The9

Anything that's given as a goal. I've scored with my arse and my c.ock, and whilst falling over and slicing it into the roof of the net from a yard, with an overhead kick at Dean Court, and from 35 yards against Pompey Online at Eastleigh, they were all worth just as many.

Well, it COULD be the shirt because of the sponsor - I was going to say the"Dri-Fit" label and the Nike label in the bottom right corner are in line with the usual branding of replica shirts rather than polo shirts, but this is an unsponsored Man City training shirt for 2013/14 and it's got the same Dri-Fit and black label. Same goes for this new Nike training shirt for England - same black label bottom right. So yeah, it COULD be a training top, but they don't usually have the adverts for club sides. Obviously it's different for national teams who can only carry a sponsor on training kit. Generally however, the kind of sites I go to for this kind of stuff are rarely wrong - and the people in their comments sections saying "fake" are usually wrong.

No, he wasn't. He was an absolute liability for a good few weeks, I remember turning up for the Spurs match wondering if he'd still be in the team after the performances against Arsenal, West Ham and to a lesser degree Everton. And who were we playing when he made that massive balls-up with Gazzaniga ? He'd already played at least 3 times by then...

Nice interview. Flagged up a few things to me which debunk some well-worn SaintsWeb cliches : Firstly, after all the sarcasm a while back about how Schneiderlin's game wouldn't be suited to the top division when he was sometimes struggling in League One, Gaston's comment that "the football is very fast. Quick play means there can be a lot of space, and that is good for me because that really suits my game" goes some way to explaining how Morgan has managed the step up. Also : "“When we played Arsenal in September, we were a very inexperienced side so we didn’t work so well with one-another. That was a bad game for us, but now we know how to play in the Premier League. We understand the opposition and we’re defending much better." shows we've made a lot of progress, and supports the "gelling" argument a fair bit too - of course now the window's open we might have to do it all again... but this time at least we don't have the majority of the team with no Prem experience.

Not a huge surprise given how well he played when he came on as a sub against them in the League Cup up there.

Oh, and here's the probable Nike Man U shirt for next season (seems to be the same style as the Arsenal Brasil shirt above) : And the 2012/14 Nike Malaysia shirts :

Dubious Nike shirt for Boca Juniors 2013 - has some hummel-esque tendencies. Would be "interesting" in red/white/black. Also to be feared, two new adidas shirts for 2013 with ridiculous V-necks, Spain and Celta Vigo :

Hmmm, think I'll go for Luke Shaw to be honest. I think Cork's made a difference but not as much as Shaw.

Ramirez was wearing those when he first signed for us, albeit the updated version, not in a kids' size like your picture, and in blue. These have a mixed sole plate which are fairly atypical : He's since changed from Tiempos to Vapor VIIIs :

Pic 29 shows Schneiderlin making a slide tackle and his soles have gathered a lot of mud considering the condition of the pitch, if there's a lump of mud reducing the depth of "bite" from the studs it's not surprising players were going over. You can also see Wilshere's soles - with additional "proper" studs evident in pic 34. Pic 37 shows Puncheon's sole and he doesn't seem to have extra studs on the front of the boot and probably has the standard FG blade plate (though it's difficult to tell). http://www.saintsfc.co.uk/news/article/gallery-saints-hold-arsenal-572903.aspx

Just for the record, here's an article on the various FG (Firm Ground) sole plates available for standard (as opposed to "Elite") boots, the £120 ones rather than the £250 : http://www.soccercleats101.com/2012/09/30/a-different-angle-current-nike-stud-configurations/ There are also SG (Soft Ground) options with "proper studs" and pure moulded Astro-style before people start blaming blades - we have no idea which soleplates were being used. An article here about Cristiano Ronaldo customising his sole plates with a hybrid of blade and stud : http://www.soccerbible.com/news/football-boots/archive/2012/03/18/cr7-custom-mercurial-sole-plate.aspx At least he pays attention to that kind of stuff... as you'd expect from a fast bloke who changes direction a lot. Worst boots I ever had were a pair of £10 Umbro blades, no lateral blade on the ball of the foot so every time you tried to push off to run you just got a pure flat plastic area pushing against the ground and slipped straight over. I was dubious about Puma blades for some time due to the lack of lateral blade in the same area when I wore a pair in 2005, (see below) but Lallana hasn't had any problems with his Evospeeds this season and you can see the different stud config now. No significant blade for the ball of the foot or direction change studs at the side on these v1.05 (2005 boots) Lallana's Evospeeds (latest colourways and notably different stud pattern) :

Puncheon went over at least twice. I don't remember Lambert doing it (he was in the previous colour, not that it has anything to do with the soles...) :

Clyne's worn two different brands of boot this season alone, so you can only attribute it to either his soleplate/stud choice, or the simple fact that he's one of our quickest players and is asked to change direction completely at higher speeds than others more often. I've seen plenty of opposition players fall over, there were a few yesterday too, including that one comedy bit on the half way line late on when basically everyone was slipping and Puncheon ended up coming away with the ball. I've got the match on my HDD, if I get the chance to rewatch I'll do an "on camera slip count".

