The9

Damn sight better value than Lambert for Prem top scorer at 80/1...!

With you on that one... can we start the "is getting back to the Prem a good thing?" thread again ?

I *think* the idea was to send out a message to potential targets. Quite how we've missed out on the likes of Pogrebnyak and Guthrie to Reading though... Other than that, yeah, fair point if we don't sign anyone else of note.

The question is now, what's the FL's deadline going to be for player registration?

I'm still torn between wanting them to go pop right now due to no buyers, and wanting Chainrai to take over, sell to the Trust and then the council to repossess and lock them out of the stadium...

They've done both before. Funnily enough I posted that Wiki info re: Maidstone earlier in the thread.

I'm just amazed there are still people who think the FL will baulk at kicking them out. They've done it plenty of times before to teams, and they're usually in this kind of state for it to have to happen. I am interested to know if the League Cup registration is linked to the FL one.

He's not actually injured then. Great.

I'd assumed he was still being rested, is he injured?

He spent all season looking like our second best centre back and like anyone with pace would worry us, more like. Worse, we genuinely looked less of an attacking threat without him bringing the ball from the back, which I can't see happening much next season.

I don't think they do, no. I don't think many think we'll get more than 3 points from the first 4 matches and I'd be happy with that.

Great idea, let's play a completely rigid, predictable formation that has plenty of spaces between the lines for players to exploit and which with 2 defensive midfielders isolates the front players.

Ha! Have you watched any football in the last 5 years? We'll lose by 4.

Oh come on, it's not like they're taking apart the European Champions without really trying or something...

Let's hope it's us.

Really? You think the club would focus on making a few quid from 4 Preseason games rather than focus on trying to get 60 million quid for not going down this season? Seems rather unlikely. Match day revenue is becoming less and less important for Prem clubs anyway.

Looking at the relative teams from the last time we went down was sobering. Reading Theo's book about how slow Championship CBs are has worried me a lot, and seeing our lack of experience and the likely demolitions in 3/4 of the early games makes it easy not to enjoy. Also, that crappy kit just puts me in denial that it's Saints anyway.

You still have to tell them who you're buying for.

There's no one in the lower leagues with a kit like it. Blackburn and Rangers have something similar in away kits but that's standard Umbro practice and they're both pretty big clubs. The problem is not the kit itself, it's applying that kit to Saints, who don't usually wear those colours in that way. It still doesn't look like us. Anyway, anyone for a rendition of Seven Nation Army using the words "where the f*ck are the White Stripes"? It works, you know...

We also have no way of knowing we won't revert, though the originally stated aim was to produce something different because everyone already had striped shirts, and it's not like the new kit was trumpeted as a new beginning or anything, so the odds of stripes returning are pretty good.

They are terrible, just relegated from the Championship, players. Injury prone has-beens who are only interested in picking up a wage for doing nothing for as long as possible. Ridiculous idea, not least because at least one of them already has another team.

In the 5 year kit deal signed with Umbro, which stated we'd have a new home and away kit every season, which also expires summer 2013, thereby guaranteeing we'll have new kits next season anyway, because the current contract will have run out.

And grey. As much grey stripes as white. Unless of course the colour of the collar is now a determining factor, in which case the first kit at St Mary's was red and white and black stripes.

Or "completely debunking the myth that the current shirt is somehow red and white stripes" as I like to call it.

I would say they were definitely better, though they need a bit more European experience to prove it.