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New Stadium Details And Discussions

Lilbaz

Just call me Baz
Apr 1, 2005
41,363
74,893
I don't accept that it is random though, I'm not saying it's a conspiracy but some algorithm or other throws this up too often to be an anomaly, something that is entered into the programme on a regular basis must increase the odds significantly and so it happens regularly. Logic dictates that there is a reason for it and that can't have escaped the Premier League's notice, if it has it must have been pointed out, I just don't think they have ever bothered to look for it.
I don't remember it ever being the case in years gone by in what one might call the "old days"

No the whole definition of an anomaly is somthing that deviates from what is normal or expected. This is very much within the realms of possibility.

If you flip a coin 10 times it is quite possible to get 9 heads. If you did it a thousand times and there were 900 heads then something is wrong.
 

Saoirse

Well-Known Member
Aug 20, 2013
6,143
15,550
I don't accept that it is random though, I'm not saying it's a conspiracy but some algorithm or other throws this up too often to be an anomaly, something that is entered into the programme on a regular basis must increase the odds significantly and so it happens regularly. Logic dictates that there is a reason for it and that can't have escaped the Premier League's notice, if it has it must have been pointed out, I just don't think they have ever bothered to look for it.
I don't remember it ever being the case in years gone by in what one might call the "old days"
No the whole definition of an anomaly is somthing that deviates from what is normal or expected. This is very much within the realms of possibility.

If you flip a coin 10 times it is quite possible to get 9 heads. If you did it a thousand times and there were 900 heads then something is wrong.
I happen to know someone pretty well who works for a EFL club and is familiar with the fixtures process and I'm confident in saying this is a bit of both. Yes random chance could easily throw this up, but there's also so many factors that go into the fixtures that it's very possible without a conspiracy that something could be making us very often start at home.

These factors are compounded at the very start of the season, because they try to ensure that every club starts with one home and one away game. Additionally, a pairing system is in place so that everybody is paired with one other club, and one of them is at home while the other's away and vice-versa - this both helps form a schedule, and is used to keep clubs apart when they need to avoid playing at home at the same time due to police resources, safety and the like. We are paired with Arsenal (for now - I believe that may well switch to West Ham next season). So if for instance there's some reason why the police, club or safety authorities don't want Arsenal to be at home on whatever weekend contains the second game of the season, they'll be at home on opening day instead which means we'll be away.

That's a very simple example though - in reality it's often a lot more convoluted. For instance, Southend saw that their attendances fell when they were at home while West Ham were also in action, so at one stage requested to play on days that West Ham were not. This in itself is pretty complicated. There will be some weekends where Southend don't want to or can't be at home - for instance, a protest march in the local area occupying police resources, so they're given an away game. If that happens near the start of the season, it means they might have to be at home in the week before or after. League 2 demands that as many matches as possible kick off simultaneously, so Southend need to at least most of the time still play at Saturday 3pm. This means that West Ham will probably need to play a match that will be selected for TV that weekend, so that they move it away from the Saturday 3pm slot - the TV contracts stop the PL from just moving non-TV fixtures on top of televised matches unless necessary due to e.g. the Europa League because it reduces audiences. Since West Ham are crap there are few matches that will be near-guaranteed a selection, but Tottenham is one of them, so we're then very likely to be slotted in there.

On top of that, Southend are of course paired as well, with Colchester, so factors up there might influence when they're home and thus West Ham fixtures. Colchester though share stewards with Ipswich to save money so can't have home games at the same time. Ipswich are paired with Norwich, who themselves have several weekends where they can't play at home because the local transport links are constantly closed for engineering works and the planning permission and licensing for their stadium dictates they can't encourage people to drive to games. Why that policy? Norwich is a Green Party stronghold and the local council therefore pushed a load of pro-environment policies to try and stop them winning votes. So West Ham fixtures end up influenced by an uptick in Green Party voters several years ago in Norwich.

This is obviously already a seriously complicated chain, so why would we end up paired with West Ham to make things worse? Well firstly, their previous pairing of Dagenham and Redbridge have been relegated from the Football League and therefore West Ham need to be matched with someone else. Secondly, with the expansion to Northumberland Park Station and our increased capacity we're going to see more fans coming to a from Stratford for matches (or at least that's the prediction we've modelled to secure planning permission), which you'd think the police wouldn't want going on around the same time as a West Ham home game. That would mean we might see a very different fixture pattern to normal for next season, but it would then probably become even more predictable because there's so many factors in that chain that there tends to be similar reasons for games being at similar dates across it each season. Obviously West Ham are a nightmare themselves thanks to their stadium - they can't be home during other events at the Olympic, so we'd need to be at home instead on those dates. At least mostly - occasionally someone needs a block of away games, as Wham did last year because of the World Athletics Championship and as we likely will to ensure our stadium is ready, which breaks the pairing and causes merry chaos.


