North London Red

I believe our game at Forest in early February will go down as the last ever FA cup replay. Aston Villa played Chelsea in a 4th round replay the same evening, but Chelsea won that in 90 minutes whereas our game went to extra time and penalties.

If they beat Watford this afternoon, Southampton could suddenly be back in the hunt for automatic promotion. They go to Leeds on the last day, which could be tasty. They also go to Leicester in a couple of weeks.

They were ranked 10th from May to August 2021. Edit: and climbed to 9th later that same year.

It’s not true. Belgium and Croatia at home in the nations league, Italy home and away in the Euros qualifiers, Spain in Seville, and Denmark in the last Euros, were all ranked in the top 10 when England beat them. Haven’t checked any other games but pretty quickly found six examples of Southgate beating top ten teams.

Chance to catch up with friends from around the country who support other clubs and who I’ve travelled to previous tournaments with. Loyalty points which build up to guaranteeing tickets for the big knockout games in world cups and Euros (‘you’re so lucky to get tickets to that quarter / semi final / final’ - no, its a result of putting in the hard yards at dour friendlies and qualifiers). Tonight wasn’t great, and I’d far prefer home games to go on the road around the country, but there are reasons people go!

Pedantry alert, but it was 12 points initially, then reduced to 6, then reduced to 0. I think the appeal was made by Sugar on the grounds the irregularities were committed under previous owners.

We’ve been losing a six figure sum every week for years (transfer profits notwithstanding), so are we really in a position to turn down an extra thousand or more away fans by restricting away sales to 2,000? Not every team will bring more than 2k but some do. And it’s not as if we’ve got an equivalent number of home fans unable to get tickets every week.

OK thanks, makes sense.

Which City player were they referring to (sorry if explained elsewhere and I’ve missed it)?

Swansea corner that went for a throw-in on the same side as the corner taker has been the highlight so far.

21st and 22nd both currently have 38 points from 35 games. Extrapolating that to 46 games would equate to 50 points. Now Stoke and Huddersfield might both pick up a bit between now and May, but that would likely be at the expense of one of the other 7 teams currently between Huddersfield and ourselves in the table (or ourselves, in an Armageddon scenario), so 50 points is probably a reasonable proxy for where the line will be drawn. Peterborough went down on 54 a few years ago, which was an exceptional year. By the time Rotherham come to Ashton Gate they’ll already be down. That game is probably the likeliest source of a win in our remaining games, and I suspect we’ll scramble a few other points here and there to take us past 50. The other thing in our favour (at present) is goal difference - it’s more than 10 better than each of the current bottom 8. So in summary, I think it’s unlikely we’ll go down, but not impossible. Cue a final day relegation decider at Stoke now I’ve said that.

Coventry in a play off final would be a 7th different ground in living memory for older fans (Ashton Gate, Highfield Road, Ricoh / Coventry Building Society Arena, Sixfields, St Andrews and Burton), although I think the game at St Andrews was behind closed doors due to covid restrictions.

West Brom’s finances are tight at present so I would expect this is primarily an economic decision. Either they’re confident of selling the extra 1,000 tickets to home fans (where there might some uncertainty on their side as to whether we’d sell a full 3,000 allocation) or their policing and stewarding bill might be lower if there are fewer away fans.

London to Manchester, Manchester to Middlesbrough on two separate tickets works that day. It’s a long time on trains, with an early start and a late return to Euston, but it’s doable.

Last posting day was yesterday. From today it’s collection only, which is a pain as an exile who can’t make the Leeds match on Friday. Couldn’t the club have extended the postal deadline by a couple of days? 8 days before the game seems a bit extreme.