SteV

Man Utd would be mental to loan him out. He was their third top scorer this year.

The thing is if you swapped Diame’s two halves of the season around, i’m sure plenty would be saying “can’t vote for Diame as he was so poor after Xmas”. That said to go from someone that virtually no-one wanted to see anywhere near the starting eleven, to someone who’s consistently bossing the likes of Pogba and Kante, is astonishing. It’s across the whole season though, and for that reason it has to be Lascelles.

To be fair none of the three promoted teams have really looked like they were especially likely to drop. All had bad runs at some point, but never been in the bottom three for a sustained period.

Huddersfield.

Swansea AND Southampton.

There’s always people that don’t renew for non-footballing reasons so there’ll always be season tickets on sale. Might be less now than there has been in previous seasons mind.

Seems his mother unfortunately passed away this morning as well. Perhaps it wasn't the shopping.....

I hope whatever we laid out is refunded. Fucking waste. Signing an injured player was a joke anyway. Yep, can see Leicester being bang up for giving us our couple of mil back.

Probably the shopping in Eldon Square tbh.

I wouldn't say they're skewed, they're just being used as an indicative measure of which games you could have attended with X number of points. In the Arsenal example , yes there probably weren't many tickets left when it got down to 5 points, but as if you had say 10, you would have got one. Essentially it's showing you didn't need many points to get an Arsenal ticket, but you needed loads for a Bournemouth one. Point taken about non-ST holders that can get a ticket through people they know, unfortunately no system is going to prevent that, other than an England-type one where you have to have ID to pick-up your ticket, and I suspect that would be a logistical nightmare to implement.

As long as you keep your season ticket, you keep your points. Which is perhaps where those who would argue against the current system would say it's unfair, you might not have been to an away game for 5 years but if we draw Sunderland in the cup, you could still get first dibs due to your points from previous years. Obviously on the flip side, if you've racked up all the games, however long ago, why shouldn't you get first dibs on such a game. Like everyone says, no system is perfect, but I think the majority accept ours is pretty fair. That's not to say it shouldn't be looked at and potential changes discussed every now and again.

Based on those figures, we only have 24,062 ST holders? That can’t be right surely? Unless there are 10,000+ fans with 0 points, which I’d be surprised at. I asked that and apparently it relates to fans that have at least 1 point (that could probably be made clearer in the piece), so yeah, it seems we have somewhere between 10k - 15k fans with 0 points. Perhaps not that surprising when you think about how many families there are in Level 7 that probably wouldn't ever consider an away game.

Some interesting stats in this piece: http://www.true-faith.co.uk/nufc-loyalty-points-myth-busting/

Ah, good point. Yes, it does appear a little/very weird now.

You're surprised? Really? It would happen anywhere. Opposition player makes accusation of racial abuse against one of your players. Your player strenuously denies it. Investigation finds it to be unproven/false. Wouldn't be surprised if that Wolves player gets booed if/when he rocks up here next season. And his allegation was found proven (albeit on what appeared fairly flimsy evidence) If he doesn't is probably because a lot of folk have forgotten which player it was.

What happens if no-one buys them? Presumably he's not allowed to takeover Sunderland until he's got rid of Eastleigh?

McLaren had one as well didn’t he?

4 I think.

Ricky Alvarez - 4 Paid £10m for someone that played 13 times for them and they ended up racking up God knows how much in legal costs trying to avoid paying for him. Yet apparently still twice as good a signing as Rodwell.

https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/sport/football/plan-ensure-mohamed-salah-peak-14412792

Indeed. I was there that day, and for all the world I would have told you he rattled it into the stanchion, as I was right behind it. However, I've just watched it again on YouTube and wasn't in the top corner at all, only about halfway up the net. Funny how the mind plays tricks.

It's been very noticeable this season. I'd say there's at least 500 empty seats spread across level 7 every match now (If you grouped everyone together you would probably be left with an entire empty section). It's strange because tickets are so hard to come by for home games at the minute yet all these seats, all in the same area of the stadium, are left empty. Maybe it's something that could be brought up at the Fans Forum next week., Completely meaningless subject in the grand scheme of things so yeah they'll probably be happy to discuss. Well, not really. If the discussion centred around a way of ‘selling’ your season ticket for a game you weren’t attending, I think that would be meaningful.

https://twitter.com/JonnyGabriel/status/987262690447028225

That’s not how things work. I don't know, the mackems would be on the verge of the play-offs if they hadn't sold Mannone.......

More or less, but I think SteV was talking post-expansion. I wasn't, but you're actually right. If we somehow were to expand, we probably wouldn't be recouping the layout for that for a good few seasons, and obviously that would be reliant on selling-out the expanded capacity. I think we need to be careful with expansion. I used to work with a Leeds fan, who always said Newcastle don't have more fans than Leeds (and many other teams), it's just that all your fans go to the match. And to an extent he's right. I think the primary reasons for that are the stadium location, which is unrivaled in this country, and perhaps from that a culture's developed that if you support Newcastle you go to the match. The way things are at the minute you absolutely feel we'd sell-out a 65k stadium, but if something were to happen that resulted in Rafa leaving.....