The9

If we spend £20m+ on a striker we might actually see what this side is capable of, instead of falling back on a load of excuses due to inbuilt fallability.

Would have been remembered for his goal at Cardiff as well, if we'd bothered to turn up for the previous 75 minutes.

Realistically, apart from the Championship player safety net mentioned, the situation has changed for the players too - whilst last season barely any of the players out on loan were near to contract ending and happy to take the cash for a season which they wouldn't get anywhere else, those players NOW are considering getting their next 3-4 year contract somewhere else and will be much more receptive to moving on permanently for less money over a longer period.

So they should, too. Who wants to be number 23 ?

Also worth noting that 11 was Sharp, 14 was Hammond, 15 was Forren, 17 was Forte, 19 Lee, 22 Richardson, 25 Seaborne, 26 Stephens, 27 Chaplow, 28 Chambers, 29 Reeves, 32 Butterfield. The players who were in 11, 14, 17, 19, 26 last season have not left yet, and only one of those numbers is "officially" assigned.

Yeah, I'm sure Jos "asked" for 26. Just like Barnard "asked" to not be given a number at all last season, etc. Not everyone is bothered about shirt numbers, but no-one's going to offer to take a tangible demotion no matter how much they claim not to be bothered. If he'd never taken 5 last season, yeah sure, keep your original number, Lallana style, but aside from Nicklas Bendtner who is a known delusional, no-one does that. Glad Wanyama has a sensible number too, not that the Prem rules allow random number selections. In fact I'm surprised we've been allowed the list we have with the holes in it, though obviously the youth/U21s will fill up the 30s.

Hm, gone through, recreated all the changes I'd lost, readded the other Gwent leagues and now testing - I've also put in Regional Divisions for every single team in Wales so they all should stick to the right structure. Testing, and every time, it seems to halt the leagues at the end of the first season and not play any more fixtures, whilst the cups continue. Anyone got any "known error" help here ? I have some leagues at different tiers theoretically relegating into the same "pool" of "below league" clubs, so that might be a problem - I also have promotion and relegation leagues set in my strcture, which I've seen people say to delete sometimes, suppose it could be possible that the teams could then follow the "regional teams" rules which would be fine, rather than the "promotion league" set. I guess the two could be clashing. But what I want to know is if anyone else has, or knows of, anyone who has this kind of problem.

As someone who was at Fratton in 1992 when the whole of the two ends of their ground started "hilariously" waving at each other during a match against Millwall, they equally have NO grounds for calling the Lallana wave "gay".

I don't think Saints and their amazing flexible attendance announcements from the Championship season have anything to be smug about on the "making numbers up for PR purposes" front. Remember the freaky growing crowd which was one short of the attendance record, announced as a new record, and then mysterious became one more than the record ? And all that with empty seats in the ground ? Still, it's not like we've ever closed parts of the gr... never mind.

It's a pretty rubbishy league down the bottom, and they have the safety net of the parachute payments boosting their hypothetical spending power, even if they're actually all tied up in paying existing football creditors. That will be attractive to some journeymen, as will the crowds at that level, at least for the first few weeks til the novelty wears off. As far as the players they've actually got, I have no idea whether any of them will be any good, but I do know the two strikers I've actually heard of are very, very injury-prone. I think they'll probably finish in the top 8, but where in the top 8 I'm not sure. They don't have anything like as much money as people think they have, and have still got a lot of outstanding debt for a "Debt Free" club which may stop them investing in the team (for once)... Quite hopeful they might get into the next round of the League Cup and draw us, so we can put our reserves out against them and stuff them. They're only favourites due to the "big name" effect and the fact they have five times as many deluded suckers likely to bet on them as most other teams in that league (as you can see by the pledges they got).

