The9

You mean he's old enough that we HAVE to include him in the 25, I can't see how having to use a space on a player who previously didn't count towards the total is a good thing !

In order to achieve the Chairman's stated goal of getting us into the top 6, we need the following : Right back, centre back, left back, defensive midfielder, two wide attacking midfielders, at least one striker. We have lost or factored out Butterfield, Richardson, Martin and Seaborne (signed Lovren to replace one of those already), Fox can go, need more depth in midfield where players pick up suspensions and are prone to contact injuries, can sideline Guly, De Ridder and Chaplow and need more options than just Rodriguez/Lambert/Mayuka up top. That's another 7 players by my reckoning, can't see us signing all of them immediately though and I'm not convinced of any academy first team intake this season. We have one more season of people with Championship and below contracts hanging around before we should have a full squad of players with Prem experience who are all capable of performing at a non-relegation level when called on. We're not at that point yet.

Yeah, I just posted the video. That queue is about a third of the length of last year's at the moment.

I see a new video, there are a fair few more there and it's definitely current as there are people wearing last season's shirt in the queue : just about out the door (with the large gaps in the queue taken into consideration). Couple of hundred is about right.

So I see from the video, that's something at least.

I make that about 30 people (the queue doubles back about 8 people deep near the door where the rope is), and you can see something resembling the new kit hanging up - though we did have a red training top with white sleeves back in the FP days so I'm still not 100% that pic is current. It probably is, but I have a degree of scepticism about it.

They haven't even said when it will be yet either, though "first week of August" wouldn't be hugely unlikely now they've worked out that most people get paid at the end of the month.

Except when I'm not buying it at all, like this year. Has anyone got a pic of a queue that actually looks like it's definitely "today", i.e. one with some of the kit and the queue in it ? The other pic is basically generic "people outside closed store" but if someone could take one of the store open and deserted it would have to have come from the first hour (and would be bloody funny).

That brief video has saved me a couple of quid in petrol money, it looks awful. They'll have trouble giving some of it to Lesothoans on next year's Foundation trip.

Er, you must have missed the bit where I decided not to buy it in the hope it would get us back to wearing stripes again. I may buy the shorts and/or socks or some training kit as it'll look alright with some adidas kit I already have, but I'm not buying the home shirt. Will probably get the away shirt though, depends what it looks like in the flesh. I may tootle down there tomorrow to have a look, but that's more to satisfy my geek needs for detailed information about it than to actually buy it. I didn't buy either of last season's shirts in the club shop and I only own one at all because a mate sold me one he won in Varsity's raffle at a discount. I didn't buy the white one even though I liked it, because it was obvious we weren't going to wear it (and because all of the different whites from all of the various add-ons looked awful).

I'm a rational consumer who pays as little as possible, tries to get the best value from time-restricted products and waits the least time necessary to do that. The longest I ever queued for anything was a Tamagotchi in 1993 and that was about half an hour, Cardiff Toys R Us had about 20 in and I got one (it was a crap fad, of course, but I wanted one at the time). Some people behind me didn't get one, so I regard that as a logical and rational decision. I've never queued for a Saints shirt behind more than about 2 people, though rationally it does actually make sense to get them as soon as possible because obviously they have a very limited shelf life. For me that usually means "in the first couple of days of release", but it's not difficult to avoid waiting for hours by just not planning to go until the crowd has died down. I don't understand the need to get it the second it comes out, when everyone knows what it looks like, wearing kit around town on non-match days is loserish anyway and one day here or there isn't going to make much difference over the course of a year.

I don't get the point of you linking pictures of 5 different clubs' red shirts over the course of the past 10 years ?

I'd have been there at some point, maybe not on Sheep Day though, I only do launch day stuff when I know the queue has died down or doesn't exist.

They only served 2000 last year based on the launch day figures we got from people who'd queued and how long it took to serve them, the refusal to sell online or open the Megastore at the ground means they all get to queue outside the smallest outlet for the privilege. The thing is, I bought the new kit from the same store on launch day in 2011 (aap3 stripes, Championship promotion season) and in 2008 (Umbro flybe admin season) and there wasn't a single other person around - purely because there was another shop open and a postage-free delivery service to get the kit online on launch day. They're only doing this for show, and if last year is anything to go by, if you turn up at 4pm you can walk straight in without a queue. The only remotely interesting thing about this for me today is to see if the numbers on the back of the shirt are also gold, which ups the tacky quotient about 500% and also makes them harder to see than white.

To be fair they built Dorchester a completely new ground, and I'm pretty sure Sainsbury's had something to do with that one stand at Selhurst as well - but both of those were built in the 1990s.

I got the wife to take a pic as we were driving past on the way to the Platform Tavern earlier, but she is now asleep and I don't believe has uploaded the pic yet.

Went past earlier. Big ugly red signs with Gold badge and "It's Happening" in that terrible caps font used on the Season Tickets, plus about 5 or 6 big pics of players in the new kit with "WITH PRIDE" and "FOR HONOUR" (Yoshida) and stuff like that all along above the Megastore frontage. And a big pic of the home/away/GK kits on the wall next to the store. The red/gold things look absolutely awful next to the brown-ish brickwork, clashes like hell.

...and the first 13 seconds of this from Jeux Sans Frontieres (warning if you go too far there's Stuart Hall and awesome late 70s prime time Friday night BBC1: Similar, no ?

This is what I'm banging on about : FIFA Theme - first 20 seconds here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fJ3zRDzE88

The Sound of Silence. Not the Simon and Garfunkel one, just the noise from the PA so you could hear the fans. I quite like the new FIFA theme that they've started enforcing on their competitions though, mainly because it sounds like the Eurovision theme, which means its played before Jeux Sans Frontieres. If their current form is anything to go by it should be suffixed by someone (maybe NOT Stuart Hall) shouting "And Here Come The Belgians". Wooo, that was obscure even for me.

You can do most of part one just by clicking on his name. I bet we've got a psychiatrist on here too.

If they could build the new ground hovering above the Rose Bowl but keep all of the traffic off the M27 Junction that would suit me just fine. Need more pubs between my house and the ground, maybe a walkway direct to the stadium from my house, it's a right pain having to go through Sainsbury's Car Park at the moment and there aren't many pavements up towards Thornhill. Obviously it would need a much bigger capac... NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

They'll have to make the shirt £100 to make up for the shortfall in sales if the poll is anything to go by. Shirt merch is still a drop in the ocean compared to tv money now anyway, part of the problem.

If there's one thing Cortese doesn't give a toss about, it's the current shirt sponsor. We've already sent promotional stuff around 6 months ago trying to replace them AND already replaced them only for the replacement to back out (apparently). Wearing stripes and not buying any new stuff is the only protest they might take the remotest bit of notice of. Even buying cheap lookalikes just makes it look like the kit is more popular than it is, even if they're not getting the money from it.

Too many Stone Islanders to get a proper protest shirt-wear sorted.