These random factors come into play for every team in the Premier League and Football League, and all their fixtures are considered together so that they can be accounted for - as well as occasionally non-league fixtures too where circumstances make it unavoidable. Some of them are things you'd never think of. For instance, Shrewsbury need their home matches not to clash with a motherfucking flower show of all things and so are nearly always away on the second weekend of August, meaning their paired club have to be at home, etc etc etc. It's a ridiculously complex process and by the time you've got all these permutations set up, there's precious little left for the computer to actually randomise sometimes.

I also believe that we probably have a lot of issues affecting our games near the start of the season since we occasionally seem to have big games on opening day - I remember us playing City, United and West Ham first up relatively recently. The PL doesn't much like this because opening day gets good viewing figures anyway and they'd rather save those matches for later on, so that suggests we're stuck in a chain leaving us with very few actual options for opening fixtures. Maybe that will change next year as I said - we'll have to see. But if anyone could actually manipulate something this silly to make a fixturing conspiracy work for a marginal gain, then seriously hats off to them - it would be quite the feat.
 
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Lilbaz

Just call me Baz
Apr 1, 2005
41,363
74,893
Also when the victoria line was upgraded it was shut on weekends that arsenal were away when we were at home. Tfl/police could well have asked the premier league to schedule accordingly.
 

slartibartfast

Grunge baby forever
Oct 21, 2012
18,320
33,955
No the whole definition of an anomaly is somthing that deviates from what is normal or expected. This is very much within the realms of possibility.

If you flip a coin 10 times it is quite possible to get 9 heads. If you did it a thousand times and there were 900 heads then something is wrong.
But fixtures arent random are they?
They're organised by the Premier League and should be done fairly.
We all know they're not.
Pick any season at all and look at Man Us fixtures. When was the last time they had 3 games against the top 4 on the bounce?
With us its a regular occurrence.
Even this season our first game at Wembley could have been absolutely anyone and who do we get? The fkin league title holders. Thanks Premier League fixture people, thats going to make settling into our new home that much easier and putting up with media shitstorm of 'Wembley hoodoo that much more unbearable.
#wrongthread.
 

worcestersauce

"I'm no optimist I'm just a prisoner of hope
Jan 23, 2006
26,891
45,040
Funny thing is that as we have started away eleven out of thirteen years so you'd think we'd end the season at home to the same ratio but we don't, personally I would like to end next season at home so we could parade our newly won Premier league trophy round our brand new stadium.
 

nightgoat

Well-Known Member
Sep 12, 2005
24,604
21,898
I happen to know someone pretty well who works for a EFL club and is familiar with the fixtures process and I'm confident in saying this is a bit of both. Yes random chance could easily throw this up, but there's also so many factors that go into the fixtures that it's very possible without a conspiracy that something could be making us very often start at home.

These factors are compounded at the very start of the season, because they try to ensure that every club starts with one home and one away game. Additionally, a pairing system is in place so that everybody is paired with one other club, and one of them is at home while the other's away and vice-versa - this both helps form a schedule, and is used to keep clubs apart when they need to avoid playing at home at the same time due to police resources, safety and the like. We are paired with Arsenal (for now - I believe that may well switch to West Ham next season). So if for instance there's some reason why the police, club or safety authorities don't want Arsenal to be at home on whatever weekend contains the second game of the season, they'll be at home on opening day instead which means we'll be away.

That's a very simple example though - in reality it's often a lot more convoluted. For instance, Southend saw that their attendances fell when they were at home while West Ham were also in action, so at one stage requested to play on days that West Ham were not. This in itself is pretty complicated. There will be some weekends where Southend don't want to or can't be at home - for instance, a protest march in the local area occupying police resources, so they're given an away game. If that happens near the start of the season, it means they might have to be at home in the week before or after. League 2 demands that as many matches as possible kick off simultaneously, so Southend need to at least most of the time still play at Saturday 3pm. This means that West Ham will probably need to play a match that will be selected for TV that weekend, so that they move it away from the Saturday 3pm slot - the TV contracts stop the PL from just moving non-TV fixtures on top of televised matches unless necessary due to e.g. the Europa League because it reduces audiences. Since West Ham are crap there are few matches that will be near-guaranteed a selection, but Tottenham is one of them, so we're then very likely to be slotted in there.

