The9

Certainly is. Definitely lacking some Photoshop mock-ups though.

Think it's unlikely that if we went with adidas we'd be accepting a kit which is based on the same shirts West Brom, Stoke and Sunderland have this season, but there are plenty of ways of doing that with the 2013/14 templates too.

Nope. I don't like AIR FLORIDA anything like as much as RANK XEROX though, the latter looks like a bit of effort went into their font. I think I actually prefer the RX one to the sponsorless one.

FWIW I prefer the 1980-83 shirt.

What about it ? Navy shorts and socks ?

Not sure I'd like these (2012/13) Philadelphia Union templates much : This Montreal home shirt shows the seams where the one adidas template panels go - the print pattern on the main shirt seems to be a "thing" for next season too. The other (plain) 2013/14 adidas template shows where the other style's panels/pieces go :

See post 33. And it definitely is. This is the only striped adidas MLS kit revealed so far in their "Kit week" :

There's no gap in the laws, if it hit Svensson and he didn't move towards it or try and block it, you play on and it's not handball. If he's moved to block it then it's deliberate and it's a goalscoring opportunity and a red card. Whether "accruing an advantage by accidental handball" should be a punishable offence by the laws of the game is an entirely different discussion. By the current laws, accidental handball is not a foul.

It is VERY easy for the linesman to look across the line when the kick is taken, register that Cisse will be offside if he plays the ball next, and then put his flag up when he does so. Very, very easy, for someone who is basically only there to do that and check if the ball is still on the pitch or not. As for Shearer's "you couldn't disallow that", it's another reason to get rid of the Old School of ill-informed pundits on MotD spouting cliches and irrelevances.

Actually at the point when we loaned him to Forest, Sharp had as many Prem appearances as Lambert and one more Cup appearance. So I'll take that as a win. I've given Lambert plenty of praise, he's certainly less injury prone than you'd expect for a player of his age. I'm glad we've found a system that enables him to be as effective as he can be from us winning the ball high up the pitch, because the less running he has to do, the better. It's just a shame its to the detriment of our best player, who'd thrive on someone who could get on the end of his through balls rather than being a yard short. As it happens the prioritisation of workrate and pressing in midfield has rendered Gaston's contributions less important at the moment anyway, but overall I think that'll need to be the approach going forward if we're going to push on with Cortese's European ambitions. Unless The Southampton Way is REALLY going to be a unique style in Europe, as there aren't many English-style knockdown merchants playing in top European teams at the moment, even if they have got a great first touch.

If Bale hadn't got injured when HE did he might not have come back looking like a chimp on a fridge and not developed the physique he did under Ramos either, which was the most significant area of his improvement over his ability shown at Saints.

You've sort of missed the bit where Arsenal have been paying off a massively expensive new stadium then, yet Wenger's still somehow managed to get them into the Champions League every year despite basically having to sell in order to fund purchases ? He still somehow manages it.

I'd be inclined to say takes clearly underperforming teams and makes them vaguely competent, then spends extortionately to get success in the short term at the expense of the future of the club. I'm still not sure how the Skates stayed up in 2003 or 2004 to be honest, but the Spurs side he took over were 11th the previous season and 5th the year before and clearly massively under-performing with 2 points from 8 matches when he took over, and they finished 8th, totally in line with their previous two seasons. In getting that upper-midtable side to finish... upper midtable, he spent at least £39m on 3 successful established Premier League players, and you'd expect them to make a bit of a difference... Jermain Defoe Portsmouth £15,000,000 06 Jan, 2009 Wilson Palacios Wigan £12,000,000 21 Jan, 2009 Robbie Keane Liverpool £12,000,000 02 Feb, 2009 Carlo Cudicini Chelsea Free 26 Jan, 2009 Pascal Chimbonda Sunderland Signed 26 Jan, 2009 Then the following season he bought 3 of Portsmouth's mercenaries (Crouch, Kranjcar and Kaboul) for a bargain £12.5m when they needed the cash... and only spent another £16m on Bassong and Sandro... plus Gareth Bale finally came good doing all the things he'd done for Saints anyway, and all of a sudden, having only spent upwards of £70m on an entire team, they were finishing... 4th for one season. I'm pretty sure a dog with a pack of cards and £70m could improve a team which ALREADY featured Woodgate , Corluka, Bale, Lennon, Modric, Pavlyuchenko and Bent with Dawson amongst the subs. And everywhere else he's either the manager prior to adminstration, or relegation, or both.

Stevenage as a whole are going massively backwards, haven't been paying enough attention to L1 to know why that is though.

You can't beat the facts. From late December...

He won't look up to much for as long as we've got no-one with pace up front. Unfortunately for him, Rodriguez's best chance of a run is instead of Gaston, rather than alongside him. At least for the time being. He's a superbly talented player with no-one to get onto his through balls most of the time. It's difficult to argue he deserves a place at the moment when the unit is operating pretty well, and sometimes you have to sacrifice your best players for the good of the team. Davis is working better with the pressing game at the moment.

I don't know why people are so keen for any Saints players to get England experience given that Beattie went back to being useless after he was frozen out of the England set up. Also, on goals per minute (admittedly these are stats from New Year's Eve) Lambert is 26th overall, and only 8th/9th top English scorer behind Lampard, Jerome, Walcott, Rooney, Anichebe (though he's decided to be Nigerian), Sturridge, Le Fondre, and Joe Cole. http://www.sportskeeda.com/2013/01/02/premier-league-goal-per-minute-ratio/ So maybe he's just scoring more than some English players because they don't play as much as he does (because the better players are playing for more successful clubs which usually have scheduling conflicts and there are sometimes other, non-English players keeping them out of the side)?

3 starts, 5 sub appearances, 3 around the 65-68 minute mark (plus one on 78 and one very late on). Even Haber, who looked reasonably decent against Saints with his build up play if not his finishing, isn't starting at the moment either.

Ha! That was the other one I was going to mention. Anyone of a certain level of ability can score goals if the whole team is set up around their strengths, it's being able to adapt in other systems that sets true top class strikers aside.

He was very good against them in the League Cup in the 5-10 minutes he got at the end of that game - in fact all but Shaw from our U-21s impressed in that match. For the last 10 minutes we had Shaw, Ward-Prowse, Chambers, Reeves and Hoskins on the pitch and they were running rings around their League One opponents. However since he's signed for them on loan in January he's scored once in 8 games in their only win, and they've lost the other SEVEN matches. Hopefully he can keep his place and their results will pick up.

Can't believe you've left Lambert out.

No, but the poster before you mentioned me and there were only 2 replies to the OP at the time ! FWIW Beattie was also mostly crap for Saints, aside from the 18 months when Strachan got him superfit enough to be effective for 90 minutes. No-one else managed to do that with him, so he was nothing like as good under anyone else (including Sturrock). I've never been particularly impressed with lumbering strikers.

Cork was his usual stellar self in the right back position for Sissoko's goal on Sunday. I haven't seen him have anything resembling a passable match for us at right back, he may as well be up front as his best position by far is midfield. I was talking to a Palace fan on the train on Monday and he was decidedly unimpressed with Martin, same thing we saw in League One, no passing game at all and happy to plant it into the stands - it was fine when he was 21 in League One, not so great for a top 6 Championship side two years later. Coventry might at least give him the chance, confidence and time to find a teammate with a pass. I don't think he's lacking much with his positioning or defensive ability, but as Alex Pearce is now proving in the Prem, just being a solid clearance machine doesn't cut it in the top flight.

Agreed. Though he still looked decent going forward, weirdly.