The9

Oh, here we go, the original "red is best" article... Except it doesn't actually say that. http://www.dur.ac.uk/r.a.hill/Attrill_et_al_2008.pdf I didn't have any problem with that black/red kit either. Slightly narked that the "original" kit thread has been moved though (presumably merged)... If you haven't read it, don't bother arguing about it. That's my 3 for the day, so hope the link works!

The yellow one was fine, unless you were Peter Crouch, who had to wear a t-shirt under it. As for the Red success myth, I have the article bookmarked (though I can't link it on my mobile) , it proves absolutely nothing about successful colours.

Oops. Though I will say you couldn't have known that we'd go "own brand" in January because there was still 6 months to get another supplier in at that point... Good knowledge though. Oops, I appear to have bumped my original (and now very wrong) kit thread.

Much as I love the stripes, I actually wouldn't have any problem with the club moving permanently to the sash kit - it's unique within Britain and has a historical grounding in the club's first few seasons. I feel much the same about the navy shorts the club wore for much of their first 60 years. Plain all red though is inexplicable, and can just go away.

I completely disagree about the quality of our "own brand" kits being poor to begin with. There's VERY little difference in the quality compared to all but the last Umbro England shirts (which are gloriously made). The only exception being the couple with design flaws (the "nose-breaker" central badge FP kit from first Championship season, and the white/grey and all yellow with blue piping kits under Burley which had ridiculously short long sleeves). Most of them were perfectly fine - the light blue away from 2005 is excellent in particular. No problems with regular wear, 5-a-side, 11-a-side for the Saints IFC team, or anything else. In fact we wore the blue kit for about 4 years afterwards. In contrast, the black shorts I've bought this season from adidas which are the exact same style as the away kit shorts (I also have a white pair the same as the actual away shorts without the Saints logo) have had the stitching unravel all the way around the waistband in two different places. "Quality", that isn't.

Nothing new here, Crabby, and you seem to have jumped to more than a few conclusions. As with every other post, I'll wait and see what actually happens before deciding if we're stalling or not. Plenty of reasons for optimism at the moment, and I doubt Krueger is the kind of person who doesn't know how to motivate and deliver a vision.

The one difference being that the UK's economy and Premier League income is a lot more stable than Italy's has been for the last couple of years, when ALL of their clubs were selling to anyone, as reflected in their useless European performances (and also due to their own debt issues, AC Milan's sudden drop down the league). Not sure why we should resign ourselves to be a selling club when keeping our top players and growing what we have will enable us to grow every other element of the business and marketing and bring on-field success. We're in a better place than ever to build on where we are, and we've also got a shedload more money to pay the top players much more money. If we can't sustain that, then the club should be doing more to increase revenue streams to compete with the top sides. City may have a sheik, but they've only built a wider fanbase in the past 3 years with success. We are not far from being able to compete enough to build that sort of support, though it is a big step. Not sure the owner is prepared to step across, but it's essential that we try it just to stay still. We're perfectly placed to jump the Europa-saddled teams now IF we choose to pursue that.

I don't think he's moved on from his modus operandi when we were in the bottom half of the Championship with no centre backs (the only time he has been right, and even that was only an issue for 3 matches).

Oh FFS, does he have to do this EVERY SINGLE YEAR? Seriously, the last 5 years have seen Saints improving year on year, the ownership is still the same and the changes around the club so far have all been either improvements for the club to be less fan-unfriendly or dealing with fallout from the previous CEO's petty retributions. Every year Alpine moans about failure, every year recently, we've got better. It is SO dull, even if the worst happens, which is still pretty unlikely, I'd rather not waste any more of my time discussing endless worst case "sky is falling" hypotheticals beforehand.

Not a "slap their name on someone else's stuff" brand, they actually have their own range. Newport County's 2014/15 kits are the same style as the Villa training kit from 2013/14 for instance. I would be pretty impressed if any "proper" brand maanged to get the quantity of stuff Saints want turned around that quickly though.

