The9

I went back to check for clarity, and the one you quoted doesn't mention "away".

Defoe kicked Ward-Prowse's legs out from under him having made sure he collided with something after losing control of the ball. Didn't look like a foul at the time, looked even less like one on tv. The red was clearly for DOGSO, and will be a one match ban. Can't really argue with the first one as Fonte basically kicked Graham in the head, even though Graham headed it off the pitch. If there was still an indirect free-kick for dangerous play I'd be going with that, but they've all but removed the indirect free-kick for anything except offside now, using the logic that dangerous play is now one of the definitions for direct free-kicks and the foul or card given.

Definitely need creativity over pace - plenty of quick players (including the full backs) but no-one close to the "goal outta nowhere" players some of the top 4 (and even Liverpool and Spurs) have.

Europa League earnings are one of the ways we can enhance our ability to spend more under FFP AND attract better players, Swansea are benefiting from that this season as they've just shed the not-good-enough or too-expensive signings they brought in for their Europa season and kept the better ones. We can do that but with a higher starting point, as we'd have qualified through the League and not the League Cup.

Some of us were pointing this out in the Championship when discussing ticket prices, I've still got the last Swiss Ramble article bookmarked and that compared the seasons since admin and mentioned the bad timing of the relegation as the tv deal (and parachutes) went up twice in our absence.

I haven't mentioned their "away" shirt, I've mentioned them having a yellow shirt, precisely to avoid the distinction you're trying to introduce now your argument has been debunked.

Sheesh, player comes out and says he wants to stay. Achieves a few things: 1) Makes him look loyal 2) Puts club in position of needing to be seen to keep loyal players 3) Puts player in position of strength for contract negotiations 4) Reduces likelihood of player getting grief from fans if "he wanted to stay, but club doesn't meet his requests" 5) Doesn't prevent him leaving Call me a cynic but we've seen it all before. I don't care what they SAY, only what they DO.

Point of order, both Newport's wins at Fratton in League 2 have been on Saturday afternoon.

Good to see the grey keeper kit getting another outing on Saturday (though... result...). Oh, and here's the new Stoke away, now it's official:

They have one at the moment, and haven't gone 5 years without one since 1969. They've had a yellow shirt 3 of every 4 years over the past 45 years. Plus 7/10 seasons during the first decade of the millennium. That's "practically every year" to me.

Oh, and Arsenal: 1968-1982 then the green/blue thing for one season 1983-2001 (inc 1994/6 when they had a yellow third they only used twice) 2001-3 they had a gold shirt instead of yellow 2003/4 2005-7 2008/9 2010-12 2013-15. They've actually only NOT had a yellow change shirt in one season since 2009/10.

Worth noting I was putting that together before I saw your reply.

Ah balls to it. Spurs yellow away or third kits since 1969 when they adopted yellow regularly (colours are indicative, "yellow" used when any shirt was yellow, blue used for the years yellow was not used): 1969/70 1970/71 1971/72 1972/73 1973/74 1974/75 1975/76 1976/77 1977/78 1978/79 1979/80 1980/81 1981/82 1982/83 1983/84 1984/85 1985/86 1986/87 1987/88 1988/89 1989/90 1990/91 1991/92 1992/93 1993/94 1994/95 1995/96 1996/97 1997/98 1998/99 1999/2000 2000/01 2001/02 2002/03 2003/04 2004/05 2005/06 2006/07 2007/08 2008/09 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 2014/15 So actually, they've just gone 4 years without a yellow away kit, which is the longest since 1969, and they've had yellow change shirts in 30 of the past 45 seasons.

Spurs have a yellow away/3rd shirt "practically every year", Arsenal "most seasons". Which is what I said. If you like I can post endless pics of the loads of their away shirts and seasons, but I already know it's the case. I'd say yellow and blue was now Saints' traditional away colours, seeing as I've never seen them play in amber and black and everything prior to 1976 is basically shades of black and white.

Brentford please... Been saying it since January, and now Bournemouth have made it, it'll be another great relatively local awayday. Don't care in L1, already peed off with Preston for letting MK Dons get up, in L2 anyone but Southend because I still haven't managed to get there yet and have been to the rest, and will need Newport to be playing them next season - and on that note, looking forward to Bristol Rovers going up and Grimsby not - though I'd have loved Forest Green (or of course Eastleigh) to have joined Barnet.

I think the main criticism of him is that he's too one-paced, which means Prem matches just pass him by no matter how good he is tactically or positionally (or on the ball for that matter).

Lolz, fair point, but they will take time to adjust to the Prem and this year's Championship is no kind of indication of future success. We should expect to beat them home and away (albeit not on our current form). I am so incredibly annoyed that they managed to win the bloody title when we didn't.

Can't really argue with that, I don't think Davis would be the worst choice either but he's not ahead of Elia or Long out wide.

I honestly have no idea how we're going to win this other than trying Reed as DM alongside Wanyama and putting Alderweireld back into the back 4 alongside Fonte. I've got to the point now where I don't want to see Yoshida wear a Saints shirt again, he's just not good enough.

How's your garage looking? Cos this is another one.

Based on the principle that you pay a transfer fee up front which is their value, and that you get nothing back when their contract expires, so they're worth nothing at the end of that contract, the amount they are worth (in accounting terms) reduces each year: [u] Transfer fee [/u] Number of years of contract = Reduction in value of player per year of contract (amortisation)

There are quite a few off the top of my head... Arsenal have a yellow with blue most seasons Chelsea around every other year Palace pretty much every other year if not more often Spurs have a yellow away shirt with blue or black practically every year. Everton do probably one in three seasons Stoke maybe once every 5 years Plus Liverpool tend to have a yellow/red more often than not and West Brom go yellow with green in probably 1/3 of seasons. Man City haven't, Man United haven't for ages, Sunderland don't, Newcastle haven't had many at all, Villa have had few yellow kits (maybe one every 10 years), I can't think of a yellow West Ham shirt, Swansea haven't, Hull probably wouldn't due to the home kit, and after that we're into a lot of teams who may or may not be in the division. Burnley have had yellow but don't often, Cardiff usually have yellow/blue as a traditional away kit once they dump the red altogether... Norwich wear it at home. And so on.

Already mentioned in the thread, it's opposite colours, not Adidas and the diagonal doesn't even go the same way. The leak back in March was far too authentic not to be the case.

Reed's nowhere near ready to play regularly in that position yet, as he showed by getting himself sent off in the U21 Cup Final. He's got a lot of energy and closes down well, but as well as some other similarities, his tackling is also Scholes-like, and he's got to learn when NOT to dive in. It seemed to work ok with Ward-Prowse and Davis slightly advanced of Wanyama second half when we played Burnley, I'd think that will be what we go with, the Yoshida/Alderweireld Experiment having not really worked. For a team that's got a strong first XI, we're not half having to play a lot of matches without our first team. It basically hasn't happened since Man U away, thanks to the various Wanyama/Schnederlin/Alderweireld injuries and suspensions. I think the closest is Chelsea away, when Pelle was dropped.

They might have been stupid enough to think he could deliver on his promises - we know already that part of the "financial situation inherited" was the Cortese-instigated bonus scheme, so who knows what unauthorised money-spending he had in mind?