SteV

The contract extension thing isn’t necessarily mandatory if both parties don’t want it to be though. If Howe was to say to him at the end of the season, “thanks but you’ll probably not play much next season”, he might think he’s better off going somewhere else on a free, which would probably mean he could still command decent wages, than hanging about here not playing. Alternatively, Howe might want to keep him?

Howe does actually touch on it briefly in his presser today at about 4:45 in

For a (not so) in-depth tactical analysis, watch the Cambridge game with Murphy/Maxi up top, then watch any subsequent game with Wood there instead.

How do you know Villa weren’t trying to sign him for longer than we were? It just appears like that to us because we’re all over every bit of transfer news Newcastle-related. If some obscure Peruvian journo reported three months ago that Brighton were interested in some random over there, most of us would have no idea until it broke on SSN that’d he’d arrived for talks.

It’s the same for everyone man. You’re just not sat scouring social media and forums of other clubs for any tit bit of transfer news relating to them.

Void if he doesn’t start

365 have him 4/1 for 2+ SoT on Saturday which is miles better than anywhere else

£2.5m for beating BATE or Copenhagen or someone in the group stage. Jesus.

Apparently there were loads of Man Utd in the home ends last night so sounds like they should be used to it

I appreciate everyone has tried to blank Emmanuel Riviere from memory, but he’s scarred too many of us for him to be erased from club history.

I do genuinely worry about people that can’t see what he contributed last season, and how integral he was for us to be able to do what we did. But I think everyone is beyond bored with the argument. He leaves, I’d say with the best wishes of the majority, and it’s time to get excited about what Eddie and Dan have got lined up replacement wise.

So let them join the non-points related ballot…

You can’t do that. If games are constantly selling out at ~50+ points, you create a no-mans land of people with 21-49 points that can’t get tickets either way. Any form of ballot/reserved tickets would have to be open to all ST holders.

Also the thing with club shop merchandise points idea is, if you think there’s buying to sell with tickets for loyalty points sake, wait until people start buying 100 shirts to sell on…

Aye, they wouldn’t exactly be the first team that would spring to mind if you were thinking of clubs that have this issue. Although I reckon it’s probably the London games where the demand is high for them. No kind of travel, so probably get plenty looking to go.

Brighton have started doing something similar. Randomly (or maybe not that randomly…) selecting a small number of tickets for each game that have to be picked up on the day with ID. Not entirely sure what the consequences of not picking them up are? Maybe just get selected again for the next game? Probably a fair enough idea if collecting them isn’t too much of an onerous task.

Problem with this is I think you just encourage more ‘buy to sell’ by people who want to stay at the top of tree. At the minute, if you’ve got loads of points and you’re not going to a game, you don’t really need that point, so no massive incentive to sell on (unless someone you know specifically asks you for a ticket). However, once it’s a rolling points total, let’s say three years, there’s only about a maximum of 70ish points available, so you’re going to want to stay as close to that maximum total as possible, hence buying to sell at every opportunity.

This kind of thing is definitely the eventual answer. Like you say though, clearly difficult to implement. But England have something along these lines (I think?), so it’s edging closer.

Whilst I understand the logic of that, I’m not sure I fancy having to queue for an extra however long to get in, as it would take substantially longer if they were going to do it properly and not half-arsed like the majority of stuff is done relating to stewarding.

Sensational

Forest obviously realised how influential he was in helping us stay up last year, and hope he does the same for them.

I’m not sure how common it is really. Not doubting that it happens and @bowlingcrofty does know some of the folk that do it, but there’s not that many with massive points (see the Bournemouth game currently on sale) and a lot of those are regulars who go week in week out. If they were able to prevent it somehow, I certainly don’t think you’d see points totals to sell out dropping significantly lower. Although that’s all just opinion obviously.

On the face of it, that would seem like a reasonable compromise. However I think West Ham tried something similar to this recently and it didn’t really work for whatever reason. I guess you look at a game like Bournemouth, that is going to sell out at something ridiculous like 160/170 points. If you had given 10/20% to ballot, it would be 180. If you’re on 175 points and have been travelling all over, can’t get a ticket, but folk on 0 points have nabbed one in a ballot, you’re gonna be pissed off. I don’t know the answers. Reading social media (I know, I know…), you’ve almost got two camps. The camp that can get tickets who think no-one else was arsed until the takeover, and the camp that can’t get tickets that think everyone that can has been fiddling the system by selling them on. Neither view is correct, but that’s where we are.

Now, now, play nice…. It’s not just that you were wrong. If you said he’d scored two goals, and it was in fact three, that would be being wrong, but it wouldn’t make much difference to the overall argument. But the fact is you were completely wrong about a fundamental aspect of his game, which, like I keep repeating, suggests you don’t understand the aspects of his game that made him particularly useful for us last season, if a fair bit less so this season.

Yeah, I don’t really like the idea of ballots tbh. I get that in some ways they can be argued to be the fairest way, but the situation we’re in, you’ve got some lads (and lasses) who been to just about every game for years and years, and now because we’ve got good and everyone wants to go see us, you’d be saying to them, sorry it’s now pot luck whether you get a ticket. That would seem shit. Equally, it’s definitely an area of concern that youngsters, who’ve not been around long enough to accrue much in the way of points, aren’t going to get that chance. I do think they’ll have a bit more chance going forward when we’re playing more games with Europe etc, but still. As ever though, no easy solution.