On top of that, Southend are of course paired as well, with Colchester, so factors up there might influence when they're home and thus West Ham fixtures. Colchester though share stewards with Ipswich to save money so can't have home games at the same time. Ipswich are paired with Norwich, who themselves have several weekends where they can't play at home because the local transport links are constantly closed for engineering works and the planning permission and licensing for their stadium dictates they can't encourage people to drive to games. Why that policy? Norwich is a Green Party stronghold and the local council therefore pushed a load of pro-environment policies to try and stop them winning votes. So West Ham fixtures end up influenced by an uptick in Green Party voters several years ago in Norwich.

This is obviously already a seriously complicated chain, so why would we end up paired with West Ham to make things worse? Well firstly, their previous pairing of Dagenham and Redbridge have been relegated from the Football League and therefore West Ham need to be matched with someone else. Secondly, with the expansion to Northumberland Park Station and our increased capacity we're going to see more fans coming to a from Stratford for matches (or at least that's the prediction we've modelled to secure planning permission), which you'd think the police wouldn't want going on around the same time as a West Ham home game. That would mean we might see a very different fixture pattern to normal for next season, but it would then probably become even more predictable because there's so many factors in that chain that there tends to be similar reasons for games being at similar dates across it each season. Obviously West Ham are a nightmare themselves thanks to their stadium - they can't be home during other events at the Olympic, so we'd need to be at home instead on those dates. At least mostly - occasionally someone needs a block of away games, as Wham did last year because of the World Athletics Championship and as we likely will to ensure our stadium is ready, which breaks the pairing and causes merry chaos.


These random factors come into play for every team in the Premier League and Football League, and all their fixtures are considered together so that they can be accounted for - as well as occasionally non-league fixtures too where circumstances make it unavoidable. Some of them are things you'd never think of. For instance, Shrewsbury need their home matches not to clash with a motherfucking flower show of all things and so are nearly always away on the second weekend of August, meaning their paired club have to be at home, etc etc etc. It's a ridiculously complex process and by the time you've got all these permutations set up, there's precious little left for the computer to actually randomise sometimes.

I also believe that we probably have a lot of issues affecting our games near the start of the season since we occasionally seem to have big games on opening day - I remember us playing City, United and West Ham first up relatively recently. The PL doesn't much like this because opening day gets good viewing figures anyway and they'd rather save those matches for later on, so that suggests we're stuck in a chain leaving us with very few actual options for opening fixtures. Maybe that will change next year as I said - we'll have to see. But if anyone could actually manipulate something this silly to make a fixturing conspiracy work for a marginal gain, then seriously hats off to them - it would be quite the feat.

Back before we gatecrashed the previous top four cabal of Man Utd, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool there was seemingly always one or two Sundays per season when those four teams would play each other. Sky just plugged their live games for a couple of weekends time - Man Utd v Liverpool, Rangers v Celtic, Forest v Derby, Hibs v Hearts and Villa v Wolves - all big local derbies or other big rivalries. I suppose with the number of derbies there are there's always a chance of a couple falling on the same weekend, but it does seem quite convenient how every season there's always a couple of weekends like that to plug like there's no tomorrow.
 

Lilbaz

Just call me Baz
Apr 1, 2005
41,363
74,893
Has the HP sauce joke snowballed or is this based on something else?

Somebody had hp on their burger at the ground now they are the official sauce for the stadium.

It might be a bit more than that (cause i'm a git) we'll see.
 

jimbo

Cabbages
Dec 22, 2003
8,034
7,432
Also when the victoria line was upgraded it was shut on weekends that arsenal were away when we were at home. Tfl/police could well have asked the premier league to schedule accordingly.

I overheard the TFL guys talking about this one weekend while waiting for the replacement bus. They scheduled the work around Arsenal's away games because they have the bigger capacity stadium.

Well, not any more motherfuckers!
 

Lilbaz

Just call me Baz
Apr 1, 2005
41,363
74,893
I’m not so sure, they wouldn’t confirm it at a meeting like that, they would wait for a big announcement at the right time.

I know they wouldn't announce it. But saying that the funding isn't reliant on naming rights and that until a deal had been agreed the name of the stadium will be the Tottenham Hotspur stadium doesn't sound like they are too close.

If they had said we were in advanced negotiations and hopefully a deal should be announced before the stadium was opened. Then that would mean that a deal was almost in place.
 
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