The9

Hasty conclusion to that is that the matchworn Patrick homes all had white under the arm to the cuff (or at least I haven't been able to find an "arms up" pic without white showing), whilst replicas had a single colour sleeve without the white (or light blue in the case of the away) stripe. Also that we've had more plain red alternate kits than you'd think in that 1980-85 period for playing against teams in blue and white stripes.

Ok that's enough of that... here's something else. A pic of the rare, unsponsored, special all red alternate shirt for West Brom (also, red socks). And the sponsored, with white socks version worn at... Brighton? Note also Mark Wright's shorts have a Patrick logo whilst Charlie George's don't. Not sure what we've got on the link below, 15th September 1982 vs Norkopping in the UEFA Cup, but looks like a third sponsor/unsponsored version of the plain red shirt. Getty Images won't allow sharing though. http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/mark-wright-of-southampton-in-action-during-their-uefa-cup-news-photo/106556687?

Etc Still trying to find an "arms up" matchworn pic which proves some of the matchworns don't have the stripes under the arms but haven't seen one yet... 1981:

Interesting note - I can only recall replicas with the single colour sleeve. Matchworn short sleeves definitely up to the cuff here: Can't get clearer than this - it even looks like stripes Away long sleeve underarm: Not sure on this one, but it looks to be a single colour underarm: Not on the replica here: or away replica here: Can't really tell here (I bet that was deliberate too) but the illustration shows only single colour sleeves:

Yes, and the logo size rule must have come in generally around this time, as those shirts (Saints and West Ham) went away in 1995, England's Euro 96 socks had to remove the repeated Umbro logo from around the top (UEFA regulations), and replace them with a single umbro logo, which presumably was part of a change in kit regulations more widely adopted by the Premier League soon after. Again the adidas three stripes don't count as a logo in that context (probably as it's impossible to define that those three stripes around the top of the socks are an adidas device but three stripes on a kit elsewhere aren't the same thing), only the trefoil and the "triangular" adidas equipment sign they introduced in the early 90s which is now their logo on football shirts. Pretty difficult to argue the same for a massive Pony tick on a third of the shirt (even more obvious on West Ham's shirts where there was no partial stripe noise below it).

That is bloody ridiculous compared to the Mings decision too. Absolutely no consistency compared to the Mings ban - though where there is consistency - Zlatan didn't get suspended for his stamp on Mings either.

While this is correct, there's a very large grey area around what you're considering "dealt with" - he sees a collision and gives a goal kick (I don't think it was a free kick, and as it turns out that is the crux of the matter), but doesn't see Vardy stand on Van Dijk. Not seen, not dealt with. The ref of the Man U v Bournemouth match clearly saw there was a collision between Mings, Ibrahimovich and Rooney, and gave a corner when the ball went out soon after, but he doesn't see Mings stand on Zlatan, yet Mings gets retrospective punishment. What's the difference? That Zlatan elbowed Mings in a completely separate incident? That it's higher profile because it's Man U?

You can probably add Reading and Arsenal to that... both have more fans than they had at their old grounds, but only the one continually getting into the top 4 in the Premier League doesn't have many empty seats. However, Darlington, Doncaster, Cardiff City, Rushden & Diamonds, and Huddersfield all have had new grounds with no particular improvement on attendance compared to the old ground at the same level, and two of them went bust trying to maintain it. Other clubs like Wolves, Blackpool, Newport, Aston Villa, Portsmouth and numerous others have moved elsewhere or added seating to existing grounds in some other way and have failed to fill the stadiums - the common factor being that all but one of them are at a lower level than they were when they expanded. The main determinant of attendance is a team's success, and the main determinant of that is investment in the playing squad. Clubs with the money to build new stadiums usually have the money to improve their teams which makes them more successful, and so more people want to attend. That's how Liverpool and Man U are able to expand - the demand is already there. Brighton, Man City, Swansea and Hull all had big money backers making the move viable and all of them have surged up the league compared to where they were in 2000, West Ham have slashed prices on a stadium they didn't have to pay for and have dropped in league position, whether they're actually making more money isn't clear yet, whether many of their new ST holders will come back next year isn't, either.

As an aside, Evian have also gone under in the past year or so, since we played them in a pre-season friendly not too long ago. Shame, as their weird pink and navy kits with the alps on were interesting and they had a decent run in the Coupe de France recently as well.

To be more accurate, the reported figure from the selling club usually includes all add-ons, the reported figure from the buying club none of them. It's been quite a while since Saints actually announced a transfer fee, hasn't it? The figures are then muddied even more by reporting of the payments in instalments and the value of players on the books confused by amortization over the duration of the contract. Plus for some reason hardly anyone whinging about how little we've spent on players includes all of the new contracts signed by existing players at higher wage rates. All of which makes it a bit more tricky to see what's actually happening than anyone who just wants to spout off about it will be prepared to invest in learning anything about it.

