended to only offer anything with the new ball.

Why doubt him now? Because he arbitrarily decided he was leaving here for good two months ago, only returning with a "oh actually this is my last post" bombshell which only achieves a bit of rabble rousing among those who seem desperate for something to complain about. My hunch is that his source left the club in February (around the time of his previous "final post", when a number of people left the club in the wake of Cortese's departure), so he had nothing to bring to the table anymore, and now he/his source has decided to throw the cat among the pigeons to try and stir things up, trading on the solid reputation he had built previously.

I don't quite understand why people are so desperate to hang on the words of somebody who suddenly disappeared for weeks when it became clear that the "meltdown" everyone had been predicting was a load of nonsense. While information provided in the past may have been accurate, that's no guarantee that information provided now is equally as reliable. Sources come and go, football club employees who you are friends with lose their jobs, the world continues to rotate.

And as if by magic... 215 to win. Still big favourites, but could do with a decent start to avoid putting too much pressure on the tail. Adam Wheater has a broken finger so won't bat unless he has to.

That 700 is a net loss. We've got around 20,400 season ticket holders this season, compared to more than 21,000 last season.

Some strange bowling choices considering they were hitting it to all parts before the new ball arrives. Ervine got 2-15 from 10 overs and yet hasn't bowled since tea

The point is that the German commercial model ensures that ticket prices are kept low because their fans spend loads on merchandise (far more than we do in this country). If fans didn't spend that money on merchandise, as you imply you don't/wouldn't, the ticket prices would have to rise to plug the gap. It's almost an implied social contract between the clubs and their fanbase.

£131 difference between the two, the view from block 3 is still good (as long as you're not right at the front) and you could put that saving towards some away games. I'm not convinced being sat right on the halfway line is £131 better, to be honest.

The commercial operations at German clubs is on another level to those at Premier League clubs. There is also almost an implied deal between clubs and their season ticket holders that, in exchange for cheap tickets, they'll spend a fortune on all sorts of club merchandise. If you think clubs in this country take the **** with replica shirts being replaced every year and costing a fortune, the Bundesliga goes one step further. Dortmund brought out a "winter" replica shirt, which was ever so slightly different from their normal home shirt, and they had a different shirt for the Champions League. The cheapest of those at the start of the season was €65.

How can the average price be £893.50 when the highest one is £759?

I think your maths needs a bit of work there.

Let's face it, nobody wants to pay more money than they did previously for the same product, so I can't say I'm overly thrilled, even though in the grand scheme of things a rise of £24 isn't that much. I can't help but think it would have been a quick and easy (and not that expensive) PR win for the club to at least freeze prices, especially with all the supposed uncertainty surrounding the first team at the moment. The club made a net loss of more than 700 season tickets last summer, I suspect we may see the same again this time around.

We have a lead Some truly woeful bowling figures for Gloucestershire, basically Gidman and Payne have restricted our scoring quite well, but we've been able to see them off and then score heavily against the others. MD Taylor 17 - 5 - 74 - 2 - 4.35 JK Fuller 12 - 1 - 79 - 0 - 6.58 TMJ Smith 12 - 1 - 71 - 0 - 5.91 Another point of interest, if Adam Wheater gets 55 or more in this innings, his first-class average will go above 40, from 94 innings. He's batting at number 8

100 for Vince, currently 283/6 going at more than 4 an over.

Looks like this wicket's a "get in and cash in" wicket. Scores of 139, 81 and 55 in Gloucestershire's innings but nothing else above 6!

Nope, the club confirmed yesterday that it'll remain on the Saturday.

I chucked a bit on Rose each way. That's gone well