The9

Just had a look online, it just says "Home kit coming soon" and "away kit coming soon"... no third kit then...

Hmm, could be interesting to see where the kit turns up next...

The thing with CMs is they're a lot more likely to pick up cards as they're more heavily involved than the players at the extremes of the pitch - and as well as that, as they're involved in more tackles, they're also more likely to pick up contact injuries. So we need more than just the three decent defensive-minded midfielders, and as is always the case we can move on the fringe players, which in this case is the likes of Chaplow, Hammond, Guly, and De Ridder.

I have seen the grand comeback, suspect the 8:29am single posting was due to all the bear-baiting on the thread immediately beforehand. As far as I'm concerned we should draw a blue line under it and... no wait, that's Reading now.

Someone could have viewed it twice. I voted for a rebanning as I haven't yet seen him post since he was apparently unbanned, and I didn't see the grand unveiling.

I'm not so sure, the lighter red certainly goes well, but there are already two Prem sides wearing all red (there were last season anyway ). In addition, the white shorts actually go with the otherwise mismatched white trim on the rest of the kit. That can't be said of the black, though that was their colour scheme last season so there may be a few who think "sod it, we can't have blue, let's at least keep the combination from last season and stop them changing everything every year". So there are arguments for all apart from the ugly dark red that caused the vote in the first place.

Hilarious to see someone actually suggesting that giving the fans the option to vote on the colour of the shorts means "their opinion is being considered". That is the worst combination of colours I've seen on a kit in years - Newcastle have the same template in different colours and it looks absolutely fine. But the two-tone red is just awful. The point is that their shirts should be blue anyway, 99% of Cardiff City fans would vote for that, and probably with pink and yellow spotted shorts if it meant they got the blue back - but because it doesn't suit their mentalist Chairman to wear blue, they don't get the option. If they cared what the fans wanted, they'd be wearing blue, never mind "here's a token vote because we've even managed to screw up WORSE the red kit you all hated anyway". The idiots responsible for their rebranding of course have now changed the colours they wear even since last season's red and black, to red and some different red and a bit of white. I mean, at least decide what you're rebranding to BEFORE you go ahead with it, and plan beyond just one season...

Good, how any football fans could support him after his comments last year that the "hooligans" behind the Tour sabotage "should stick to football" is beyond me.

Guessing that you're talking about Vitoria Guimaraes - who just beat Benfica in the Portuguese Cup Final, prompting the rumoured job offer to Pochettino. I went to their (presumably new) ground at Euro 2004. It's a fairly small place up in the mountains north of Porto, an hour train trip but only about £3 return, and the pitch is located on top of a shopping centre (the concrete area on the left of this picture). The Saints matches were the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup 1969/70, scores were right, 3-3 and 5-1 ! Guimaraes has a population of 52,000 and a stadium which holds 30,000.

St Chalet is Oscar Pistorius ?

Going back to the original point, what odds the FA defending any kind of money-based activity, when they've already decided to relegate Doncaster Belles out of the top division of Women's Football (bear with me) next season, purely because they're not "box office" enough, and encourage this kind of repressive behaviour against the protests : http://www.wsc.co.uk/wsc-daily/1162-may-2013/9843-fa-try-to-silence-doncaster-belles-cup-final-protest

Still doesn't work for an image link because it's not the source, I just get the IMG FAIL box However, this is different, and amusing.

That weirdly striped Man City away and the Liverpool away and third are the only ones I'd describe as actually "bad", though the Cardiff varieties of red looks awful and really cheap, even though the Newcastle template is the same and looks fine.

I'm not sure what the solution actually is, but Walcott ahead of Milner has got to be at least half of it. Hodgson's natural tendency to 4-4-2 can't help much at the moment, I haven't forgotten Germany wandering past Barry in 2010 either. Accepting that he assumed beating Ireland at their own game shouldn't be too difficult (wrong) and that that line up won't be the norm, I'm still not sure he's readily accepting that some kind of 4-2-3-1 is the way to go (though he did specifically say the 2 up front was more of a 1 with 1 in the hole against Ireland), and most Prem sides are using that already. Could it be that the players who can best play that system (looking at Cork here for a start) just aren't in the squad ? I'm not sure England's tempo is faster than Germany's or Brazil's (or Spain's, though they're not moving the ball as far as quickly).

Answer to One is that they're all used to different systems at their clubs. I think the England "style" is terribly dull and it does look like "tactics by committee", and there's no room for flair or creativity through the middle of the park. But they are very tediously efficient when they actually try. Two - probably the most difficult thing to appraise from a distance, and even more difficult to justify to a knee-jerk media.

Fair comment - but what's the alternative when you can't coach a system from scratch in 3 days ? "Committed" is another issue, does trying harder but still being cack help ?

To answer the original point, we are currently 22-23 points from coming 6th. That's basically 8 wins. If we stopped dropping daft points at home (and away) to the likes of Wigan, Stoke, Sunderland, and QPR... they'd probably be offset by us not beating Chelsea, Man City and Liverpool next time around. So where exactly are we going to find the extra 8 wins from ? A little bit of a better start covers one or two, but we're at least 2 CBs, a midfielder or three and at least one striker from having the depth to be able to play in the multiple ways needed to beat everyone and not just teams who play short passing and don't counter-attack.

