The9

I'm not sure if I've got time or the inclination to recap the ITK comments dropped at various points in the past 1600 posts, but that shirt is in line with basically all of them. We've not just pitched up here 6 months down the line, seen a random photo last night and gone "oh that's definitely the kit then", it is a shirt which reflects everything everyone has been saying about it since our first snippets of info. If I'd seen that in December when this thread started I'd have said "as if". Reasons not to want to believe it : 1) Plain red, no stripes 2) Almost exactly an adidas teamwear template on sale for £12.50 a shirt to parks clubs, aside from the one contrast area of material under the arm, which looks exactly like Bristol City and Hearts kits in similar colours 3) Ugly gold badge which doesn't go with anything 4) No sponsor 5) Looks plain like a training top Reasons to believe it 1) ITKs have been talking about another plain red shirt for months (and fwiw black/gold/white away shirt with a big V neck), rumour "Cortese likes block colour not stripes" from last season. 2) Adidas laziness in other teams' confirmed kits using teamwear templates 3) Ugly gold badge has appeared on official Saints website and on adidas announcement adverts 4) Rumours that sponsor has been changed a couple of times pre-season and might not be confirmed yet 5) All adidas training shirts so far released have been the same basic template, which isn't this one.

Not if *I'm* counting apparently. I didn't actually say we'd had non-striped kits that often, but yeah, ok, 1:4 then, same principle applies though, only the Saints PR machine would claim that was our predominant kit style.

Thing is, Bayern wore various combinations of mainly red, mainly white and stripes up until the 70s fairly evenly, and were only "all red" from 1973 to the mid 90s when they started rotating it again. There's an historical basis for it. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Overview_over_historical_Bayern_Munich_kits_1.JPG I don't think people have a problem with Saints "occasionally" going away from stripes to have a mainly red shirt, a sash shirt, a Xerox stripe style, a halved or quartered kit or anything else that's got some history, provided the stripes are the predominant style and provided it's clear that the club is mixing it up for SUCCESSFUL marketing reasons. But just changing to "we are red now" is not doing that. It's probably reducing sales if anything - yes people have striped shirts already, but that's what Saints wear and they'll always shift decent numbers. A one season change will move some people to buy a shirt because "it's different", but do it two seasons in a row and where's the selling point then ? The only thing "new" about a second all-red shirt in a row is that this one will be made by adidas. The only logic I can think behind it is that this year's shirt might sell on that fact alone, and a striped shirt NEXT year would then shift numbers due to being striped AND adidas. But that ignores the ability to produce completely different variations of stripes for 3 years and probably shift more shirts overall anyway without us not looking like Saints and not wearing stripes. Plus after 2 years of "red", why would anyone think we'd go back to stripes anyway ?

Would you regard 1 striped kit in 5 seasons as "alternative styles from time to time" ? Sounds to me like the stripes are the "alternative".

It could be a late sample, but the fact it ties in with basically every rumour on this thread gives it credibility. Also, it's not a training top as people keep suggesting, this season's training tops are a different style altogether.

As I established at the time, from the size of the queue to the times people were waiting for, Saints sold about 2000 shirts on the launch day last year. They could have done it without making people queue at the small store, but they wanted to create the impression of demand, so they served from the two tills in West Quay and had people queue out the door, rather than the 4 or 5 at the Megastore which wasn't open that day. Of course "fastest selling" might have just meant our newly chip and PIN enabled card machines (oooh, 21st century technology) were slightly quicker than someone signing a receipt. The utter lack of numbers to support the claim, and the club's hilarious record in massaging numbers for PR purposes (record attendance anyone?), along with the fact a lot of people hate the kit, is the main reason I simply don't believe it.

They were blatantly lying and using the "Post Admin" era as their benchmark for "ever". We would have shifted loads more shirts in the early 2000s than this season's effort did, there was comparable internet availability for online sales, comparable Prem status, the most successful recent side in the 2003/4 period with a kit launch following the 2003 FA Cup Final, a new kit with a new ground in 2001/2. All of those are bigger "news" and supported by more numbers than getting back to the Prem from a lower starting point after a period where lots of the 2003 fans will have gone away. The fanbase was probably much lower in 2012 than 2003, and the kit supposedly the "fastest selling" was also widely disliked. The only unknown factor is international sales (hardly likely to be high until AFTER we got noticed in the Prem) and just the economy's bouyancy alone suggests fewer shirts sold last season than either 2003 or 2001 - I'm surprised they even sold more than the sash, which people loved for various reasons (one of which being that it was at the time thought to be a one-off departure from stripes).

NyaRARARAARAHHAHAHAAAAARRGGHHHHHH. INNERNETZ RAGE ! Nah, I'm alright. I'd just rather we looked like Saints not Crappo Parks Kit FC from some random pub.

Have added the Fulham teaser, will not be adding any plain red Saints kits as I will be pretending that it does not exist. Everyone else's kit I'll keep updating.

I don't get why Allen thinks anyone would want to imitate Pompey's story, of course it's inimitable, no-one wants to end up like them. Hollywood ending it is not.

Anyway, 1500 replies. More trumpets, in the style of Saints new colours. As I have now seen what I am 95% sure is the home kit, and I'm 95% sure the away kit is black with a bit V and some gold trim I'm not sure what else there is to discuss. The home kit is horrendous and once again not Saints, and proves the Chairman either has no idea what the fans want or simply does not give a toss, and the away kit might be alright in black with it's big V and gold bits but I'm now probably not buying it on principle. It is SO easy to get this right but they just do not care about bothering to maximise their income, and it is a strange way to run a football club. Anyone want to buy a £10 Saints Store gift voucher ? I've had it since Christmas with nothing I want to spend it on...

How is it "not some kind of Cardiff-style rebrand"? We're now wearing the same colours as them for a start. Cardiff's owners are idiots for their rebranding and it's hilarious what's happening to them and how much crap they'll put up with, but how is it any better that Saints' ownership haven't even SAID we're no longer a team that plays in stripes ? They just stick a shirt out there without any on it and assume people won't care. Google Bullsh1t Rodeo.

Or if you like, £13.50 from pretty much any teamwear retailer, the Adidas Tiro teamwear shirt, with only one bit of underarm arrow panel different : Which explains why they've made the adidas logo gold on the actual shirt...

Near enough, and represents more of Saints history than the "new shirt" does too.

Yes, it's just a shirt. That's why the colours and style don't mean anything. I bet loads of Saints would buy royal blue shirts with white shorts and red socks too. I won't be buying it, but that doesn't change that we'll still have to watch my team wear the fcking horrible thing that fails to represent the colours of our club for another year.

"We can't have stripes, we'd look like Sunderland and Stoke !" Bristol City 2013/14 : Hearts 2013/14:

Just realised, I don't need to buy one anyway, I've already got that 2004 adidas Latvia shirt that I've hardly worn.

It's not the left one, you can see where the white stops on the sleeve is where the underarm "arrow" bit on the shirt goes, and the material in that area is red - even if you can't actually see the "arrow" shape. That badge in gold on red looks bloody awful too, and I bet we'll be having gold numbers on the back now as well, such an "ideas above your station/new money" Pompey-type thing to do.

Nigeria are playing in a green version of the 3 year old Paraguay kit... or 2 year old Stoke kit. It's also the same as the 2012 New England Revolution shirt they're still wearing. There aren't any current templates (that I can recall) with a solid single colour the full length of the side of the shirt, only templates which came out over a year ago. Adidas operate on a 1 year rotation for almost all their teams, random international ones usually being the exception, and they NEVER give out old templates to teams getting new kits.

Teams playing in red and white stripes : 2 Teams playing in red shirts with some white bits : 4 Teams playing in pink with yellow spots : 0 I have no idea why anyone thinks "other teams wear similar colours" is ANY kind of defence for this kind of pointless rebranding exercise.

For what it's worth, our "new" kit is almost identical to Bristol City's and Hearts'.

Keep hoping.

I'm afraid you are wrong. Every element of that horrendously poor shirt is as it's been described on this thread already - including the fcking TERRIBLE gold badge which someone mentioned fairly recently. Christ, I've all but mocked it up already, other than the sh1tty badge. There's no "liver bird", I don't even know what you think is a liver bird, and Liverpool don't even wear adidas, and don't have a kit that looks like that. If you mean the inside of the shirt, that's an adidas equipment logo along with the size information for various continents. You can see it here on the Chelsea kit : It is a 2013/14 style, has the cheap teamwear collar, the pointless white sleeve pieces (which I took great trouble to eradicate from the template I used because they were so nasty I figured no-one could possibly choose it), the ugly gold badge (which at least will look great on the black away), even the new 2013/14 climacool logo bottom right corner. The training tops are all a completely different style and have been the same for every adidas club so far, so it's not one of those. That is a terrible, awful, boring, ugly, poorly designed, un-Saintslike shirt and whoever thought it was a good idea should be hung... in effigy. We are a low-totem parks-level teamwear effort with a badge tacked on. Ugh. Based on what we've heard on here already, I'd say that was 95% the actual shirt (minus the sponsor). It is always possible it's a late version of a sample, but there's a tag on it, so suspect not. Oh well, gives me £47 to spend on something else. Maybe a nice traditional amber Newport County shirt.

Just joined.

As already stated in post 56 of this thread.