Promotion watch (now with Poll)

The 17,500 cap per club is for match only ticket but they can sell more if the ticket is sold with coach travel so Oldham are selling 17,500 match only tickets plus 9,000 match & coach tickets so if both clubs do the same it's still 53,000 tickets sold which easily breaks the record for the National League final.

These engineering works will have been planned months in advance and I can understand why they took the gamble on doing it next sunday as the National League final very rarely gets above 25,000. If the semi finals go the other way then this isn't a talking point as FGR vs York would struggle to get to 17,500 between them. If FGR win their penalty shoot out they would be able to give FGR the 5,000 they would need at most and the rest to Oldham.

 

If Sunderland play like they did in the semi-finals they'll get battered. Need to step up. It's a one off match. Give it a go. Do feel united are much stronger though.

 

There's a much bigger issue in play if the Blunts go up, which potentially affects the whole pyramid.
Today I'm full on mackem

 

Yep 100%. I think it's well and truly a pyramid issue at all divisions. It's the same or similar teams every season, maybe you get the odd one or two new teams across the play offs.

The pyramid isn't a gradual drop anymore, they are cliff edges and it needs a change.

 

Liverpool, Arsenal, Aston Villa, Chelsea, Manchester United, Crystal Palace, Bournemouth, Fulham and Everton are American owned, add Leeds and Burnley and that's eleven, Sheffield would make twelve.
Fourteen are needed to change PL rules.
The Championship will have Wrexham, Birmingham, Norwich City, Millwall, Swansea and West Brom. with the potential to be promoted.
no relegation? franchise football? funding lower leagues? 39th game etc.

 

We need a German owned club in there.....

 

Vorsprung durch football or technik or summat.

 

I want to know what is the point of VAR? So several refs say to the ref on the field we will take a look at that; several minutes later, they then tell him to take a look? Why? There is no way the ref could have called it offside. He then goes and looks and reverses his decision. I don’t see why extra time should be used by the ref on the field when several of them upstairs have already seen it.

while I am on my rant, why is there a delay by linesmen in putting up the flag for offside, what are the reasons?

 

The referee has to make the final decision, when it is subjective like this was the referee has to go over to the monitor as they might not agree, whilst in theory they could disagree against factual decisions they never would as that would be arguing with facts so they take the word of VAR and go on their recommendation.
The delayed flag is to allow VAR to correct mistakes, if the flag goes up immediately then VAR can't reverse a wrong decision as it either wouldn't be able to end in a goal or the whistle would go before the ball goes in.

 

Sunderland promoted.

 

happy days

 

If the ref on field makes the decisions what is the point of VAR? It takes forever and the ref defers to them because they have looked at it 20 times from every angle. Cricket have a review system but the decisions are reached by umpires looking
at the TV and communicates to the field umpires.
It is a nonsense, and the delayed offside decisions are farcical in my view.

 

That game is exactly why there should never be any discussions of ending the play offs. Sheffield United's record in the play offs is quite something now standing at 10 play offs and 0 promotions from them.

Before the Sunderland v Marseille game at VP I was talking to a couple of Sunderland fans walking up to the ground from North Parade and they were very pessimistic of their chances of top 6 never mind going up as they couldn't see where the goals were coming from and the lack of experience in the squad.

 

Cricket is completely different as it is nearly all factual whereas football is the opposite. The point of VAR is to the be able to look at the incidents whilst the game is going on and it speeds up the reviews as they can check much quicker than the referee needing to go to the monitor for every possible review.
If we didn't have delayed flags then VAR would only take away goals, it would never award them. On Monday night Brighton's 2nd goal against Liverpool was only scored because of a delayed flag. With no delayed flag the game is stopped immediately, that goal is never scored

 

We will have to agree to disagree on this. I am not against VAR, or technology but I think it needs changing.

 

They are waiting for VAR to make the decision, if a goal, pen etc.