I sent an email to David Luker about this kind of thing in 2009. Saints went into admin the following day. For some reason they didn't fix it. Isn't it nice to be able to worry about the little stuff while the big stuff takes care of itself? Agreed re the utterly guff Sinatra ripoff, it's garbage by any measure and nothing is going to strengthen the link between it and Saints. I've always hated music immediately before kick off and after goals too, drowns out the natural atmosphere. PS The Premiership hasn't existed for 10 years - in which time the club has actually fixed the PA.

Oh, one other thing, I went into Sports Direct in Whiteley yesterday. It's the time of year when they flog off all their remaining stock. As Sports Direct own Sondico who make the Portsmouth kit, the football display was probably 90% "can't sell" Portsmouth shirts (reduced to £12), training tops, tracksuit trousers, and nearly 100% of the merchandise (scarves, teddy bears, etc) was PCommunityFC. The only non-Skate stuff was a rail of about 5 Saints shirts at £30, which is the price they were on at after a couple of weeks - they didn't have any Saints home shorts, home socks, or away kits left from the swathes that were in there at the start of the season - and nothing from any of the big clubs either. Still, at least they're not selling things at £12 now, rather than the £4 of a couple of years ago. Even Newport County could afford to give away 50 shirts to their travelling maniacs who went to Morecambe last night - maybe the Skates could do something similar? They've clearly still got the stock.

Pretty much all lower league clubs have club lotteries to raise funds to benefit the club, can't see anything worth having a go at here tbh. I've never had a problem with teams trying to fundraise, it's the clubs who "fundraise" by buying a load of players they can't possibly afford and then writing off the massive debt they've deliberately built up in order at the expense of the taxpayer and the public purse that I find particularly obnoxious.

We're all fairly well-versed in the fact that bottom half of the Championship is their natural level, just look at the attendance figures - they can't get more than 20,000 even if they want to at the moment and that puts them squarely as a small second tier side. They wouldn't even be the biggest club in League One next season. On my way back from Crewe on Saturday (two wins in three days for the 'Port, only 7 points adrift now!) we had the misfortune to arrive at Waterloo at the same time as some Skates and some post-Twickers rugby herberts. Fortunately there was an 8pm train via Havant as well as the 20:07 through Hedge End I was getting so there was every chance the "indirect" route would be low on Skates. Unfortunately there was an incident on the line at Wimbledon and every train ended up stuck at Waterloo for the next two hours, during which time as it was now the ONLY train going to Portsmouth which hadn't left the station before the incident, the beered up Skate quotient went up... and up... and up... at one point three girls who looked barely old enough to drink staggered on, started singing something about being "on their way" and parked themselves in the next carriage, loudly. Some Skate commandeered the PA at one point to regale us with his wit, "Urrrrrrr Play Up Pompey hurrrrrrrrr", and every time there was an announcement or when the train actually started moving there was a loud boozy cheer, which descended into a low-rent version of Saints' Gabbiadini song (which btw I hate) but for some bloke called Powter or something like that. At one point the drunk girls accidentally started singing a song about their American biscuit sandwiches to the tune of "Oriol, Oriol Romeu" and then had to apologise to their friends because they were clearly enjoying being vaguely associated with a good Premier League player too much. Aaanyway, two hours on a train, stuck in Waterloo, we finally got to Eastleigh and there was an announcement that we needed to get off the first 6 carriages (God knows why, Hedge End hosts 10-carriage trains all the time), so we started walking through the train. When we got to the 6th carriage, there were Skate shirts (and the odd rugby shirt) everywhere, and smell of BO and stale booze was absolutely overpowering. With us unable to go further up the train, we queued next to the one door that would open, the queue stretching all the way through the carriage. The woman in front of us commented on the stench (cue fish jokes), and then a friend of hers somewhere behind us LITERALLY THREW UP ON A TABLE because she couldn't handle the overpowering reek of body odour. So, that was a lovely end to my 15 hour round trip to Crewe... we left Crewe at 17:29, home just before midnight. FFS. Meanwhile, at the top, everyone keeps ballsing up. Carlisle 0-0 Luton last night was an awful result for both of them, and Stevenage of course hit the wall after their run of wins. Plymouth can't buy a win, and Doncaster had to come from behind to beat Notts bloody County. All the teams just outside the playoffs won, most of them in the playoffs didn't. The Skates' ability to win slightly above half their matches at the moment is putting them fairly comfortably into 3rd. Let's face it, if they DO go up, coming third is miles better than them getting to Wembley...

I don't know why we're having so many problems at the back, when according to this thread we have potentially world class centre backs Caceres, Carceres, Carcaras, Carecas and Cackers to choose from.

Yup, as Caceres will be leaving in May unless he signs a longer deal. Can't consider Gardos as a viable first teamer any more and we need 4. Obviously if Van Dijk did go, which I think is fairly unlikely, we'd have to replace him too.

