Bombers' Financial Decline

As some of you may know, I've recently been thinking of moving on from my team Lancaster Bombers due to the very restrictive situation I find myself in.

Being in debt means I can't buy any new players or employ any new staff, which means I can't improve my team. I have plenty of good players who are not maxed out on any skills that could no doubt benefit from better quality coaches.

I've tried selling players to make some money but I never get any bids. Perhaps I'm overpricing, I dunno. Whatever.

I've taken a look at the financial history of the club and notice that in season 6, my first season in the premiership, my ticket sales were 4,262,470. Last season though, season 9, they were down to 2,811,180. Quite a difference. As my club rating has gone down, demand for tickets has dropped off. I've reduced my ticket prices down to around 23 from 29 or 30 from season 6. I must say I don't think I should need to reduce ticket prices below 20 to sell out. I am in the premiership after all. I look at other clubs and see ticket prices in the 40's.

Anyway, here's a screenshot of my financial history:


Disturbing huh?

I'm gonna try and get my ticket price up. After spending a lot of last season renegotiating contracts, I don't need to worry about any of those this season.

Thoughts?

Team Ratings and Matches

First post of the new season and it's one that looks back over that last two...

Well, not so much looks back as quickly summarises them with a pair of pictures apiece - but as they're each worth a thousand words, it all counts :)

Above are the team ratings in season 9 and below, the season 8 ratings:

Like the graphs posted for season 7, it's much better to be next to a blue or green team name... And, as before, the drop when managers resigned from a team is quite noticeable.

And the matches that played a part in affecting those ratings; for season 9 -

And for season 8:

I'll eventually get around to doing a team rating graph of the Premiership since season 6, but I wouldn't hold your breath ;)

oh, ps. Webby, I can't seem to get this post to have just an excerpt on the index pages - has something changed from the last time I posted or have I just forgotten how?

Techie Friday

As it's close season on itsagoal, I thought I'd get all techie on you. Just yesterday, I added an RSS button to this blog. There it is under the 'Subscribe To Manta Banta' section of the sidebar -->.

Briefly, RSS enables you to subscribe to a website's content. Whenever new content is added, the RSS feed will update. This means that if, for instance, you visit many different websites that add new content, whether that be daily, or as infrequently as once a month or even less, you can simply check the RSS feeds for those sites.

There are a few ways in which you can employ the feed. One, your browser may have RSS built in, so, you can add the feed to your bookmarks folder, or bookmarks toolbar and access it from there. Two, you could use a web based RSS reader such as Google Reader. This requires copying the feed address and adding it into the reader. The third way is to use an actual RSS application on your machine. This works in much the same way as the web based kind.

I'm using the RSS function built into the browser; for me, that's Firefox 3. I know that IE7 has support for RSS, as does Safari. They all work in slightly different ways to achieve the same result. Note: IE6 doesn't work with RSS.

To learn how to use RSS in Firefox, there's a simple tutorial here.

More...

I've been using Firefox 3 a bit recently. IE6 is the default browser on the machines where I work and they won't let us install IE7 because our HR websites are incompatible with it!

So anyway, using FF3; impressed. I like how you can tag bookmarks. Save a bookmark, give it a tag or 3. Easier to find 2 months down the line.

Another thing I like about FF is the add-ons it has. I'm writing this post, and I'm not even logged into my blog. I'm using an add-on called Scribefire. I access it from the bottom right of the browser and up pops a text entry window. From there I can write and publish directly to my blog. Brilliant. It's easier to use than the text entry box within blogger itself, so if you're a Manta Banta author and you're using Firefox, take a look at Scribefire.

Well, I think that's enough techie stuff for now. Have a good weekend chaps. See you in the new season.

All is Well

After the dramatic events of the last couple of days, I'm happy to say that everything appears to be back to normal with itsagoal.

I don't know what the official cause of the problems were but I'm sure we'll hear soon enough on the site itself.

There was a workaround for the issue though, and for that we thank Grezz. It worked for most but not for some though. It appears that the fix didn't work for those operating behind a proxy server, for example, from a PC at work.

I'd also like to thank fellow mac user Bearing for posting detailed instructions for applying the fix in mac os x. I then posted those instructions in the Facebook group. Not all of us use windoze ya know!

I think that this site was only known to a handful of people but somehow people found their way here. The community spirit and efforts of those that were able to help has been brilliant, so thanks to everyone who contributed to this blog yesterday. I think mantabanta may have found it's way into a few new Favourites and Bookmark folders.

itsagoal down

Just thought I'd put some keywords up here to aid google searches. Dunno if it'll work.

Can't connect to iag
Can't connect to itsagoal
Can't access itsagoal
Can't access iag
itsagoal site down
Can't login to itsagoal
Problems
Issue

p.s. itsagoal isn't down, there is just an access issue preventing people from getting to the site.

IAG access fix (works for some)

Now, now. Don't get too excited! I just thought I'd pull the instructions out from the lengthy comments of the previous thread and put them here.

It has been noted that this fix works for some, and not for others. So here goes:

Windows:

Go to C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc

Open up your file called hosts with notepad

Add this line:

87.117.198.158 (and then hit tab, and then type) www.itsagoal.com

Save the change

Start a new browser session

Type www.itsagoal.com in the address bar

If your PC does not save this then you need to do the following first.....

Right click on "hosts" and then click on properties, go to security tab, click "edit" to change permissions, highlight your username and then click on all the buttons below where it says permissions for users, and then "apply" the changes. This will enable you to save the changes Grezz has suggested making. You then should be able to access the site.

Good luck.

IAG Connection Problems

If someone reads this anytime soon, please ask around IAG what I can do to connect to the site. It just refuses to load and I think there was a problem like this a while back. Another manager dio1 also can't open it, while I asked a buddy of mine from another city some 300 miles from here and he said he can open it.

I asked my providers and they said other it's not only them, other providers can't connect either, so it must be something in the site.

God, I hope someone reads this soon!!! I wrote to Guermano vie e-mail, but I haven't got a way to contact anyone else, while he's probably busy at work. And just in case this isn't resolved soon, please tell me who I drew in the Super Cup and how my game with pleasant ended.

Cheers,

A seriously angered chaos