Not sure why "own brand" is such a problem. If that is the case, there will be plenty of no-mark companies ready to slap their logo on stuff anyway, what difference does it make when most of the stuff is in the same pool waiting to be branded? I remember when Fulham had on of their lesser known brands a few seasons ago (might have been Airness), their training kit was exactly the same stuff as Saints training kit from a season or two before. There's a ton of mass-produced kit out there just waiting for someone to agree to stick their logo on it - for instance Palace's "own brand" kit this season, or, depending on which kit you looked at, their "Avec" kit. Also, I'm sure there are loads of companies wanting to get their name into the Premier League who could knock up a load of kit and source lots of training kit a lot quicker than adidas did, given that they took on NINE Prem sides last season and that was probably the source of any supply problems. Besides, some of my favourite Saints kits have been "Saints Apparel" ones, there's no difference in quality compared to major brand names other than the reluctance to give things gimmicky names like Formotion and Techfit.

Hmm, that was from April 24th - I think the most interesting bit about this whole thread is working out who knows exactly what's going on and who is passing on a bit of information with some assumptions. Looks like Matthew Le Tissier knows up to date stuff. Blakey for instance, might not have known about the deal being cancelled, OR might have known it had happened and assumed that the club was able to sort things out. As for the specific designs, well, I guess someone has to produce a design in case they do go ahead? As for what I was told about what Krueger had supposedly said about "can't stop the previous year's red"... that suggests the story was apocryphal, or at the very best, that as of a week ago the club thought the only way they could get a kit out of adidas for next season was to go with a plain red kit - and now things have changed. Or it could have just been utter cobblers from start to finish. Because the club have said outright that the contract was cancelled in Cortese's time in charge which suggests that there was never a "red adidas kit" even discussed for 2014/15. My money is now on Puma, and stripes (though as the bit about Krueger knowing we want stripes was part of the same story that might also be questionable), though I'd have to check to see who suggested it on here and their ITKness. At least the ST and HOME and HEART campaign implies that the club knows most people want stripes. Anyway, here's the Arsenal Puma shirt for next season: Switzerland (nice keeper's shirt!) Penarol (though judging by the collar the striped one is actually the same 2013/14 template Cardiff and Newcastle had) Olympiacos also have Puma stripes, but 2014/15 isn't out yet. Here's Alajuelense with their stripey Puma kit also based on the Newcastle 2013 template: And away, with a design on the front suspiciously familar to Saints fans from 2000. And the new Newcastle away for 2014/15.

Blimey you lot have been busy over the past week or so... I heard from a third party that Ralph Krueger was asked about the kit at the Awards last week and said pretty much the first thing everyone says to him is "can we have stripes back", but confirmed the kit deal was already signed for next season and it will be plain red - which I am aware conflicts with Blakey's story. I don't think Puma would be much better, everyone uses templates nowadays anyway and there's not much difference in quality. Subside are always buying shirts from retailers and selling them on at a massive mark-up, on the off-chance someone very stupid or very desperate wants to pay through the nose. That white shoulder mock up is cack, a Hull kit from 2012 and Fulham away kit this season, adidas hardly ever go with a one year old kit, never mind 2 years out of date (Forest this season and Fulham's aforementioned away which was a 2001 promotion tribute aside). We're by no means last to launch kits, there were a few (adidas as well) after us in the Prem last season and a few didn't even get announced before being worn (Fulham's navy third kit worn in their opening game, for one). The fact it seems we're almost certainly having red again aside, I quite like the Milan one (though not sure red/white stripes would work with the gradation as we'd have to have pink on there), and the Bayern is nice and would work better with a black pinstripe (or none at all). But it seems my "original 2014/15 Kit thread" post of "boring templates here" was right. For the record, I shelled out £15 for the home kit last week (ugh, but I'll buy anything if it's cheap enough) and can't convey my annoyance at another season of red enough, so I'll probably never mention it again* *Lie.