Adidas (short sleeve) Shirts across the Prem are either £40, £45 or £50 (Hull are the cheapest), Shorts are £20-£25 and Socks are £9-£12. We're joint most expensive on the shirts (last year's was £42 for just the S/S shirt), most expensive on shorts, and more expensive than Stoke for identical socks. If you factor in the 10% off, we're still the same price as most for shirts and shorts, and we match Stoke's prices for socks. Also worth noting that we're the same price as the likes of Chelsea, who have shedloads of retailers selling their stuff and are guaranteed to have price cuts within a month or two if not already. Hull are doing a full kit for £60, a Saints shirt is £50 without ST discount.

I disagree that the stick on advert from last season (the same as the season before) is not better than the terrible invisible gold thing this year, the colourscheme of red and gold ALONE makes it one of the worst shirts in the Prem this season, before even considering what our kit usually looks like.

As the badge is black on black or white on white you may as well just buy an adidas teamwear training one from some random local kit retailer, it'll be cheaper too. I keep toying with the idea of buying some adidas kit but I can't see me having many chances to wear it any more.

May as well not bother, ESPN isn't free on Virgin Media after today because it becomes part of BT Sport tomorrow, literally every one of those shows except the Women's rubbish and a few of the friendlies was on ESPN. God knows what crap I'm going to stuff the planner full of now.

Any reason you have no put to bed the "development money" rumour ?

I've been watching the following during the close season : CONCACAF Gold Cup (every match, every goal, can't remember any of it) Brazilian League (the voiceover bloke is annoying) MLS (USA, live and highlights, terrible defending) Copa Libertadores (CONMEBOL South American CL, they love a colour clash) Asian Football (AFC World Cup Qualifiers highlights, hence knowing Lebanon's kit looks like Saints') Friendlies for Thailand, Indonesia, South China FC (Hong Kong), Bayern Munich, Dortmund, and an A-League All Star team, and probably some others Bundesliga and Serie A reviews Euro U20s and U19s Championships Women's terrible football nonsense I've also become quite au fait with Gwent-based non-league football in the past couple of months due to a frenzy on the FM13 editor.

To stop the masses of people queued up and buying the beautiful and classically inspired historic new home shirt from seeing someone print a name on the back of a shirt, I'm guessing. Seems quite a reach, doesn't it ?

I am aware of the £5 thing, which is why I think it's weird that so many Full Members are mentioning the ads above. I chose the "avatar free" view in my profile, I find it makes work browsing marginally less problematic, not that I do that much when I'm not at home anyway, today being an exception.

Shirt printing would seem to be a little excessive, you'd think they'd have "behind the scenes" machines as well as the ones in the shop. But then they don't even have one at West Quay, so who knows ?

I don't think we're bothered about moving players on, we seem more than happy to pay them their contracts as a reward for getting us back to the Prem and we're also happy to release players for nothing who would easily have raised a few thousand in the January window. The assumption is that none of the reserves who played in L1 or Championship will get similar wages from any other club so they don't want to leave, or just that no other club is prepared to pay what we are for them so the offers aren't there. Obviously as their contracts expire it's in the players' interests to get themselves a new deal at a new club, but until then some of them may not even want to go on loan (or may be prevented from doing so, like Dickson seemed to have been last summer). I suspect the club don't think it's worth the effort selling the reserves, compared to the gains a big signing could bring in, so they focus on that. Which makes you wonder wtf they were doing in January...

I was under the impression that Chaplow's contract with Saints would have expired in July, but because he was injured we offered him a short-term extension, which was then terminated to enable him to sign for Millwall. Otherwise he'd have been released with the others in the summer. That's assuming his contract was up in 2013 of course. Speaking of which, I haven't seen Forecast anywhere, has he snuck under the radar to sign that contract Gillingham offered him or not ?

I don't get ads. I also don't see avatars.

No reason for them to close the store for that, they could either do it after closing or in the morning. It's not like the design is secret or there are any embargoes in place.

They were all like a son to him. Except Frank, more of a nephew. Add Jermaine Defoe to that list of players who succeeded despite Redknapp's influence as well. Oh, and the whole squad from that League Cup game at Mansfield.

I'll consider this one that "slipped through the net" when he's got 200 top flight appearances.