The9

The 2006 world cup final drew 716 million viewers, so I'd be surprised if the global viewing figure was over 470 million, and even that seems fairly preposterous given time differences and the large chunk of people who aren't interested in football, never mind Prem football.

To have been successful against Man U all he needed was to have grown about a foot, developed a completely different style of play overnight, and had 8 of the other players on the pitch not play like they were completely knackered for 15 minutes. This is not a criticism of him.

I'd expect it may have sold more than the Umbro/Flybe kit worn in Championship relegation and first League One season, but obviously not as many as the sash or we'd have heard how it was the best selling Saints shirt of all time, etc. Whether it sells more than last season's shirt, not sure. I'm guessing the larger crowds and generally raised level of interest will help make up for any "style boycott", and we'll probably shift a lot more overseas than at any point in the last 7 seasons.

I think it looks cheap because it's printed colour on white material and the red on the body of the shirt doesn't match the material or colour of the sleeves or down the side of the shirt, which also doesn't match the red on the shorts. The white is much nicer as it's actually white, with only the pinstripes printed on. The contrast collar looks nicer as well. Anyone noticed Lallana has taken to ripping his v-neck open ? He obviously doesn't like the collar much.

Potentially we may go with anyone, we don't have any commitment to any of them at the moment. As for Kappa, they are worlds ahead of Diadora, Lotto and Legea's cheapo-looking cack - faffed about with stripes guaranteed with any of them (assuming the return of stripes, of course). Bit too Portsmouth-linked for my liking now though. To be honest as Umbro are my favourite kit manufacturer, it's going to be downhill from here. Adidas just shove out the same 2 or 3 main templates to everyone with little variety and Stoke and Sunderland's shirts are basically interchangeable as well as the exact same pattern as West Brom's, Nike make horrible plasticky shirts which hold sweat and saturate the shirt, and make both plain shirts ruined by pointless stupid design features (big sleeve turnover contrast colour, gingham, purple hoops) AND ugly gradated and patterned shirts (Barcelona's home and away, Werder Bremen, the zig-zag stripe motif)- although there's a chance they might produce something classic like the current French shirts. Macron are Kappa-esque with their insistence on massive logos, but have at least produced some decent shirts for Leeds, West Ham and Villa recently - they and Nike are probably my preference at the moment. Then there are Under Armour and Warrior, both trying to expand their market share after annexing a couple of big names - and both responsible for some horrible away kits (as well as a nice Liverpool home from Warrior).

It is, plus Umbro don't actually exist any more, plus every year of the Umbro deal was scheduled to provide 2 new kits anyway.

Fox is "Scottish", I understand there's a vacancy for a top 2 level team up there...

Umbro are currently owned by Nike (as of about 18 months ago), and Nike have sold the high profile Umbro contracts to themselves. Having done this they are now selling off the shell of Umbro without any kit deals - Mike Ashley is rumoured to be interested and Umbro are expected to rebrand as "Lonsdale" type training and leisurewear producers only, probably with Sportsdirect.com distribution. None of the other Umbro teams are getting renewed Umbro deals, and Sunderland and West Brom (amongst others) have already jumped to adidas because Umbro weren't around to negotiate with. It's irrelevant to us though, our Umbro kit deal runs out at the end of this season so we're free to negotiate with anyone. The Man City Umbro deal was for TEN YEARS and was only signed 2 years ago, but due to the takeover of Umbro they're wearing Nike from next season.

Not necessarily.

I still hate it, but I bought it last week. I know that makes no sense, I'm treating it like a school uniform. I wear the shirt to matches, that's just what I do. If I start questioning that, I might start questioning why I like football at all, and we can't have that, I'd get really bored, really quickly. Basically a mate won one in a competition, already had a shirt and the wife managed to get it cheap. I still much prefer the white kit but we're not likely to wear it for a while yet so I didn't get that one yet. The fact I already have the third kit has lessened the blow.

Though not in public loos. Only in cubicles or at home. This is by no means the worst thing time has done to me.

Tis irony.

We already did this "unemployed player" debate after they played Plymouth. Pleased to say all of the details have already fallen out of my head.

My recollection of it was of it being as positive as this one.