You mean an injury where he'll be out for a bit and still be fine afterwards, as it's 2014 and they can pretty much fix anything now with enough money? Actual career-ending injuries nowadays are incredibly rare and shouldn't have any influence on any of these kind of decisions, especially given wages earned and the pension plans available - the career-ender list pretty much ends with Fabrice Muamba and Stuart Holden in the past 5 years or so (wow, Bolton were unlucky).

I thought the Man U fans made their own atmosphere, the unfathomable drone in the second half made it difficult for the Northam to sustain anything, and they noticably raised the volume when the final scores were read out, to drown out the news that their hated rivals had come second, and their other hated rivals had won the title. It was interesting to hear how they perceive their "real" rivals. Singing "Blue Moon" would have been utterly lame, just when idiots sing "Play Up Pompey" at us. They're an annoying bunch of gobsh01tes generally though, all seemed very narky generally. All this cobblers about "Saints fans were quiet because we know we're going to sell players..."? Um, what? Aside from a couple of negative spinners on the substitutions (which were clearly for fans to give Brazil-bound players an ovation, and to make sure they didn't get injured, considering we were playing for nothing in terms of league position) I don't think it got a mention all afternoon. And yes, the PA is gash, the running joke is that the only place you can hear it is in the toilets, and to do that you have to suffer the plumes of half-time smoke from the addicts. Finally, also in favour of forgetting all about comedy teams in League 2.

Which is of course why he's not getting a sniff.

We definitely have a racially-motivated minority - it was more obvious in the lower divisions when there were fewer Saints fans around generally, but I remember quite a few occasions where morons near us in the Northam would cycle through the black players hurling abuse, Jaidi, Papa Waigo, Antonio, Puncheon etc. all getting some. Jake Thomson got hammered in his couple of appearances, so it wasn't just "picking on the senior pros rather than the kids" either. As for the game at Swindon when Jacob Mellis' parents started back at someone a couple of rows behind us on his debut after a half of racist bile... Glad that the idiots are disappearing into the bigger crowd nowadays.

I spoke to a female Saints fan in the ground who said their entire row was scarfless when she got there, this led to me nipping to our seats to collect ours. I was completely trollied though, so not be the most reliable source.

It would have to be, they nearly got 18 points when in non-League one season for the international clearance issue having signed a "retired" player from Cardiff within a couple of seasons of his "retirement". To get done again is VERY careless. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_conf/6339377.stm

Oh, and cheers for the heads up, thanks to the combined wonders of free-for-an-hour St Mary's Stadium car parking and the sharty kit finally becoming cheap enough for me to succumb to it, I've just bought 4 items of kit (including the GK shirt for some reason) from the Megastore. And the programme from last Saturday as there's a picture of me in it. This concludes my three posts for the day.

Yeah, the "big clubs" pay a massive premium of minus millions of pounds to get the manufacturers to make kit for them. Man U's deal is a massive revenue creator for them due to the money Nike pay them. As an aside, all but one of our 80s kits was striped. I wouldn't be surprised if we broke out a new home kit against Man U, tbh.

It would look exactly the same to me, had them all on ignore for 18 months.

Doesn't really excuse your inability to detect stripes in all but one of the 1980s kits, does it? Also, definitely worth arguing about. Repeatedly. Every other page of every year's multiple kit threads. And even the 1985 Centenary kit had more (albeit all red shadow) stripes than this year's, which is probably why 80% of people don't like it.

We had loads of striped kits in the 1980s including Rank Xerox and all hummel ones, and we haven't worn navy shorts (which btw I quite like) for 64 years, which makes it difficult to claim it is Saints colours any more. In fact we've worn black shorts pretty much since that was viable.

I think Chambers is better positionally and more defensive-minded, and Clyne is a better crosser and quicker. Shaw's better at everything else though - if he starts getting 5 yards further up the pitch with the ball, improves his delivery and works on taking set-pieces, we'll have another Bale on our hands.