The9

Quite hopeful Newport will continue their appalling recent form at home on the beach against Exeter tomorrow, seeing as they're not going to go up they may as well help the Skates down... playing them in a couple of weeks, too.

Given that we're shipping out Osvaldo and that'll give us about £15m, anything other than a like for like spend should start the alarm bells ringing for our ambition.

I read somewhere yesterday that Man U's ticket and even tv money is now dwarfed by their other financial deals due to corporate partnerships and naming rights for almost everything. Obviously a side-effect of the Financial Fair Play rules as clubs can make as much as they like from legitimate business deals.

Pretty sure the decision is already made, have you seen the ad campaign circulating at the moment yet? Tangible red and white stripes and a couple of yellow and blue bits on there too... http://www.saintsfc.co.uk/news/article/14032014-home-heart-launch-1421737.aspx

I will give Barker credit for improving their defence, which as we all know is the basis for success in football. Though not usually if "defence" means 11 mean permanently behind the ball and no-one in the opposing half. Still not sure why Chesterfield were so bad against them though. They do have a couple of decent players there. Of course we know Connolly is at Oxford for now, not quite sure why he dropped Jervis and Wallace midweek given that they were their best players in the previous few matches and Jervis in particular looks like he knows what he's doing - though I'm not sure he's a finisher. God knows where Barcham's gone though - he was decent at the start of the season, with Connolly-like levels of performance. I note he hasn't played since the thrashing at Sçunthorpe though, so maybe he's one of those one-way players who doesn't defend... which basically just sounds like he should be up front, cos no-one else is.

That's missing the point a bit - Schneiderlin's development was due to him remaining with Saints as much as having to play against L1 players, and it's also difficult to credit Lambert's development into a Prem player to anything other than his efforts within Saints' system when he'd spent 10 years in the bottom 2 divisions not getting anywhere. The whole discussion is about the benefits of remaining with Saints as opposed to going to another club's system - though admittedly there's a difference with established first teamers (though Schneiderlin was 18 when he joined us, mostly keeping him in the side through the rough patches was a remarkable piece of foresight).

How do they think they can increase their playing budget when it's limited to a percentage of turnover, and they are currently including the parachute payments in the turnover percentage calculations? In order to do that they'd have to raise more income than this season, because they've already said they're over their estimate for this season and that's WITH the parachutes. Logically as they (currently) have the biggest crowds in the division they would be able to outspend the rest of the league slightly anyway, but they still wouldn't be able to splash significantly more even so. How they've managed to get themselves into a position where they get 15k crowds (at least this season) and yet can't spend more than their rivals is one of the best bits. Anyone would think they had some kind of Season Ticket offer likely to be announced soon and they were blatantly telling lies just to dupe the locals into stumping up again, thinking they'll be watching a winning team. I can see it now: "Last season we asked you for £1000 PLUS the cost of a season ticket - Next season, we only want you to pay £1000 FOR your season ticket..."

The Montreal home kit is new, the away and striped third are unchanged. Re: another post above, I love that Timbers kit, and I love our deep V away kit - won't expect another of those this coming season though. I'd have money it'll have a bit of pointless tape across the shoulders though, it's this year's adidas thing.

Oh yeah, and LOLz at "no Saints player has ever played in the Prem for anyone other than Saints". I put a lot of effort into researching this when discussing our lack of experience in summer 2012, so can I also add Lee Barnard's 3 Spurs appearances to that list?

I'd have Johnson from Sunderland (if his wages weren't silly, which they probably are); maybe Medel from Cardiff to give us another defensive midfield option (one I reckon we can improve the fitness of, and he's already a good player in a bad team); wouldn't touch Caulker with a bargepole and I don't think we need another young right back, McGregor at Sunderland seems to be a decent keeper (as is Mannone from Hull, but I don't think they're in danger of dropping). Vorm, Tremmel, Ben Davies, Taylor, Britton, Bony, De Guzman and Michu could all DAJFU. That alone suggests Swansea will be fine. More of a gamble, wondering if Hangeland has lost it at Fulham yet, haven't seen enough of Burn, and having Darren Bent in reserve to stretch defences late on wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. Mulumbu and Yacob were awesome together at West Brom last year, this year not so much.

