The9

Lambert's free-kick to make it 3-1 away at Bournemouth in L1 was a pretty big deal at the time, we went 1-0 down and after that match we had moved ahead of them for the first time into 4th and were still only 2 points behind 2nd placed Huddersfield. If we'd lost we'd have been 6th, 5 points behind Huddersfield and 6 behind Bournemouth with 12 matches left. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_div_2/9418926.stm And obviously Fonte's at Brighton to win it in injury time after they pulled the ballboys with 15 minutes remaining and timewasted like hell.

This obsession with re-signing players we sold because they weren't good enough any more is just weird.

In the sense that he's a young version of any adult human who plays football and is older than him. Other than that there are practically no similarities besides them both trying to score goals.

They have an equal number of legs, after that I'm failing to see the similarity.

Even if we got him for nothing I wouldn't pay him that.

So very hatstand in every situation I'm starting to think he's some kind of genius troll.

Completely agree - if we can get him cheaply or arrange another loan he's worth having if we get to the group stages.

Related to Dalian Atkinson and Dalian Shide. Because that's how names work.

He also mentions the media pouching players. I do hope they're not all gooey like the ones joeys sit in.

I feel stupider for having read that - and also, not a single obviously Arsenal fan saying it's poor form. One Saints fan starting it, and a couple of people without obvious team allegiances from their usernames supporting it.

Your description of a "4-3-3" with the midfield "3" not in a line fulfilling the same roles isn't a 4-3-3. By definition the fact you can identify one of them as a DM makes it not a 4-3-3. "4-1-2-3" I will give you, though it was very rare anyone other than Rodriguez was as advanced as Lambert anyway during open play when they weren't timing a run from midfield into the box - which doesn't change their position.

Indeed, and the positions they played from weren't 4-3-3.

It's practically an internet meme paragraph for celebrity behaviour, having googled the one word in the text that isn't a word to narrow down the responses to that particular paragraph, you just get a list of that paragraph with celeb name and weird behaviour phrase changed. There's almost certainly a text generator page spewing it out for different names with 95% unchanged content.

Although some of his antics have meant clubs haven't wanted to sign him, he was as well-behaved at Juve as anyone could expect, and their response was typical in that they were happy to get someone at a risk on lower wages but not prepared to take them on permanently. That's just the nature of loan signings, especially those of troublesome players. Clubs will take a short term gamble if there's value but none of them are going to commit to anything when there are safer bets out there for the long term.

And been rightly highly praised for it. I doubt our Championship budget was anything particularly spectacular for one. As usual you've missed the point - if you only join a club in the first case because they tell you you'll have a decent budget and that doesn't transpire, well firstly you have every right to be upset about that if it's detrimental to your career, and secondly it completely ruins any planning you might have done and almost certainly leads to an imbalance between the players you brought it to meet a higher budget and those on a lower budget, not to mention the gaps you might have been planning on addressing by spending money which instead become the problem positions preventing you from achieving success because you'd expected to be able to replace them and now can't.

Delighted to let him go on a free just to get the wages off. Less so with Gaston, who isn't disruptive and is miles better than some of the kids widely being praised on here for having a pulse and being in the academy.

I would absolutely pee my pants if we sold him to Liverpool.

Rodriguez is better on the left, Mane is better in the hole behind the striker, none of them are up to much on the right. Assume Long or Tadic will be one of the others. Still not sure why MLG thinks we played 3 up front under Pochettino to be honest. 3 AMs interchanging with Lambert dropping into the hole and one of the others pushing past him for almost the entire season. It was always 4-2-3-1 not 4-3-3, just as our "4-3-3" last season didn't stand up to any scrutiny as the "wide" men played only as advanced as the central AM and cut inside let the overlap come from full back... still.

Is that a rhetorical question?

It's not a good thing by any measure. It's bad for Saints because they miss out on valuable merchandising income from fans in one of the few scenarios where having another kit is justifiable, and it's bad for fans who want to buy the shirt the team is wearing. Having said that, there are limits. If you're going to complain about clubs releasing multiple shirts, you'd be better off doing that where there's no justifiable reason for it, and seeing as every club is now on a one season replacement of every shirt you'd be wasting your time doing that too. I'd be happy enough with every shirt lasting 2 seasons and the home and away shirt updating on a rotational basis. The problem with that is that throwing in shirt sponsor changes and "manufacturer" branding changes you get a wholesale change of shirts every 2-3 seasons anyway, and contractual legalities mean you can't enforce the wearing of two different brands in the same season, so that can't be avoided. Which means with that situation you get plenty of "one year" shirts anyway for justifiable reasons, and if that's justifiable, then changing every shirt every season is a short step away, and that's where we are now. Beyond "every team changing three shirts every season" there are still other things which cause the possibility of other kits, some of which might be reasonable: European shirts - though those should really be part of the 3 existing shirts already Saints are hardly likely to want to sell 2 similar home shirts but they may not have time to do that beyond the playing squad Charity fundraising shirts (eg limited edition pink cancer shirts) Memorial shirts - like last season's West Brom Jeff Astle shirt, the Munich air disaster memorial shirts, neither of which I think were on sale(?) and then you're into dodgy ground with one offs and stuff like Christmas shirts - a German thing, utterly pointless Farewell shirts Testimonial shirts Personally speaking, if it's not used in a competitive match I'm not really interested in it, and wouldn't buy it anyway, but some of the above (even the Christmas and Farewell shirts) have been used in competitive matches, which IF the shirt is for sale gives fans (or more likely shirt collectors) with a dilemma. The long and short of it is that no-one HAS to buy them.

We can do what we want as long as UEFA approve, we don't break the advertising rules, and there's a contrasting panel behind the number. Though I'm sure if it was going to be anything other than "wearing the away kit for every match" or "just stick a red bit at the top with the number on it" we'd have seen some rumblings already. They're not even selling long sleeved home shirts this season, and I'd be guessing at a red panel, so doubt we'll even get to buy a Euro shirt.

I had to laugh when I saw someone getting agreement from one-track lard as vindication of their opinion that Adkins underachieved. It would be like me suggesting we were going to come 17th and being delighted that Dalek popped up supporting me. My second thought was "OMG there are two of them". Just for the record, we may have had 41 matches left to play (we didn't, we had 39), but that "best squad in the league" had to that point managed to be the 22nd best side in the division after around a sixth of the season, which hardly suggests that managing them was easy and that success was guaranteed. Also, how's about the following season, where everyone had settled for "maybe getting on the fringes of the playoffs" pre-season and we finished above Allardyce's West Ham side in an automatic position? Or was that a foregone conclusion as well?

It was at the point when Reading's promises of massive investment which attracted him to them despite their obvious relegation turned out to be a heap of lies.

I'm assuming you wouldn't be posting such an emotive response if you'd bothered to read the thread containing exactly the same story you posted but two days previously, so yes, it's rhetorical.

I suspect it's always been a consideration and the away launch will have been near enough that date anyway. I'm more interested in how they're going to manage the possibility of us playing our first home game in the kit wearing a completely different design to the one people have been buying for the previous month - seeing as the stripes won't be allowed on the back of the shirt in Europe.