should be a busy board on not606 next season... Gills, Wycombe and the mighty Sunderland all cosy together. Probably going to lose Charlton and unsure of Plymouth at the stage. But should make for a pretty decent bit of banter next season. @Ron you might get a fair few more in your betting league next season if you tag the Gills and Sunderland lads in.
Cheers brb. I'm a bit worried about having too many in the competition in its current format to be honest. Single bets are a doddle because they are all automated and I can cope with a hundred or more entries (as per the Cheltenham Festival Horse Racing Comp I did in March - even had entries from another horse racing site). But, in the League comp, I allow all sorts of fancy bets which are relatively time consuming and I doubt I could cope with a significant increase. A few more would be fine and we would welcome some more but I'm not going to promote it for fear of ending up with too much work. I could restrict bets to single bets but, in view of the successes some have had with their muli-bets, I doubt that would be very popular. I could run an additional comp if it would be useful (basically along the lines of one of my horse racing comps). Pick (say) 5 matches and predict home win or draw. Odds to £10. One prediction can be a nap for which you get double points. Or I could make it more demanding (eg select 5 matches and predict the score. If you get the home team score correct you get 5 points plus the number of goals. If you get the away team score correct you get 5 points plus the number of goals. If you get the correct score the points are doubled. Or something like that. Plenty of time to think about it
Just watched the video of Trevor Stroud on the WWFC site saying Sunderland's parachute payment is 8 1/2 times our budget just shows the difference. Money is not everything the owner of Eastleigh put thousands of pounds in there & they have had their worse season in the National League.
Not everything but can be quite significant though philhythe. There is a post on the Pompey board asking where the rest of the money is going from their mega gates they get. So, the rules state you are only allowed to spend 55% of your income on wages and transfers etc anyway. Technically having a massive gate should not advantage any club too much although it is bound to to a certain extent. With Sunderland they would be able to factor in their parachute payment as income so of course that is bound to give them a huge advantage. It may not work but it is certainly going to mean they can attract pretty much anyone they want in the Championship/league one shop. However, do you really believe that clubs stick to this 55% rule at all if they choose not to? You will not convince me that Blackburn and Wigan or Portsmouth do that now. There are other clubs who obviously get income from a source that is at best dubious. Fleetwood is one example of that. Their gates are no better than your's yet they compete financially in league one with no trouble at all. Answer is rich owner prepared to subsidise. They simply bend the rules is how it's done. There is no such thing as a level playing field in football no matter which league you are in. If I had the money all I would have to do is change the name of the stadium to whatever I picked and sponsor it to the tune of £10m a season. 55% of £10m plus the normal income would give my club a budget far in excess of most. But it would be income. Clubs fudge the figures all the time and it is very very hard to compete with it. My guess is Accrington in particular will struggle with the money side because gates of 2500 without the benefit of a backer will mean they have league 2 players in league one and they would be very lucky to survive on that. Football is about money and that's the end of it these days I'm afraid.
Pierre has another 2 years on his contract so we couldn't afford him, plus Ingram was sent back to QPR for not being good enough for League 1.
I don't think we would want Pierre now to be honest. Ingram not good enough for L1? I find that difficult to believe
He was on big bucks and they played him mainly at left back or on the bench and Ingram confidence was shot playing behind their porous defence I can see them doing a Chesterfield
When I have watched goal rush on C5 did'nt see much of Pierre has he played many games. That was a stupid decision to give him a three year contract no wonder he left.
Surprised Ingram was not deemed good enough, but Pierre was an awesome as a big brute of a defender, maybe more finesse and an ability to play out from the back are needed the higher level you play.