Just to put the cat amongst the pigeons a bit, I've done a bit of analysis of the passage of play from the first Saints substitutions until the 3rd Man U goal, just to see if there were any obvious trends... boy were there. Of 38 possessions : 18 unsuccessful high passes (inc corners and free kicks) 4 successful high passes 8 successful low passes 5 unsuccessful low passes 3 efforts on goal, all off target or blocked In addition to that, of the high passes that were successful, one was an accidental slice to Clyne by Fonte, one was a hoof by Fox which was deflected to Mayuka, one was a goal kick which was deflected by Rodriguez back to Hooiveld and back to Kelvin, and the other was a kick from Kelvin which Rodriguez controlled and kept possession (only for Fox to whack the ball up the pitch with the next kick). So precisely ZERO of our air passes were successful and ALL of them led to Man U regaining possession within one pass. In that time frame, we also made 9 what I'd call "unforced errors" on the ball, i.e. hacks, slices, passes off the pitch under no pressure. 3 by Steven Davis, 3 by Jose Fonte, and 1 each by Lallana (whacking it against the ref and losing possession) and Hooiveld (poor defensive header under no pressure). Mayuka was the target for 13 passes : 1 successful high pass (which took a deflection on the way) 6 unsuccessful high passes 3 successful low passes 2 unsuccessful low passes What does this lot tell you ? Well, apart from me having too much time spare when the wife goes out, it tells you that we gave the ball away on 23 of 38 passes, 18 of which were long balls, and 6 of which went to Mayuka in the air. Conversely, we kept the ball from 8/13 low passes, 3 of which went to Mayuka on the ground. It also tells us that Paul Scholes only had the chance to do ANYTHING because we constantly launched the ball at a short bloke, and that Fonte and S Davis were probably pretty tired judging by the errors they made. SOMEONE should have been screaming at them to try and play it out through midfield, but either we were too tired, or too panicked to do it, we gave the ball away cheaply, and eventually got punished for it. PS my statistical logging is by no means professional, so there's probably a bit of variation, one or two passes here or there unlogged. I switched off after the winning goal. But I did also notice Scholes ambled around on the half way line pinging passes to absolutely no effect at all until Hernandez came on, and we did go from competent to crummy when the first changes happened, mainly because we didn't have a 6 footer to win the high balls. Suppose I should go back and check how many hoofs we did before that when Lambert was on, but bit late now...

To be fair, a lot of us were discussing it in January.

And nor can I, but my independent research (cough) did see that all of last season's squads met with it. It may have just been coincidence that all the sides who weren't subject to the homegrown limit who had named fewer than 25 players had fewer than 3 over-21 goalkeepers. In Saints' case, we only have 23 over-21s, plus the 3 on season long loans who aren't named. We even named Forte and Dickson so it's not like we've been choosy, we literally couldn't name anyone else. It could just be the case that last season all the teams who were short of 25 just didn't have that many players - but at the same time, all of the teams LAST season who had 25 players named 3 over 21 goalkeepers.

The question is whether you can sign unattached U21s at any point. Or whether the goalkeeper rules are different (as they are different for emergency loans).

Danny is one of Steeeeeeeeeve's middle names and a more famous player, so it's understandable.

There was nothing on last year's PDF about it either, September or February, but everyone seemed to adhere to it.

There are far more matches in a Prem season than a CL one, so I'm not sure why you'd doubt it or why that would be relevant ? Long and short is it's a rule that none of us have seen, but that Flyer knew about from last season and which Norwich seem to not be abiding by. I've checked all of the players I didn't already know were outfielders, and there are indeed only 2 GKs named in their 25. FWIW I also checked all of last season's squads a while back and didn't see any obvious exceptions to Flyer's rule, none of the 25-player squads had fewer than 3 keepers last season and some of the ones short of the full complement had fewer than 3 goalkeepers.

That's what I thought too.

I can confirm that Norwich have done what you've said. It remains to be seen if this is within the rules, but it certainly contradicts what Flyer said - and also implies Saints might actually have free slots in the squad for free agents. Nice of the OS to confirm that we are able to recall any of our "season long" loanees in January though.

Isn't it nice when you look at matches and see that though ? I remember when we had Stephen O'Halloran in on loan and he played for Ireland U-21s against England U-21s at St Mary's, and even then, only a couple of seasons removed from the Prem, I thought the England U-21s tempo was astonishingly quick compared to the Championship, and as the U21s had a lot of Prem players it worried me at the time. Turns out we were nowhere near needing to worry about it though !

Erm, already linked. Our 2 spaces are due to not having 3 over-21 GKs.