True, but signing a top class striker who isn't a mental case and hits the ground running would add some edge to our death by passing. It doesn't have to be specifically Suarez, but where we are now, anyone to improve the side is in pretty rarified territory and going to cost a chunk (hopefully offset by selling Osvaldo).

At this stage, Lallana.

Aye.

So, I watched Chesterfield v Skates for about 40 minutes on Monday. As self-appointed L2 expert (I have been to all of about 7 L2 matches this season, but it's more than most of you lot and at least I've got some benchmarks for competence ), I couldn't believe how bad Chesterfield were compared to previous games. Skates were better than when I saw Newport beat them in December, but they'd have to be. Jervis and Wallace are vaguely decent, and that'll probably be enough for them with the way Torquay, Exeter and Wycombe have been sliding. However, that was an insipid, sideways Chesterfield performance more than it was a decent Portsmouth one. They were ponderous and took an age to move the ball, giving the decidedly sub-standing Skate defence and midfield every opportunity to re-organise themselves. At that pace, even Shorey could get back in position in time, and not lumping it at Devera's head or turning N'Gala to face his own goal were also huge failings on Chesterfield's part. Of course, the Skates still failed to actually win. But then they were on tv against the league leaders, if ever there was a Cup Final performance from them, that was it.

Agree with all of that, but where he is next season may well be dependent on where Katharina is with her intentions for the club. If we aren't active in the summer window before the World Cup and look like we're going to stagnate in mid-table not push on towards getting into Europe, we could be replacing 4 of our best players (and manager?) before we even get the chance to improve what we've got.

It happened in August-November 2012 for me, when he scored the vast majority of his open-play goals in the Prem. It won't happen again.

Oh, and here are the only pics of that 2014 Philadelphia Union shirt so far - shows the random shoulder tape effect, different collar, no trim on the broad stripe, and a pinstripe not in the 2013 shirts: The previous 2 seasons they had this: Also, pretty sure last season's mock up wasn't the Union shirt, it was the Portland Timbers one (cos I did it).

They produce patterned prints on the front panel for teams in the template of those above. You can get some decent designs out of that, I'd imagine the Argentina (home) and Nigeria templates would be pretty popular, maybe not so much Mexico (home or away): I think the Argentina template is actually the 2013/14 one with the curved sleeve-piece. There is one other style which doesn't appear in the other post above which has pitched up since last September, it's the same style as the latest training kits for the World Cup, on the right, below:

They've taken over AFC Wimbledon's kit for next season, the only kits of theirs I've seen this season are these for Gibraltar: As you might imagine, I'm completely unconvinced that we're switching from adidas, sounds like a Cortese kind of thing to do, and we don't do those any more.

I said this in the summer of 2012. After an unexpectedly good start in the Prem, it took about 6 months for it to be empirically verifiable, and with our change in style under Pochettino having bedded in by March 2013 it's been over a year since he was effective IMNVHO.

Injured Player Ability Bias

This thread is lacking in David Pleat hatred. Pleat makes Townsend seem competent, Motson cutting edge, and Tony "Mick-aye-ell Laudrup" Gubba a linguistic genius.

Yeah, it's clearly because he's hilarious.

I think your mistake here is not classing Lallana, Rodriguez and Lambert as midfielders. The reason we're not scoring goals is because ONLY our midfield contributes goals, and we don't have any strikers (except Gallagher).

Now, now, it's well known that they have an exclusive distribution deal with SportsDirect.com, who happen to own Sondico and who brand their current kit. Though despite this, there weren't any Skate shirts in the SportsDirect stores in Whiteley or Eastleigh last time I was in there. I haven't actually seen a Skate shirt anywhere other than Fratton this season. While we're discussing kit, anyone else think it was amusing that their capitulation at S[unthorpe came with them decked out in entirely red and white? Well, white shirts and shorts with red socks to be more accurate...