leffe186

The match going culture has been diluted because of the price of tickets now. Te cheapest adult ticket at SJP is £25, so if you are a family of 2 adults and 2 kids it would cost the best part of £100 to attend a game. The remaining money that you would save on the child tickets would surely be taken up by just having a bottle of pop and some chips each. £100 on average every fortnight is a lot of money. Going to every home league would cost about £1,900 a season. It's not just the premiership clubs either. In February I went to see Doncaster play at home against Watford. When I first enquired about tickets we were told they were £22 each for the cheapest tickets or £25 for the better tickets. That price put off 3 members of my family from going so it was just left with me and a friend of mine going and we got in for £15 each when we payed at the gate. We didn't know up until then that the tickets would be reduced and no doubt many people who attended the game would have payed full price. People can't afford those prices, especially when you factor in travel costs/parking (which is getting worse with more out of town stadiums popping up), and of course your half time pie and pint then the price goes up even more. That's right, but just one factor. Allowing PL games to be televised at 3pm on Saturday would be another. Thankfully we haven't gone down that route yet. Edit: and your mate would be even less likely to go if the match was on TV in the pub.

Bit harsh - I wouldn't say we are fragile or that it took us a ridiculous amount of luck to get there. Essentially, just when we were well placed to break through after years of building, Man City won the lottery. Then Abramovich got interested again, then Liverpool picked up a decent lottery win themselves. Doesn't sound like much good luck for us there. I do agree that if Chelsea and City are allowed to carry on as they have been, then bracket that with Arsenal and Man U's income and it's impossible to compete on the same level. Impossible. However, which couple of our best players do you mean? Bale and Modric? That would leave us with Van Der Vaart, Sandro, Huddlestone, Lennon and a strong supporting cast. Plus an absolute shitload of cash. I hope they stay, but can't see us falling apart next year.

They did it deliberately, gave people short-term contracts to avoid financial trouble if they went down. Fair play to them for that, and fair play to the players for taking it, knowing they then had to prove themselves.

Will still be green.

You could have said that at any point this season. Most of our home games this season have looked exactly like this one. You'd have thought Harry would have come up with a couple of new ideas by now.

weren't the spurs board making noises to the effect that they'd have to trim a few things if they failed to reach the champs league ? Yeah, I think they have. Our feeling is that Gallas' wages, for one, were only coverable due to CL money. The nice thing is that there are plenty of ways to trim without affecting the first team (Keane, Dos Santos, Bentley etc). The bad thing is that we might have to take a hit on their value to offload them.

Yes they are very well run. People on here have used them as an example of a club pursuing their ambition by throwing money about. That's a myth - they invest what they can afford. The key reason is the wages structure. Look at their squad and you will find their wages unbelievably low. I wonder what this year's figures will look like? Something has to give at some point and clearly they've fallen short of their target this year. Plus they have "currency speculator" Joe Lewis on hand to regularly put in £10-£20m, which has happened a few times over recent years. No it hasn't, that's specifically why Conn includes the stat on what the owners have put in. Abramovich has put in 739M because Chelsea have been making a consistent loss. Lerner has put in 200M plus. As the article says, there has been a 15M share issue at Spurs (which I think was for player investment plus the training ground. Or maybe Conn's wrong. Which times are you referring to?

It is worth repeating - Chelsea had the second best score for respect to referees. That's Chelsea. Chelsea.

