The9

Nothing weird about that, all the elements were there but European football and not getting breaks between games has affected much better sides than Saints. Everything we need to finish in the top 6 is still in place, unless we get to two cup finals next season we'll do much better in terms of points and competitively against this season's top 7.

Ok, so I've been, bought the home and away shirts. I've bought Large this season rather than XL, but I would say the difference from last year is very small and either would have been fine. Basically I think the shape of the "bra" on last year's shirts made the shoulders fit uncomfortably on me previously, so I bought XL last year for comfort, whilst this year's retro look both demands a more 80s fit (see Benali/Le Tiss for evidence) and doesn't sit weirdly, so I've gone with the smaller size, even though I reckon I'm fatter. Despite buying a different size this season I don't think the difference in the sizes is significant, and what you bought last year will fit - but then if you've ordered online you probably already know that. Also managed to get a full refund of last season's stuff as purchased 13 days ago. If you want ST discount, try and dig out your email from the club to prove you have 2017/18 Season Ticket before you go, it took ages looking for it, they DIDN'T accept 2016/17 even though we're renewals, and they looked it up from the postcode, rather than customer number.

Not true, I said we *shouldn't* be sacking him, based on all the same stuff I'm still saying. The fan reaction and threat to ST sales from that is what did for him. I'm not saying it'll be easy, I'm saying we're in the equation.

That depends on whether the government is making legislation that removes the need to adhere to certain previous legislation or not - the whole Brexit/Great Repeal Bill thing looks like a useful opportunity to change all kinds of EU-mandated regulations and might just mean "you don't have to do that any more" rather than "it's not a company concern".

I don't disagree with any of that - the public stuff can be quantified if it's out there, but it's not the same as having a first hand relationship with the player, and that's always going to be more reliable than any media reporting, for instance. I think we would tend to shy away from approaching any player with any kind of controversy since Cortese went, and Osvaldo (and possibly Caulker based on some of the other posts on here?) gives us a very good indicator of what happens when you don't.

For the lolz, I shall also be attempting to return one of last season's shirts and a pair of purple keeper shorts purchased in the past two weeks. Can't wait to see the size of the queue and their response to trying to return label-on out of date stock. I don't even know how two pairs of different sized keeper shorts ended up in my bag.

On a similar note, if I come back saying they're tighter than last season, please note that I am in the process of developing post-everything fatness.

I've been saying for months that if we don't sell key players and do the same stuff we'll challenge for the top 4 next season. General themes - bizarrely low shot conversion, high conceding from bog-standard chances, players we've signed having a full pre-season and better understanding of the league and their teammates, fewer matches. Also, every team that came above us last season having to deal with Europe - haven't checked the fixtures to see how many of them we're playing on Sundays due to European fixtures yet (will be lower than last season obviously), but that could help too with their squad rotation affecting the quality of teams we face. Christmas is still going to screw us over though, of course, and injuries/suspensions at key times are always a factor.

Oh yeah, and here's an entire article about "Fraser Forster's failings" which begins with the phrase "Southampton are having an absolute nightmare with shots on target (SoT) in the box at both ends of the field. They’re the worst team in the Premier League at saving those they face and the worst team in the Premier League at scoring the ones they have themselves." which was written in December 2016. https://differentgame.wordpress.com/2016/12/31/fraser-forsters-failings/ Sooooo, yeah, we're better than results last season showed (also fatigue but I'm sure people have had enough of me mentioning that). FWIW Alex McCarthy constantly appears at the top end of save stats tables like this.

"Expected Goals" is your friend (and here, also here, if you translate). We were poor at converting chances compared to the benchmarks. See also, Expected Saves - which we were bloody awful at. The stats supported everything we could see. Oh, and FWIW I'll retract my previous defence of Stekelenburg's shot saving abilities - he was indeed one of the worst (to the right of the line) in 2015/16. xG and goals data for 2016/17 is here: https://public.tableau.com/profile/paul.riley#!/vizhome/PremierLeagueShotDashboard2016-17/PLShotDashboard2016-17 From this you can select Southampton, choose any player, and see how many goals they were expected to score from the chances they had (compared with a historical database of all chances in football in the past 30 years for instance), and how many they actually scored. Data for 2014/15 and 2015/16 for comparison can be found here: https://differentgame.wordpress.com/xg-shot-maps-and-tables/

Yes, I think there's a good chance we will finish higher than 8th. Assuming we retain our levels of the past 5 seasons, one or two of the sides in Europe will drop off (Liverpool is the obvious one, Everton will be affected by Europe too) and we can challenge the top 4 with a bit of luck and fewer key injuries. ALL the usual top sides being in Europe gives us every chance of overtaking them as we focus on a single competition and don't have the rigours of the midweek grind we had so often last season. Plus the strikers and keeper surely can't be as ineffective as they were last season again...

