The9

We finish jointly with them and the prize money gets split. There's only a play-off if the title, European places or relegation is affected. I looked it up last week.

Our Umbro contract expires this summer and has no bearing on anything, and Nike sold the Umbro name to Iconix in December. With the exception of the kits Nike are still making for existing "Umbro" contracts they took on before this season and the teamwear range, there is no "Umbro". Lambert may well have a Nike deal, he's been wearing their boots for nearly 3 years, but that has no bearing on what the team wears. We also have a few ITKers saying the adidas deal was done months ago, and describing the style of the kits. In fact the only shred of evidence about what you're saying is that the "Cortese Statement" on the OS was white and gold (and not black and gold). FWIW I don't know either way, but there are a lot more people saying adidas than Nike and have been for some time. Mods, probably worth merging this with the Pointless Kit Thread... ?

Not at all. I think we've done well, but am slightly concerned at our form tailing off and think we need to spend extremely big to have a hope in hell of troubling anything above 8th next season - when I keep hearing 6th is the target in a couple of seasons. We were more than 7 wins off 6th this season. I was confident we'd stay up from the 4-1 win against Villa and we did with room to spare, but injuries and lack of depth could have been a problem and still would be up front and at the back for the current squad. Not incredible, but there were some incredible moments in patches, now it's about producing them consistently.

Because there's a certain way of being successful in the Prem, and it's not the same way as in the Championship. It took time for their players to adjust to the division, more lenient refs, the harder schedule, and more importantly, Allardyce taking over in June 2011 and changing their system entirely. Hoofball isn't generally as successful in the Champ because defenders expect a certain amount of agricultural passing and are geared up to deal with it - the likes of Pearce and Gorkss at Reading "just heading it away" will do fine for you in the Championship and can win you matches, but not as much in the Prem. Also, they didn't have Carroll last season, he's ideally suited to their long ball game, and he took the Championship to pieces with Newcastle when he was down there. Finally, MLG point, we were behind them in the Championship for at least a month in Jan/Feb 2012.

The thing I was most surprised about was them hoofing for Crouch's head. When he played for us, we passed (often long) to his upper body, and he usually pulled the ball down on his chest and laid off a high side-foot volley about 3-4ft off the ground which other players just couldn't defend without fouling him. Plus his heading wasn't all that great, they'd probably do a lot better using him to retain possession in the attacking third rather than just flicking on all the time.

Yeah, but as was pointed out VERY early in the season, they had more than half a team of players with Prem experience only 18 months previously, whilst we only had a few. They hit the ground running and we didn't. After 11 matches they were 6th and we were bottom but one, 13 points behind them. http://www.statto.com/football/stats/england/premier-league/2012-2013/table/2012-11-11 It took us time to get used to the Prem - though 4 draws and 2 defeats from the last 6 games wasn't exactly sparkling.

Because people like lickle Mikey and want to show him that they thought he was good from 1997-2002-ish, I should think. The wife, apparently, used to have his poster on her bedroom wall. I was hoping for the opportunity to shout "well done, he's thirteen" at him.

Better than the gash we're singing to that tune at the moment, anyway.

Thought they had a lot more skill and ability than West Hoof.

Luke Shaw had to endure that terrible "Hey Jude" song at least twice that I heard, plus ongoing "Luuuuuuuuuuuuuuuke"s. Rodriguez' song was sung once that I heard. There was at least one "Super Kelv" and a "Kelvin give us a wave", there was a "RLSGM" when he scored, a "Morgan Schneiderlin lalalalala", even a "Jose Fonte Baby" at one point. "Puncheon Sh11ts when he wants" got a few outings when he came on, "Adam Lallana" when he took some corners, is this enough yet ? Aside from that, we sang at least 5 times about Markus Liebherr, and that terrible Cortese song a few times too, plus the equally gash This Is How It Feels hugely overdone with the manager's name too, in amongst all the Skate-baiting, OWTSGMI and WTFILN.

Why Nike, when every leak we've seen elsewhere or been posted on this board - including by people who work at the club and (apparently) at adidas, has said adidas (and the only person who's said anything about the away said "oh well it's out there now, black with gold away kit) ? PS There's a thread for this...

Announced at 8am on the day before Season Tickets actually go on sale, or July 1st, whichever is sooner.

We sang loads of Saints player songs, and I heard "One Michael Owen" twice, when his name was read out at the start, and when he came on.

To my recollection he touched it twice in the entire time he was on the pitch, both short passes near the halfway line, plus that air shot. According to whoscored.com he had 3 touches, including one shot, so they must be being VERY generous with his air shot. 100% pass accuracy though.

Weirdly, in Pochettino's entire time with Saints, we moved up precisely one place, overtaking Sunderland. Everyone who was below us when Adkins was sacked ended below us, everyone else who was above us stayed above us. http://www.statto.com/football/stats/england/premier-league/2012-2013/table/2013-01-16 We were also the only team in the Prem except QPR not to win any of our last 6 games.

I've just done the predictor, I've got us coming 14th on 41 points. Ridiculous, somehow Wigan went down too.

Waste of police time, and completely in character for Poyet's Brighton.

Frankly there is nothing wrong with this, and some of the mods really need to get a lifes, yo. Bring Back The Bear.

I think we've got a few sets, even a footy minutae geek like me doesn't give a toss about corner flags usually though.

Saw him run on as the teams were going off, bloke in a white trackie top with red and blue on it, went up to Lambert who wouldn't shake his hand then got steered away by a co-ordinator guy in a suit, before jogging away towards the tunnel. Couldn't see anything after that.

I thought to be fair to the club, the stewarding was pretty low-key and they didn't give the bell-ends an excuse to run on by standing a load of police in front of the stand so they could pretend they were rebelling against being oppressed. Saw a load of the usual suspects disappear down the 41/42 stairwell a minute before the end to reappear at the pitch-level 40/41 entrance, but for once they didn't all pile on and were happy to just "be at the front" in case any shirts came over.

Not the ones in the Northam Kingsland Corner according to the pic of Puncheon ? They're red right the way up post-side and white elsewhere, could be halved the other way though ?

I didn't notice, but they certainly were earlier in the season : Sort of visible in the pic of Puncheon in the gallery, seem to be red near the flagpole and white other than that.

I really like it - as an Aberdeen kit - though it is just straight out of the adidas teamwear catalogue.

Whether they mention Saints first or not has no relevance to whether they think Saints play in stripes though. That's basically "name some more well known clubs who wear stripes", we've only had one season in the Prem for 8 years, of course other people will mention other clubs first. That doesn't mean they don't think we play in stripes.