ExiledAjax

It's a lack of technical legal knowledge for which I don't blame anyone. It's a slip of common lay language being applied to a distinct legal set up. It's nothing to beat them up for, but it's annoying as it conveys something wrong to fans (who also don't have the technical knowledge to spot the error).

No. We don't rent it. We are not tenants and we don't hold a lease for it. This is a common but important technical error of language that I have previously explained to Tom and the SC&T. If we did hold a lease then we'd have to sub-lease it to, or grant a licence to, the Bears, and the Women's team, and BS for the offices their staff use. We, and all those other teams, pay a licence fee to Ashton Gate Ltd to use AG on match days and as office space.

Yeh Birmingham did theirs at our away game there (they presumably use the calendar year rather than season) and it took up most of half time. But when you look at the numbers it's not too surprising. The annual death rate in the UK is about 1%.* So even if you just limited it to our STholders you can reasonably expect roughly 1% to die each year, so very roughly that's 150 people each year. Even giving just two seconds to each of those people takes you to a 5 minute memorial. Of course this can't be a precise prediction of how many fans will die each year due to the demographic of a football fanbase not perfectly reflecting the demographic of the country as a whole, but it's going to be close. These memorials can take names from the entire fanbase, not just STholders. You can see how any decent sized club will pretty easily run up a list of the dead that runs to a few hundred each season. It also shows why a minute's applause/silence for every dead fan is impractical. *ONS https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregistrationsummarytables/2021refreshedpopulations#:~:text=The overall age-standardised mortality,) (see Figure 1).

Yeh they've been planning it for a while.

£60 a pop probably

If I'm Leicester/de Marco all I really care about now is avoiding a points deduction this season. Next season is next season, a points deduction in the PL would hurt but we see from Everton and Forest that it's not a certain death/relegation sentence. Frankly any team relegated from the PL with PPs should be able to take a -6, even a -10 in the EFL (the ceiling is basically -12 as that's what you get for insolvency - see the Forest award for that analysis), and still have an excellent chance of a playoff or even top 2 finish. So what they really need to avoid is a deduction this season that pushes them into the playoffs. So delay, frustrate, delay again. Stick in all the Rule K applications you can. It doesn't really matter if you win or not, you just have to ask the question and force someone to spend time answering it.

Well de Marco clearly reckons it's at least useful as a delaying tactic. Which may absolutely be the intention here of course. Try and kick any EFL deduction into the "it's waiting for you if/when you're next relegated" long grass, and try and get any possible PL deduction either a) applied as late into next season as possible or b) applied in the EFL. I suspect b) is a very, very, very long shot, but the rest...a delay for the FA to sort out a Rule K might just be enough to achieve those aims.

Leicester are asking for an FA Rule K hearing to determine which league has jurisdiction over which issue and so which points can be deducted from which season by either competition organiser. Top banter.

Utterly spectacular. https://www.theguardian.com/football/picture/2024/mar/26/david-squires-on-england-flag-furore-kit-collar-woke-things-destroying-football

Yep, and you can see that initially it wasn't awful, and if we look at something like shots on target against them we did see an improvement under Manning initially. But it's gone off a cliff. Against looking at shots on target very roughly. Pearson's last 10 games - average of 4 per game. Manning's first 10 games - 3.6 per game. Manning's latest 10 games - 5 per game. Sorry I don't present this all as aesthetically as you do, but the downward trend expresses itself in many areas.

Oh FFS. Thank you. I looked at my goals for column again. This is why you should always question a stat. It's of course 16 in 14, which is 1.14 per game. The numbers are heavily influenced by small number bias. Which is ably demonstrated by my **** up here where one extra imaginary game for Pearson, with 0 goals conceded, improves his average from 1.14 to 1.07. Which is a big improvement from a relatively minor shift in the numbers.. That's the main reason I say that it's a fairly meaningless measure.

Yes it is. But it's still 1.26 p/g. I was looking at the goals for column for my 26 Quite.

Technically, but imo not meaningfully. Pearson was on 16 in 15 this season; 1.14 p/g Manning on 29 in 23; 1.26 p/g It's really a very small difference considering you can't actually score part of a goal. General shots against and shots on target against are basically the same. xG against is actually slightly better under Manning. Edit: also, it is deteriorating under Manning. Over his first few games it did appear that we'd tightened up a little at the back, but it's gone downhill in recent games.

Have to say, whatever my feelings about the legitimacy of the English football team, there's a damn classy Plantagenet coat of arms on display in this photo.

Sadly the constant use of sport to engineer division between the four home "nations" hardly moves the UK towards unity does it. **** devolution; rule Britannia.

I mean it's a fair confusion given people like calling England a country.

"David Seaman asked: “What’s next? Are they going to change the Three Lions to three cats?”" Seaman will be livid when he finds out Lions are actually cats. This whole thing is hilariously tinpot.

Cheeky plug for the Youth Cup as well. I for one cannot wait for that semi-final, the climax of our season that everyone has been working so hard to achieve.

De Marco will be very good...but he also just finished representing Forest so paying his rates definitely doesn't guarantee Leicester a clean slate.

I've thought for a while now whether we could have some sort of innovative "online season ticket" or something. I've never fully thought through what it should get you but essentially I'd see it as falling between an ST and a membership in terms of general ticket priority, but maybe with full ST priority for one home and one away game each season, and also including RobinsTV for all of the games that can be covered in the UK. Price it at something like £200. I don't know, it might be too complicated or not necessary or not workable, but I've sometimes thought it would be interesting to see something other than just ST, memberships, and POTD.

Possibly. And possibly.

Well I heard a little whisper that the Leicester board has been less than fully transparent with the ownership and there's more than a little discontent at the King Power right now. Issues off the pitch and on the pitch between players and coaches.

This whole furore looks particularly odd when you realise that Wales, England, NI, and Scotland aren't even countries in the modern sense. Having a sense of identity with one of the regions is fine, but imo the country we live in is the United Kingdom. However for queer historic reasons that country is permitted to enter 4 teams in certain international sporting competitions. Which is odd beyond belief. The st George's flag has about the same status as the bear of California or the Texan lonestar. It's a flag, of a region, of a country...but it's not a "national" flag.

Hang on. Hang on. Wasn't everyone sending a message about discontent or something when "no one" turned up to the Swansea game? Ah so it's actually pricing that determines crowds, not whether or not we play front foot football.

Every club that overspends does it knowingly. No club "accidentally" spends £30m more than they are supposed to. As to the regulator - it is not expected to directly deal with P&S/FFP breaches. Breaking those rules might require a club to notify the regulator of a change in circumstances, and it might require a revision of the clubs business plan, a serious breach could even lead to the regulator taking action against the directors for failing the new competency test. But it would still be the PL/EFL actually charging, investigating, and punishing clubs for the FFP breach itself.