Oh, and there's this too :

Tried linking the cartoon from BS Rodeo above but the sweary detector prevents the pic linking working too. However, if you're in any doubt whether to read it or not, "Angry Birds Lego Bum Poo Wee FC managed by the reanimated corpse of Klaus Barbie playing in the PaedoLand stadium" should do it.

MLS is franchised by its nature, and mainstream US sports all adhere to this model, so US fans are used to it. In addition the league itself isn't 20 years old yet and the membership has very much fluctuated in that time, so it's not like fans have built up generations of support, they accepted a level of "plasticity" when the league began. Which is not to say fans haven't built up a bond with the organisation - but when you can just create a new team in the east of the same city and potentially suck fans away for merchandising reasons alone, you have to say the "bond" isn't as strong as it is in most European countries. The RB Leipzig example is interesting, you can see just from the shirts that RedBull haven't had their own way as they'd wish to, they have "normal sized" adverts on the shirt rather than the RedBulls logo dominating the front of the shirt as with other sides, and the tricky naming convention is also down to the DFB having more balls than I expect the FA to have in a similar situation.

My theory is that systems are so essential to English football nowadays, and every decision and choice is so pre-determined and micro-managed that it is literally impossible to take eleven (18? 23?) players from different clubs and integrate them into one unit within the few days the England manager has. One of the main reasons Hodgson sticks to the top teams is because he at least then gets understanding between players from the same clubs. The players are often not intelligent enough to switch systems without endless drilling over a longer period than is usually available, and the issues between Gerrard and Lampard over the past 10 years, both of whom are good internationals by any measure, show some of the problems that can occur. On top of that, England is terrible at producing flair players and thus the entire pattern of play they DO produce is mechanical and "efficient" rather than exciting. This works fine against less well drilled teams in qualification and usually the early stages of tournaments, but as soon as they hit the QFs they're playing equally efficient sides who also have more creativity, and often, just better players. As far as Saints go, my interest in players getting to play for England stretches as far as "I hope they get the recognition they deserve so they don't feel they have to leave".

Yeah, I think we're all aware Red Bull aren't going to be our sponsor, but it IS worthy of discussion, as it opens up questions about what it is we're actually supporting.

Revisiting this 1) I identified from the car park on one side and the Harvester on the roundabout on the other. Been there once. 2) Recognised the park to one side with the huge recent stand, the configuration of the road past the opposite side, the steps at one end, and the car park at the other end. Been there a good 10 or so times. 3) Never been, guessed, got it wrong as I assumed it was a more recent Stadium and the one it was wasn't uniform in shape 4) Have been to 2 of the options which it wasn't, and didn't look new enough to be the other one which has just been rebuilt, so process of elimination it was the other one (and looked right). 5) Wasn't certain, though knew it was one of two, decided on the correct answer due to the other ground having newer stands, and seeing what appears to be a motorway nearby. 6) Process of elimination. There's no hotel behind any of the stands, I've been to one of the other options and there's no astropitch near that one, and of the two remaining options, I'd been to one and the roads configuration looked vaguely correct, as well as the line of trees to the left, which IIRC correctly was next to a train line. 7) I've been to 3 of the 4 stadiums mentioned, remember the old stand with awkward access in the away end for the correct answer, and that the ground I hadn't been to had massive newer stand alone stands and nothing as old as the one in the picture. 8 ) Have been to 3 of the 4, two of which have already been answers. Of the other 2, quite similar but remembered the ground I had been to was boxed in by terraced housing a little more and didn't have the room to expand shown in the pic, so it had to be the ground I haven't been to. 9) Only been to one of them and the walkways were in the wrong places for that one, wasn't another option as it was a previous answer so bit of a shot in the dark, then remembered one ground had just been redeveloped and looked at the colour and trees of the surrounding areas and style of housing for clues, guessed right. 10) Been there a few times including recently, terraced housing in rows all down the one side right up to the ground itself, boxed in by houses all around except the one end with a car park, and colour of the roof also helped. Dunno why I chose to share that.

I'd hate it but lump it. I'm pretty sure the Premier League rules prevent any sponsorship club naming, or otherwise others would have done it already. I do know the FA blocked "Coventry Talbot" back in the 1980s, although they got railroaded by the Premier League within 10 years and appear to have entirely abandoned any principles or interest in preserving football against the tide of money ever since, so I'm sure they could get something through if they needed to. After all, both the FL and the FA agreed in principle that Wimbledon being moved to MK was a bad thing and shouldn't happen, and there's a rule that clubs should relate to the conurbation for which they are named, but they keeled over into appointing an independent arbitration panel which approved the move nevertheless. In terms of Red Bull Saints supporting, I really would hate it, and would probably spend more time watching my home town club, seeing as I'm now in the weird position of having 2 clubs I have supported for over 15 years each both in the 92. It would still take a lot for me to dump a ST for the Premier League club within 5 miles of my house though.

Just to be clear, I'm talking about something like this 2013 Toronto shirt (without the pattern and with white underarm) : not this one, which is a 2012 template