The9

Some people still don't seem to get what I'm saying though. Which is entirely, of course, based on my opinion of it. Their opinion will be different to mine. Says something that last year I was thinking "might get one for the collection even though I hate it" but this year I'm more "just going to have to sell the rest of the collection as it's now going to be incomplete". Saves me trawling eBay for a cheap white shirt from last season too.

RE: replica retros - I REALLY hate remakes of anything which actually had a visible branding on the original - especially when they use the wrong materials, fake logos etc. The cotton Score Draw Patrick Xerox replica is a particular annoyance, the more recent polyester one is better but still a million miles from the actual Patrick "Keegan-era" shirt (which I don't own, yet). If you're doing retro, I say buy an original. Of course for anything before 1976 basically there's no outward branding so any kind of plain striped shirt with the right kind of collar is fair game - but I bet you can get one cheaper than Toffs or Score Draw can do anyway. Going back to the sash era (and a lot more recently with red/white centre lines) even the players didn't have their sashes going the same way!

Why is why I didn't.

I didn't suggest "karma", I suggested if you pay £47 for that shirt, you'll get that shirt, for £47.

I was going to say "because Umbro don't exist any more and there's a big ole vacuum for teams to get kit deals", but actually they've only added Fulham, Saints and West Ham. Umbro only had us and Man City last season and City were already signed with Nike due to their 10 year Umbro deal. Adidas also got lucky with Hull coming up and none of their teams going down (relegated sides wore MiFit, Puma and Lotto). They already had Chelsea, Stoke, Sunderland, Swansea, West Brom last season. Figures are as follows : adidas (9) : Chelsea, Fulham, Hull, Saints, Stoke, Sunderland, Swansea, West Brom, West Ham. Nike (4) : Arsenal, Everton, Man City, Man Utd Puma (2) : Cardiff, Newcastle Macron (1) : Villa Avec (1) : Palace Warrior (1) : Liverpool Errea (1): Norwich Under Armor (1): Spurs

The main reason Javi got massively p155-taken was because he got hugely upset about someone bantering him at some point on Saints Forever and threatened to kill them. That the poster being threatened was a police sergeant and the massive overreaction made the whole situation utterly hilarious. "I keeeel you Mabereeek" became a bit of a S4E meme for a while. Having actually met Javi when he was over here for a while, he's an alright bloke though terrible, terrible footballer, and a bit of a fantasist. The time he took Summers and SAF (two teenage boys at the time) to Yeovil to meet Aaron Davies when Davies was known to be with the Welsh U21s in Cardiff was decidedly uncomfortable though. He was also introduced to Saints by my ex, who spoke decent Spanish and also never posts any more.

My only bbs memory is him at Leicester away, shirt off, moobs a-flying, puffing his way down the stairs of the (then) Walkers Stadium to give it the large one after Saints scored. By the time he got there, Leicester had scored again. Possibly the only time I've been delighted to see the opposition score, I was laughing for about five minutes.

Gecko moved to Australia a few years ago, living the dream.

Mmmm, if Swindon didn't offer him anything, which is what "not taking up the option" means, then the "money" being referred to is Swindon's available wage budget, not Portsmouth's. It also doesn't take much money to offer more than Swindon's offer of £0. It will be interesting to see if a player not wanted in their squad by a L1 side which made the playoffs is "the best in L2" though. A parallel would be the kind of CB replaced in the squad by Seaborne/Martin/Fonte at Saints in 2010/11 and then released as a result - Olly Lancashire level springs to mind.

...and because Summer holidays.

What's it got to do with support for the team ? They couldn't care less what shirt you wear. My point is that if people want to pay full price for an horrendous unSaintsy kit, then my opinion is that's what they'll get. People who are buying it will obviously have a different opinion which is fine, I don't have to respect them for buying it though, just like I don't expect anyone to respect me for buying every other shirt under the sun for the past 20-ish years.

Best of both worlds, you can see what it contains without actually opening it.

What happened ? "Everyone expected promotion"? When we were about 8 games in and in the bottom 5 ? Sure it did... EVERYONE. "Universally accepted". Of course. Take a look in the archive. As with everything on here, there were a range of opinions, most of which were more hope than expectation.

Can't disagree that some of it matters - I think it's related to the pursuit of relative success though. I went utterly mental at Brighton away at Withdean, same at Plymouth, had a few moments last season (Man City away, home, Chelsea etc and hell Newport getting into the FL worked for about a week) but overall if you've got no expectations and it's just some game in the middle of the season, you can stay flatline win or lose.

I'd rather have a striped unbranded cotton 1950s v-neck with wool socks and hob nail boots than anything modern in a plain colour.

I don't think so - maybe for Pardew before the season started, but by the time Adkins came in we were in the bottom 5. By then some people would have taken your arm off for making the playoffs that season.

This is true, some of the pro Tiro styles have them and some don't. Boro home and Stoke away have seams, the red thing doesn't.

I honestly think people who want to spent £47 on that heap of sh1t get what they deserve ! FWIW there are plenty of Chinese companies who'd make you one with the gold badge on it anyway for about £8 a shirt. It's just the white armpit arrow bit which is "wrong" on those. Suspect the socks may be hooped, but this is just guesswork on my part...

I don't even agree with this bit, I've been a football fan for 40 years and I'm LONG over the result affecting my mood. For about 95% of matches, anyway.

Plus we didn't even win it, never mind walk it...

I'm actually struggling to work out which template it is - if there are curved sleeve pieces to make it the Sounders template they're blending into the colour of the material well...

I'll be wearing a variety of retro Saints striped shirts to matches this season. I would fork out the £12.50 for a Tiro but as I'm never going to wear it and it has no collection value I probably just won't. There's definitely a market there for buying a load and selling them at half the price of the actual kit though if you get in early enough.

Oh yeah. Don't like that either, but at least it's stripes.

Once I've got over having to support a team that doesn't look like Saints again, yeah. That doesn't stop it being a problem.

If I'm not mistaken there's a "three stripe" weave as part of the red stripes as well. It's a really nice shirt, the stripes make all the difference.