Yeah, they do look better as a set, but... yeah.

Yep, they'll run it against your customer number. Might even be able to use the 2016/17 card if you have it. They've also automatically put the discount on the items online for you, but I don't trust the sizing (yet).

Finding this hilarious - the shadow being cast and the solid bit between the legs suggests they have full size cartoons in the store.

Yoinks, £14 for name and number and £18 for those and Prem sleeve badges. Plus they haven't confirmed any squad numbers yet.

Not sure they've got any in stock yet. I'll have a look later when I go down there if I remember.

Your logic leaves a lot to be desired. "In the last 3 seasons alone over 500 players have been through it, we certainly have not signed 500 players, so that is testimony to the accuracy of the system." I'd probably expect a lot more than 500 players over 3 years, but as we wouldn't sign 500 players in 3 years in any circumstance I'm fairly sure it tells you absolutely nothing about the accuracy of the system.

It's hardly miraculous if our finishing returns to the statistical mean, as opposed to being outlier-levels of crap like it was last season.

The classic USA kit from '94 hasn't had a mention yet. Oh, and just-relegated from La Liga CF Granada wear red and white hoops. Quite impressed angelman has managed to name one team that no longer exists (Chivas USA) and one that's changed name and colours (Melbourne City).

Another one who can't see "will not sell those players" and has to construct a lengthy argument why he didn't mean that. The two players mentioned prior to his comment were Van Dijk and Cedric. He explicitly and categorically said "those players" won't be sold, then went on to note that no-one else we want to keep will be sold either. I'll believe him until I'm given reason not to. Previous statements had obvious wiggle room. The only time they've said a specific player "will not leave" before, Schneiderlin didn't (at least not for another year, anyway). The only grey area for me is Bertrand, who even said himself that he hadn't even thought about leaving. I wouldn't consider Rodriguez a top player for us any more, unfortunately, and it seems likely he'll go. The only speculation around this should be whether it's the new manager who's demanded this as a condition of him coming to the club, or whether they were changing their plans based on the new funds from the tv deal anyway. You might recall I suggested we did a big recruit last summer because the prices were about to shoot up - we didn't really do that, but we'll see how much last year's recruits are worth in a year or two. Hojbjerg and Boufal are two who have shown glimpses of potential but aren't yet where we'll want them to be, but I'm not sure how that's any different to Ward-Prowse who's taken 4 years to get to this point, other than the amount we paid for them and where we expect their development to already be when we sign them compared to a kid we've brought through.

Training kit actually looks a lot nicer on - though the red tees are the one without a glaringly ugly contrasting badge to begin with... Bloody loving those alternate socks though, hopefully we'll have suckered SportsDirect into selling those as the home socks again this year...

No helping you then. This is the most positive I've been pre-season for years (already was at the end of last season anyway), obviously we haven't sold anyone yet, but who knows, we might only offload a bit of dead weight.

It's not particularly difficult to see that the items where the badge background and outline is the same as the rest of the shirt look miles better than the ones with the red background on other colours. Makes you wonder why no-one mentioned it during the design phase. The red training top looks sort of ok, because the badge blends in, the maroon 1/4 zip is passable for the same reason. The rest of them are basically vile. Very pleased I went out and hoovered up a load of last season's stuff a couple of weeks ago at 75% off, now - I'm actually going to have the chance to wear it.

The training kit from that season was awful too!

https://southamptonfc.com/news/2017-06-28/southampton-201718-training-wear-on-sale-soon I actually don't like it very much, especially not the red badge. There will probably be something worth having though. Training kit on sale from midday tomorrow. Which makes sense given that the cardio stuff and tests are starting this week.