The9

Well THAT was inevitable. I think the red one is the keeper's, but I can see loads of problems with tie-pulling incidents in the box.

I like it anyway, different without being offensive and not too "fashiony", the sort of thing away kit designs are for. Will be interesting to see if the shirt is lighter than it appears, as it seems daft to have black home shorts and navy away - but I'm pretty sure we won't be wearing any royal blue any time soon. I look forward to the green alternate shorts...

It's mostly because everyone who's going to buy a yellow Saints shirt already has a yellow Saints shirt. Only the idiots like me who want them all will buy it. We've had a LOT of yellow away shirts - personally I'm always hoping for an amber/black one like the briefly used early 70s one, it's one of the few designs that hasn't been retroed already. But then that's because my home-town club happens to play in those colours. Speaking of which, their new shirt (out today) is absolutely dull as ditchwater and they really should put a bit more effort into announcing it:

Since I saw this leak there's never been the remotest doubt in my mind that it's accurate. Some bloke chucking out a photoshop on twitter is absolutely not the same as a photograph of what looks like a page from a buyer's brochure showing legit adidas kit model designs. The whole "now it's confirmed" thing is people who claim to have other sources being able to confirm it, but there's never been any doubt since that was leaked anyway. As I said in early March, may as well close the thread now.

Which no-one has seen or heard anything about since it was first mooted... hmmmmm... I'm more in the "wearing a colour of shirt is selling your soul? You haven't got much of a soul" camp.

It was as confirmed as it needed to be. Authentic buyer-brochure style design, using the same outline picture adidas used in last year's Premier League handbook and matching 2015 adidas designs which were still being released at the time. No-one goes to that amount of trouble to mock up a fake. Last game of the season is away, btw...

I don't think either of them should be near a top half Prem side, and that's really all that matters.

Both debatable. Chambers started the season only due to Clyne's injury but having done so well there, there were occasions when Clyne was on the bench with Chambers in the team (and of course Clyne and Chambers both started a couple of times with Shaw out).

9:12pm on 11 March was the first time the leak appeared on here. Definitely next season's kits as far as I can tell. As discussed at the time. I assumed that was just a bump, tbh.

Willing to bet that we absolutely don't play them on any of those, as they're the specific dates which are prevented from hosting "derby" matches, and that's the closest we've got to one.

Yep, and Bournemouth tried their very bestest against us in L1 and we beat them three times. They're a good Championship side, but nowhere near our level and not likely to be in the first 6 months of next season.

I disagree on Gardos/Hooiveld though neither are good enough for what we need. Clyne/Chambers isn't even about who is the best, it's about having one less player who can step up to play that position - precisely the weaknesses we should be addressing. Your most relevant point is that last summer was EXCEPTIONALLY good, we can't assume we can ship numbers out again and just expect better replacements. If we keep most of our players we've got half a chance to build.

That's not true. Clyne was dropped for Chambers a couple of times depending on tactics.

Yes, and I agree. That doesn't mean he can't play there.

Interesting to see Stoke's New Balance away shirt is basically the reverse of ours (navy or black with a green sash going the other way).

Well the last one of those has been p155 poor for nearly 3 years, he couldn't even get back into Bolton's team before they went down and was soon replaced in goal at West Ham too.

It will be an easy six points. We are a lot better than them.

That doesn't look much like an improvement, we still need to ADD players not just replace the ones we lose. There are no guarantees on Rodriguez's ability post-injury or Ward-Prowse's improvement either.

The last full season they played they came 12th. The two seasons before they were 11th and climbed to 9th. They went backwards, if they finish 8th this season they're in year 2 of another improvement, but the 6 year spell of improvement we were talking about is already over.

They're going backwards now though. Only 12th this season after their 6 successive years of improvement, starting higher than Saints (7th in L1) and peaking lower (9th in Prem). Not sure moving from 8th to 7th in the Championship from 2008-2010 was much to get excited about either.

Which is also due to not having enough top quality attacking options, or being able to attract the kind of top class midfield players which can unlock defences with their individual skill, because they're a different price bracket and only go to clubs showing signs of competing in Europe. Even with us in the Europa we'd be likely to attract short-term stepping stone career rebuilders who look to move on after a season or two, but our recruitment is better than most and we seems to be building incrementally. But getting a bloke who played in a World Cup Final, and two blokes who've played in the Champions League Final (one only a few months before) are excellent pointers to the kind of players we can attract, even if they're not ours at the moment.

Not much but some - I don't imagine anyone expected the exodus that occurred and that will have had a significant impact on how likely we were to improve the squad. If you lose all those starters you have to replace them before you can build at all - there's a reason we only have 20/25 squad players registered with the Premier League, and it's not just that we have a lot of promising U21s. Plus recruiting the likes of Alderweireld and Elia even temporarily and potentially getting into the Europa League puts us in the shop window for better players, and the sell-job is much easier. Plus EL prize money may not be as big as CL money but it still gives us more to play with on the wages front under FFP.

Whilst not investing anything in the squad beyond the first 13 or so players, it was absolutely based on a foundation of sand. Even this season, with a couple of players more depth, we've come up short of Champions League due to having to put mid-tablers like Yoshida and underdeveloped players like Isgrove and Reed in. We need to add depth at the appropriate level of quality.

Again, the fault was claiming we could only do it with him there, which gave the ones who wanted to disappear every excuse when Cortese went first. There's a reason "Cult of Cortese" was used around here. We should easily be able to get to the Europa Group stage (either by going through two qualifying rounds or from league position), and it's hardly the hardest task to get to the knockout stages from there. We could make the last 16 without too much trouble provided we can put out a side as good as our current first team. I won't be surprised if the league position takes a big hit next season though.

All the nonsense talk was based on Cortese making out that Saints would only be able to do it with Cortese in charge, this is the serious stuff, done without ego.