The9

Given that it was an attempt to get as much money into the club to keep us out of admin and get us a young, promising, top flight reserve keeper, I can at least understand the logic. Though hindsight shows it didn't keep us out of admin (which turned out not to be the worst thing ever), cost the club tens of millions from losing out on the sell-on from Bale's enormous future transfer, and that Forecast wasn't even competent at non-League level and Saints had to pay him for 5 years, during which team most of us saw him play for the first team at St Mary's at most once, in a pre-season friendly.

Me too. Makes a nice change.

Bloody obvious his injury was ligament-related and at least serious enough to miss the last 4 matches so I'm not remotely surprised. Only blind faith would make me think he's going to play for Saints again - and if he was wavering at all, an injury is precisely the sort of thing that will focus the mind on maximising income while he can.

Or "out for 4 weeks" as it could be described at any other time of the season.

The top European clubs do get an element of bespoke design, but it's very limited in execution. e.g. Bayern's new adidas shirt uses a diamond motif from the Bavaria badge which is repeated on their club badge (and actually looks like an Umbro design), but otherwise it's basically a standard adidas template. This season's Chelsea shirt has the gradated pattern that other shirts don't have. Mostly the bottom clubs get a colour-reversed teamwear design, the good national clubs get a unique design using a standard combination of templates, and the top clubs get a unique combination of templates with a slight variation to show they're special. I'm fine with uniqueness, I'm not fine with exploitation, which is what more than 3 shirts a season, or producing not-special "special" kits is is. Stuff like the German "Christmas" kits annoy me. I'm fine with Saints having 3 shirts (though we can't actually buy one of them), no-one is making me buy them.

Hey, look at that, you can do it if you try.

I don't think there's much argument that he's been better for us than either Chelsea or (especially) Villa, for whom he was remarkably unremarkable last season.

Cos, y'know, anyone can stick a badge and a sponsor on an old shirt style (Bosnia's 2014 World Cup kit):

In unrelated news, I'm pretty sure the leaked Chelsea "Yokohama" shirts are fakes (a 2014 adidas design with the new sponsor slapped on it), whilst the older "Turkish Airlines" ones are based on the legit style (2015 adidas design samples with potential sponsors on before the new sponsorship was agreed) - even though the correct sponsors are Yokohama. These: derive from this But not this, which is just last year's style with the new sponsor on: We shall see though, Chelsea have had some fairly convincing fakes before if you're not paying attention. And sites like this http://www.edpsoccerjersey.net/chelsea-c-2_3_12.html making knock-off stuff based on leaks alone (they have BOTH styles listed) don't help matters. Also interesting to note that they have Saints unbranded shirts from this season, though I'm not prepared to invest the $16.88 to find out how badly made these are.

Yeah, those are the photoshops produced by Footyheadlines.com the day the leak came out. Already lengthily discussed on this thread - to the extent that I can tell you the collar on the home shirt is wrong (because it isn't the same as the leak). Based on the basic templates and all the other adidas kits already released in these styles, I assume the home kit has mesh on the collar, just like the away kit probably does on cuffs and hem.

Clough loved the media, and the media loved him. He was widely popular precisely because he gave opinions and drove media, and you could get away with a lot more - though even he got hammered for punching a fan who invaded the pitch. The nearest thing nowadays is Bloody Redknapp, who gets media work precisely because he's not a Football Media Training Automaton. Though obviously for us lot it's hard to see that a lot of idiots out there actually like him despite his self-parody Old School rentaquotes. He's like the Farage of football, find the lowest common denominator and appeal to their stupidity with basic platitudes and down-to-earth language to try to come across as popular. As for Pearson, did a great job keeping us up in very difficult circumstances, but is clearly suffering from the media spotlight and coming across as a not-so-passive aggressive thug rather than the "respected hard man" I suspect he thinks he's conveying. We're above and beyond what he can offer us now.

I didn't say he did, I said that some parts of the media were clearly deliberately destabilising the club, and they were. Although it's also not coincidence that a lot of the players decided to leave because Cortese did and they didn't have the confidence in the club management that the progression would mean their personal ambitions. I don't think that's going to be the situation this close season as we're clearly stating our ambitions and anyone going will be showing they don't believe we can do it DESPITE the past season's improvement without Cortese and the "Meltdown". Of course if they all leave again on the balance of probability eventually it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy, as we'd have to rebuild to get back to the previous level, before we could improve on it. Agreed on the second paragraph.

He's got weird taste in average-looking women off the tv, anyway...

Are you saying that the endless reporting of instability stories by one particular BBC reporter WASN'T designed to destabilise the club? Even though he was clearly getting stuff direct from Cortese, who was his Saints contact for a load of "Cult of Cortese" promotional stuff when he was still in charge and trying to stay there?

More or less the same comment as last year, basically that we don't want anyone to leave, which some people will choose to interpret as "he said no-one was leaving" because they are hard of thinking.

The majority most certainly did not. The papers are about 30% accurate overall. http://www.footballtransferleague.co.uk/newspaper_statistics.aspx

Meanwhile, I think Townsend is predictable and easy to defend against sh01te, and an absolute waste of a shirt. I'd much rather that we didn't sign him at all. Then again, I was a bit like that about Bertrand, but he's playing better for us than he has for anyone else so far, and I'm not sure Townsend has that improvement in him. Agreed that Schneiderlin won't sign for Spurs, makes no sense at all.

Hell yes. They only made 3 of those grey ones to go with the yellow away kit at Newcastle, apparently.

Oh, and this one, possibly the rarest Saints shirt of the last 25 years:

I claim my +1 MLG point for the last post, btw.

In the 1970s maybe! I think we're past that point, it's as likely to be green as any other colour. Though of course quite a few recent seasons have seen Saints keepers in green: 2010/11: 2011/12 (green-ish): 2013/14: 2014/15: There have also been 2012/13: and the various change keeper shirts in the same time period:

For matches against all those teams playing in red and green stripes? The only problem I can see is playing away to a team in the League Cup or FA Cup which has black or navy shorts, due to those competition rules.

As you can probably tell, the adidas format is very similar to the leak - but the designs of the Saints leaks are 2015 templates, not last year's.

And here's the Swansea one.

Just to confirm the point I'm making about the authenticity of the leaked design from March, this is Sunderland's shirt from last season as shown in the Premier League Handbook 2014/15: