The9

What makes anyone think it wasn't just a one off to sell more shirts, seeing as that was the theory widely circulated at the time ? I mean I have my suspicions that we're stuck with red with tiny white bits, but as yet there's nothing tangible to say otherwise.

Not only do I not remember it, he never actually said it word for word, and there was at the very least a very big grey area in whether he meant academy products or just "homegrown" players by the Premier League definition (which includes the likes of Schneiderlin).

Which never, ever happens. Because if the Brits are better, they play.

Just to point out that I'm not sure why you think picking Forren would be done "to please the fans", who as far as I could tell weren't particularly bothered whether he played or not. Also, in order to have finished below Wigan we'd have had to done more than "lose one or two" of the last 10, we'd had to have lost two of the games we actually won, or lost one of the games we won and three of the games we drew. Or to look at it another way, we were never worse than a 90% chance to stay up after we beat Reading with 6 games left and didn't need any of the 4 points we did get from those matches, so it would have been an ideal time to experiment IF the manager felt we need to. Again, we'll only know if the "saving Forren" theory is true or not at the start of next season.

Oh and FWIW, I don't know what Steve Grant has been doing to the Southampton IFC (Fans' team) kit when he gets it washed after matches, but I reckon it's been worn about 3 times total in the past 12 months since we got it (the last striped kit), and the aap3 logos are all showing the red stripe through the sponsor's logo and "shadowing" where you can see the glue on the logo all around it. Meanwhile, my Saints kit from that season, which is about a year older, is still in perfect nick. I think someone, or someone's launderette, having been blitzing the buggers on 80 degrees.

This ?

Here's the 2013/14 Basel shirt, for those of you who have been waiting on it so you can see what a halved shirt would look like - it's also the "other" arrows under armpits kit that could be a template for the home shirt, and shows the different material piece shapes nicely.

Who is this "Marcus" feller ?

He didn't, he said in a couple of interviews that he wasn't expecting to play...

Nah, I didn't have one of my better games, Griffo scored a nice little finish into the top corner from outside the box. I was concentrating on getting poleaxed whilst taking the ball around the keeper and missing a sitter in injury time... Chris played really well at the back though, we had a few decent performances today once we got going.

Yes, there's a Bleacher Report article, probably poorly researched and a load of guff (and some of the fees are... strange) at least they have Neil McCann and Jelle Van Damme in there... though Bleidelis (as a Pahars helper), Draper and Wayne Thomas are unusual other choices http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1664096-southamptons-5-best-and-worst-transfer-signings-of-the-past-15-years? Can't really argue with the signings of Beattie, Lambert, Schneiderlin or Pahars on the "top signings" list though... not so sure about Kelvin. So who are your best and worst Saints signings of the past 15 years (since 1998 ) ?

Jim Solbakken, Forren's representative directly quoted mentioning that he and Forren were told by the club that he was signed for next season, as we've heard a few times from various sources previously. http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/sport/10472392._/? Of course, it could just be the agent saving face, but then we'll know that if he isn't in the team in August anyway. It's an interesting policy though...

I don't see any other academies churning out as many top level players as ours. Everyone knows you're extremely lucky to get 2 Prem players out of any single year, half the others will shuffle around the Championship or lower leagues and a few will fall off the radar into non-League or stop altogether.

It was the worst I've seen him play this season. Says something about his teammates too though, and yeah, he's probably the better option nevertheless. Maybe the complete lack of asking him to overlap means they want a more "defensive" player there.

"Golaço!" also "Golazo" and "Golaso". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_Italia#Gola.C3.A7o.21 Always wondered why it was a Spanish or Portuguese word on Italian football...

He played in their most successful team ever. Not sure where you can go after that - oh yeah, they signed Afonso Alves. Now HE was crap for Boro.

FWIW, Paraguay played in the "old" kit again yesterday, still 3 years old though.

You wouldn't have wanted to see it, trust me. We lost 4-1, decent game but as we hadn't played together and they were in their 20th game of the season it took us a good half to get going.

Is it part of the training ? Makes logical sense to coach people to distrust everyone and everything, easier to do the unpleasant stuff if you have to then, us against them and all that.

Yeah, management black arts stuff like Project Management, which now I'm qualified in to government standards I can confirm is just "doing logical project stuff" all the way through. Somewhere under all the OTT jargon is a decent guide to best practice.

What do you want ?

They presumably mean €18m, seeing as they quoted the purchase price as €14.4m.

Unless he's genuinely unsettled and worried he's not starting, I can't see any reason why we'd want to sell him now. Next year's a World Cup year and he'll be busting a gut to be involved in the first team every game by the time the spring comes around so he's starting for Uruguay - assuming they qualify of course.

There's only been one person using this to score irrelevant political points on this thread, and it wasn't Turkish. Yeah, sure he could have not said anything, and probably wouldn't have if he'd known it was getting resolved via another method. But at the time the criticism was justified. Fortunately, and I have to say for me a little unexpectedly, the club did the right thing and acknowledged that there was a legitimate case here.

I don't think there was any admission by the applicant that they didn't qualify by the rules, they were however unable to prove they qualified by the method they'd used previously, which was no longer applicable, but common sense (a change of address to care home and, unfortunately, the nature of the condition itself) should have shown they were still eligible and that should have been part of the initial response from the club. If the club had maintained their "computer says no" attitude as originally displayed, they'd have been subject to even more criticism, but they still deserve a little of the displeasure at the intransigence initially on display. Hopefully they'll have learned from it though. And much as the home facilities are good, the oversight on selling disabled tickets online for away matches - when the customer is already listed as disabled on the database - is still far from acceptable, and unaddressed.