Our gate receipts are pretty impressive considering we are in Championship. Turnover for the coming year could be close to 90m excluding Carroll's money. And seems like Liverpool would be in deep deep trouble for the coming year's figures. 121m wages are terrible for a club with only Europa places this year and no Euro competitions next year. They may have to sell before buy. Liverpool still have a pretty solid turnover though, even considering the loss in income due to missing out on Europe. The key for them will be Fenway, who are surely in for the long haul. They've already ploughed in some serious money. I did think our wage bill would be higher, keeping it at 56% was a surprise. We need to offload a handful of high earners this year, as "extra" players' wages (Gallas, VDV) will have been offset by the CL revenue and other clubs picking up at least some of the tab on people like Keane and Bentley. Pleasantly surprised by the figures shown. I thought that that 156M for property development for Arsenal was included the last time Conn did this? I just do not get Man City or Chelsea. Honestly. They must know something we don't about the new financial constraints. Man City's commercial activities magically increasing to 53M? More than Arsenal's, and not far off Liverpool's? If the fair play regulations mean even a tiny fraction of what they're supposed to mean then they'll get laughed out of Europe.

It's gonna be a loooooong summer.

An element? It's their raison d'etre.

Well I want them to go down, go bust, fold and not be allowed to re-form; so their Essex fans can go to Dagenham and Redbridge and their East London fans to the mighty O's. No half measures. Edit: West Ham that is [/typingtooslowly]

They sold carrick and berbatov for big money, but it was invested back in to the team. Come this summer they'll sell at least Bale, and will invest that money as well. We've had this discussion before. We didn't really choose to sell Berbatov or Carrick to develop the squad, they both wanted to move and so we just managed to screw a lot of money out of Man U for them. We did re-invest that money though, and you need to re-invest at least some of the Carroll money in new players, as well as boosting Tiote's contract etc. The point is that selling our best players to build the squad was never a matter of policy. You could argue that in both cases we only offloaded one marquee player. If you sell Enrique, that's two that you've sold in one season, which makes life tough. I do think that losing a left-back is less problematic though, however good that player is.

An interesting perspective, and one which has gone ignored in this thread, sadly. Would be interested to know what other people think of this, perhaps worth discussing in another thread? I do think that you're right about the top few spaces becoming a closed shop, that seems pretty universally accepted. What to do about it though? What you're pointing up are structural concerns about how the game is now...and the odds do seem stacked up against anyone but the top 5/6 teams, but are you saying there's no point even having a go? The utterly depressing problem is that we (Spurs) did have a go, built a squad from scratch over 5 or 6 years and challenged the Top 4 two or three times. Man U were consistently there along with Chelsea and Arsenal, but you could see the cracks appearing at Liverpool and it looked like Roman was getting bored. Now we're all in an even worse position. Man U still cruising, Liverpool sorting their life out (and getting bailed out by some Americans based pretty much on their name), Roman back to massive spending and Man City winning the lottery. Even Arsenal, while faltering, are still in third and only need a couple of blatantly obvious purchases to sort themselves out. We're all desperately hoping that the financial fair play regulations will rein them all in, but I'm not holding my breath.

This, tbf, probably even more so next year than this. Man City's money has started to tell, Liverpool are rumoured to be spunking a huge wad this summer and Man U, Chelsea and Arsenal are not about to get any worse. I hate that I'm even considering the possibility that missing out on the Europa would be a bonus this year. The UEFA used to be a really tough challenge and some years rivalled the European Cup for difficulty, but now UEFA have utterly, utterly devalued it. The main obstacle I can see you having next year is the fact that very few of the clubs challenging for 5th-8th next year will have to deal with Europe. In past years, clubs like Villa and Spurs have struggled to keep up a challenge in Europe and the League, and it's put a great deal of pressure on their squads. That (probably) won't be the case next year.

Fuck knows?? They spent over 70 millions pounds in Jan for starters.

Barnet going down and Orient not going up. Bad day.

Oh, the irony. If Fulham are singing that at you, it really is time to get your coat.

Hee hee. Lovely build-up from Fulham, lovely finish from Sunderland.

Just an unbelievably stupid, pointless second booking from Scharner. What a tool.

Ovrebo was disgraceful though, tbf.

If they get through then the Madridistas won't give any kind of a fuck.

I love how terrible the tank is.

Weirdly, I like that that tackle happened. We need a bit of aggro in MLS to get the crowds going.

Would have been different if they'd played the whole allotment [/hoaryoldfootballjokes]