They should refuse to play their next 5 matches and see how much crap they can cause, that would be bloody hilarious. Apart from the one against us...

He can't spell "Pele" though, so it could be - not that it's anything to do with Saints or Portsmouth directly anyway.

I skim-read that already once in this thread, it appears it fell out of my head. Edited original to say the opposite, still doesn't change my argument. What that suggests to me is that they were going to propose a draconian punishment that they could reduce based on the difficulty of proving intent - which I suppose they might have done anyway, as we don't know they didn't plan on banning him for 9 matches... Obviously that's a fudge and a half but they've decided to ban him based on no clear proof anyway.

I'm intrigued to know if we're actually going to pick Caceres and if we're interested in keeping him for longer. Makes sense for us to play Stephens as much as possible to give him experience when the results don't really matter (Prem prize money aside), but seems a lot of money to pay for Caceres' wages just as a back up as well, which suggests we're considering him as a future option without wanting to commit in case Stephens makes that unnecessary.

Coventry also had a navy front/sky blue back shirt to deal with the problem of the sky/white clash http://www.truecoloursfootballkits.com/articles/true-colours-updates

No, the adidas stripes run precisely within those parameters and count as one logo per sleeve (even when the lines are broken, suspiciously). These are existing rules. Those Coventry Talbot shirts would still be banned under the existing regulations (as would the team name) - their massive T is bigger than the 250cm squared allowed, and so was the word Talbot. As it happens I had more of a problem with the replacement shirts, which were sky blue on the front with white side panels, and plain white on the back. They played Man City on The Big Match and City's home kit was Sky and away white, they wore white having seen the front of the shirt, but when Coventry turned around they were both white shirts. Crewe have a similar thing this season, mainly white on the front gradated from red, and red on the back. Away kit here too! And here's Crewe's with a red back: There's something on the new sponsor regulations here - seems to imply that the 250cm^2 size is only allowed if there's no other sponsor on the shirt: http://www.sports.legal/2016/11/premier-league-clubs-shirt-sponsorship-a-new-trick-up-their-sleeves/ The other thing affecting Saints this season was the shirt sponsor for Europe was only 200cm^2 so the player shirts used the smaller sponsor as seen on replica women's home shirts and youth/kids' shirts. Plus of course the all red backs, which we will have to get used to in the Premier League from the summer.

Yup, one of the teams at Switzerland kind of coeffecient level gets a team moved into a later round, and the first qualifying round loses one tie with the domino effect ending with the top rated coefficient nation moving a team from the first to the second qualifying round - at that point they're usually kicking teams out here and there for not reaching UEFA criteria and considering if the likes of Kosovo, San Marino or Gibraltar merit an appearance based on ground size and things like that, so it's not as significant as you'd think.

That's not "making up scenarios", that is literally the most likely outcome of this week's FA Cup matches. Also, if Man U are out we still have to play them midweek (as you yourself just said), because everyone has Premier League fixtures scheduled for FA Cup semi weekend, so not sure what your point is there. We're guaranteed 3 midweek games (Palace, Arsenal, Man U) plus probably Chelsea as well. As I've already said, the hypothetical "best way to play 3 games in a week" is to consider all the variables, i.e. opposition strengths and weaknesses, home or away, travel time if there's a European game involved and any prioritisation of the matches, and try and put out sides to win every game, except in extreme circumstances (eg derby game, dead rubber in group stages or big lead from first leg). Maybe on rare occasions or when you know the opposition will weaken their side too, you decide it's better to seriously weaken the team for one game and go for it in the other two - we basically did this with our EFL Cup games against Palace and Sunderland and scraped through both. We got wins either side of Palace, but only a draw and a defeat either side of Sunderland. So all that really did was give us an even playing field for the league games and the results we pretty much as expected given the opposition (beat Swansea and West Ham, drew with Man City and lost to Chelsea). That set of results shows that you can't make your best team better than their limits using rotation, but also shows that with strategic rotation you can win games whilst resting players and giving you a better chance of having your best players at their limits. However, it's a case by case basis: when you look the matches either side of our Europa League games the results were pretty much as expected, except for two upset defeats - after beating Inter we lost to Hull (in a game we would have won 90% of the time and were very unlucky) but before drawing at home with Beer Sheva we got humped 3-0 at Palace - picking basically the first team but with Hojbjerg for Davis. Both those midweek Europa games were vital and it seems to have had an impact on a Premier League result, but I don't know if we could have balanced the teams better. All the other games basically went with league position and expected results anyway, but those two results are 6 points which would put us a point behind West Brom with a game in hand for 8th - but you can't expect everything to go your way in every match, rotation or not.

Targett's shown his best position is to the left side of midfield in a 3-5-2 where he's not the one doing all the crossing - which gives us plenty of flexibility if we switch formations. I don't see any reason we wouldn't keep all three of Bertrand, McQueen and Targett tbh. McQueen and Targett are exactly the age and standard of player we should have in those cover positions.