I had a pair of Brooks boots, still got the box from 1991 as I used it to keep toys in at my gran's. They had loads of studs. Anyone remember that back in the 80s Patrick boots had different sized screw threads to all other boots (shorter and wider) and also had their own stud key ? This was back when everyone else's studs were standard. You didn't get daft stuff, like replaceable blade-studs with utterly weird removable iron-shaped studs which didn't even fit each hole, back then... (Predator 2002 I'm looking at you).

The boots are "for illustrative purposes only" to show the style of boot rather than the stud style or configuration, the players will have had a choice of a number of different sole plates, lightweight soles, hybrid blade/mould/studs and all of the various combinations in between. I think half of the problem is that some players don't think anything of playing in a pair of boots someone else has broken in for them and possibly with little consideration of the conditions underfoot other than what someone else has told them about it and their warm up (for which they may not even wear the same boots), I'm always amazed at the rapidly changing boots of top players and wonder if it's having an impact. It also hasn't escaped my attention that Robin Van Persie is still wearing a make of adidas Predator that he wore at Arsenal, was launched in 2011, and has been superseded by about 10 further colourways and a complete Predator rebranding for the Euros in 2012. I'm assuming that's because of either superstition, contract reasons or simply because he likes that colour and that particular build much better than the lighter boots released since.

Yoshida was bloody awful for us for about his first 3/4 matches. He's now fully integrated into the defensive unit, because he was given time to settle into it. That's what he's got to do with it.

Having said I thought we might be getting rid of him earlier in the thread, was surprised to see him start. Dodgy first couple of claims, not sure about fault for the og as I've only seen it once from the wrong end of the ground - and a few dubious kicks early on as well, but he grew into it and by the end was exuding arrogance - everything about his handling of the ball late on (especially the palming of the ball before distributing it) says he's an arrogant and superbly confident maverick, but his throws out were absolutely superb. If he can get his kicking more consistent and cut out the fumbles he made early on he's going to be the best of the three we currently have. Let's face it, Nige knows goalkeeping.

Maybe they have been, but Schneiderlin, Puncheon and Davis (and Lambert, who was still wearing the previous white/green/yellow colour) all wear Nike Maestris and have done all season. Fox wears them too. None of the Saints players were wearing Umbro to begin with so none of them have changed. The only thing that happened bootwise yesterday was a new colourway, which has already happened a few times this season - they started in yellow with black, there was a very brief use of red with black by a couple of players, then they moved onto white with green, and are now on orange with black. If I can be arsed I'll trawl the gallery for pics. Just had a look, can't nick the URLs, but the Udinese gallery shows Lambert, Puncheon and Schneiderlin in the yellow version of the orange boots above and that was August. Long and short, nothing has changed except the colour and the weather. http://www.saintsfc.co.uk/news/article/saints-udinese-in-pictures-307521.aspx

Except they weren't.

All of the players who slipped over yesterday (Puncheon and Ox-Cham mostly) were wearing these though you can't see from the Northam whether they had the same sole-plates or stud configs, and others in the same boots didn't fall over, so could be a red herring.

Jeeze, anyone would think that 6 year olds weren't mainly interested in repeating anything grown ups say to make themselves sound cleverer. The alternative being of course that your 6 year old knows nothing about football.

Guzan has been superb in the last 3 matches for Villa, including the one they conceded 8 against Chelsea, and he got his chance because Given made a few mistakes in the first couple of matches following an unspectacular Euros not saving things for Ireland. I actually think the Gary Speed stuff might have knocked the stuffing out of his will to play and he's not necessarily going to want to get another contract with anyone.

I think my favourite Saints moment was the release of that picture of Matt Taylor and Billy Sharp which showed what utter crap the West Ham fans were spouting about Sharp having "dived" and Taylor "not having touched him". Oh, and our second goals against Coventry and Man City. Weird to think they were successive league matches !

I agree with that, he's spouting gash if he's said anything about the stadium or size of the club - but it wasn't in the OP, which only mentioned "preferring to play for Harry".

To be honest I think he underperformed against West Ham with his kicking which put Adkins on watch for mistakes from someone he was expecting to be a significant improvement, then marked his card with the Spurs incident (overblown though it has been) and I'd be surprised now if he wasn't already looking at being moved on by the club. Heard a few stories about his disruptive nature from Celtic, and they're not the kind of players we tend to keep around. I don't think he's fat either, fwiw.