James

This is normally the part where we tell jokes about his leg falling off in the medical

It both excites me and unnerves me that going into this season there are only three players - Botman, Schar and Pope that I am confident I know that they will be picked in a specific position whenever fit.

Did ASM ever actually manage 2 goal contributions in a game?

Hope he brought cash

really? I just posted the above as a joke

PAUL DUMMETT

Assume Dummett and Ritchie are starting tomorrow?

Schar is crocked apparently

get over it

suspect we are still trying to find a way to minimise how much Chelsea get

Is Frimpong still available?

Has Ryder confirmed that he is not related to Tino Asprilla or Valentino Lazaro? We need to know.

This Amazon documentary could effectively end Ten Hag’s career looking at that

a good season at Swansea and he will be worth a fair bit

But…..Frimpong

At this point probably worth mentioning that anyone we sign henceforth has missed pre-season and we all know how Howe is with players who aren’t properly conditioned / tactically prepared.

The player churn at Brighton means they are more than good enough for top 9 but they will have weaknesses that prevent the consistent results needed for a table climb

If Kane goes I couldn’t rule out Spurs getting relegated this season.

I’m sure there is a loophole in the PL tests that we will expose. e.g. a 40% sell on fee which gets activated as ASM is awarded player of the season and moves to another Saudi club for £58m meaning that we pocket an additional £23m

Last year I said 4th to 10th I think and I was chilled with 10th. This season I’m revising it to 2nd to 8th (plus at least a quarter final) and I am very chilled with 8th which means no Europe as there will be seasons with teething troubles. My biggest worry is the media and the idiot but vocal minority of fans if and when we aren’t showing CL or Europa form. The media will immediately go for Howe and try to create a narrative that the job is too big for him. Our board must resist this narrative and ignore the idiot fans that believe it.

looking for Jeff Hendrick

the ballot will not be completely random and probability of being selected will be determined by how many times you have previously been to matches and other data they have on you. you are very right, no commercial analysis, very back of envelope, but if we get 7,500 Group 4s at every match and they generate £50 extra commercial income that is £10m. then you look at sponsorship deals for clubs like Man Utd with a lot of Group 4 fans and you can assume that being able to generate £10-20m in sponsorship revenue on the basis of better fan engagement is easily very possible.

I think the ballot is going to be really important commercially, let me explain why. the commercial analysts at the club will have categorised the fan base, probably more nuanced than I am going to, but here we go: imagine a graph - the y-axis is how many games a fan attends, and the x-axis is the fan’s level of engagement (defined as willingness to engage in activity other than match tickets that generate revenue). Every fan is on this graph somewhere and of course part of the commercial lab will be getting more fans on the graph - but this post focuses on the fans we have. once positioned on the graph, the fan base can be split into 4 groups 1. High Attendance, High Engagement These are fans who go to every match, buy all the merchandise, spend a high proportion of their disposable income in the club. Think Adam P. These are the most lucrative fans to the club. Due to the constrained nature of season tickets and requirements this to be a fairly well off local person, the commercial arm of the club has limited scope to grow the number of people in the group (probably limited to a couple of thousand), and they can’t increase commercial income from this group as they are already spending a lot. the main objective for this group is therefore to keep them happy. 2. High Attendance, Low Engagement There are two subsets of these groups, those that have season tickets, and those who attend quite a few games a season. Both of these groups however have things in common, they don’t buy much merchandise, they don’t eat or drink at the stadium, so the per match income is very little over the ticket price. Think Greg or Crumpy Gunt. the commercial arm has very little scope to increase income from this group either, especially as constrained to 50,000 to 70,000 people. whilst the club likes its season ticket holders as a source of guaranteed income they may in the future try to reduce these numbers a little if they believe they can fill the stadium with more commercially viable fans. meanwhile, those fans who buy several individual tickets a season but don’t buy any extras, the commercial arm of the club hates them as they are blocking more profitable fans from coming to games. More on this in a moment. 3. Low attendance, low engagement. fans who don’t go to games and aren’t generating income for the club. This is the largest group of fans by far with the biggest opportunity to generate new sources of income. However as there are only so many match tickets, the commercial arm prioritises trying to increase engagement in this group. 4. Low attendance, high engagement Fans who are willing to spend a fair amount n non ticket revenue but for whatever reason can’t get to games and may be put off by competition for in-demand tickets. Of those fans in this group who get to a match, they spend significantly more per game. the commercial arm therefore loves this group, wants as many in this group as possible and then would like to see as many individual tickets as possible sold to this group at the expense of those who currently go to games more often. additionally potential sponsors are most interested in this group so having as many fans in this group as possible drives other commercial income. The ballot therefore does a few things. It cuts down on the unprofitable fans from group 2. It gets more of group 3 and 4 at games which generates extra revenue from group 4 whilst encouraging more on group 3 to transition to group 4. a quick back of envelope calculation on the basis of what I have described above has led me to the conclusion that the ballot will in the long term contribute to £20m - £30m new income per season.

Huge claims

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