The9

Fair enough, I've only ever noticed one, but I was told there were two. I can do one in about 3 minutes with an iron which is a lot less efficient, but then I'm not doing replicas.

Foiled by the use of W e s t wood...

I'd just like to point and laugh a the 500 losers who've pre-ordered something that they have absolutely no idea of the appearance of... http://www.saintsfc.co.uk/page/NewsDetail/0,,10280~2391978,00.html Sorry, I mean "committed fans", at least the OS hasn't actually started mocking people for their bizarre Saints purchases yet. I must have missed the bit about it being thick stripes with white sleeves, was it on this thread ? And what about the "black bits on the sleeves", people ? I still find it difficult to believe that nobody credible with a decent source has managed to come up with anything tangible yet.

Just had a look at the teams through the first half of 2007/8 - Pretty sure Hammill, Euell and Surman were involved somewhere along the line. This was the team which miraculously beat the to-be-promoted Hull side 4-0 : Three potential left midfielders in it with Euell, Surman and Hamill (ignoring Viafara, BWP and Saga who all also played there at some point). K. Davis, J. Wright, A. Bennett, A. Davies, R. Skacel, J. Euell, A. Surman, Y. Safri, A. Hammill (J. Viafara, 78 ), B. Wright-Phillips (M. Saganowski, 69), S. John (G. Rasiak, 83) We also fielded a side with Sagnowski, John and BWP in it at one point without me thinking "4-3-3", how ?

I'm not suggesting there wasn't other criticism of Burley, I'm merely saying that his tendency towards playing inverted wingers wasn't worthy of the criticism it was getting, and other teams using them successfully (including Saints yesterday) shows it's a worthy tactical ploy. I should probably call up Soccerbase to see who we had... I think by the time we started using the inverted wingers, Bale had gone and Skacel was left back. I'm fairly sure it was the season we started with no defence (that would have been [v]), and ended with no Burley. It was a fair bit wider than "a handful of dinlos", but I do vaguely recall delldays being one of them.

I'd say they were being actively discouraged, although it may just be incompetence. Not surprising the Marketing guy has walked though when everything he's been trying to promote forces people through a series of hoop-jumping exercises for anyone to be able to actually buy the product.

It says on the Sounders website that he "had visions of world-class soccer in his hometown soon after purchasing the Seattle Seahawks of the National Football League", which was in 2002. Though I can accept that may be spun somewhat for the soccer audience. Also just noted that as you said he's not the "owner" of the Sounders, his bio on the Sounders page lists him somewhat ambiguously as "Owner and Founder and Chairman... Vulcan Inc". http://www.soundersfc.com/Team/Staff-Members/Paul-Allen.aspx

I know a crap, lightweight, embarrassingly one footed player when I see one. AND I've been paid to play football, FWIW. The Poolis thing was an illustration that just because we're no longer watching Smith make Neil McCann's legacy at Saints look glowing, it doesn't mean he's turned into a better player. If anything, as his strengths, were he to have any, would be agility and pace, he'll probably have lost some of that with injury and age. Which is not to say he couldn't have spent every second of the last 4 years working on using his other foot, and then he might be worth a game in League Two. I am amused that he's leaving MLS to be nearer his family, but apparently a TRIAL at Zaragoza is as near as he can get, despite there being around 100 professional clubs in the country his family is actually located in. He was a teammate of ex-Zaragoza player Jermaine Pennant's at Arsenal I presume, and that's somehow how that offer came up.

Hah, well that confirms the story about the shirt printing going on at the moment anyway... I was in Arsenal's store at The Emirates on the weekend, they have SIX heat presses for putting numbers on in their megastore, makes our one or two behind that curtain look amateur! Mind you there wasn't a single person buying anything... But then they can get their shirts pretty much anywhere.

It is another indicator. ST and walkup plus price and success on the field are all factors.

Usually because it's an indicator of how popular the club is, and a season-on-season indicator of the level of interest amongst the fanbase. For me, this year, because it's also an indicator of how the various roadblocks to buying one are affecting fan support at a time when there's not much money out there but the club is successful on the pitch and informs a wider discussion on the club's pricing policies. This interests me because I have to pay to watch Saints. Also, it's not an obsession, just a passing interest.

Are you being literal or figurative?

I have a suspicion our ST sales will be around the same level, which considering that we've gone up a league is pretty weak. The pricing, the lack of marketing, the small sales timeframe, the general intransigence about the methods of obtaining one, and of course the general lack of cash and longer-term effects of the credit crunch and recession are all affecting sales.

Yeah, he does, all the more reason to play him on the right wing not the left. I can't even remember who our inverted wingers were when Burley was doing it, anyone recall?

And so could Poolis.

I don't, I'm still being hugely sarcastic - I've also noticed that the U-16 girls' kit has the v-neck which makes it last year's template and one that Umbro don't sell any more. I've heard too much about a Cosmos collar to let that drop at this point... Still can't work out where the references to the black bits on the sleeves come from as regards Umbro templates though - as I said previously, only the teamwear style we can see on the website as "Cosmos" (confusing, nothing to do with the collar) has any contrast colour on the sleeves.

This just goes to prove that if you have a good enough agent and "Arsenal Youth Team" on your CV there will always be opportunities no matter how one-footed and shart you are. Doesn't say much for MLS either.

I'd put the incredibly bad performance of Obertan, reduced to crap by playing approximately 10 yards narrower than usual, down as the reason Saints mostly looked comfortable defensively for about 50 minutes. The bloke looked like he'd been told not to move.

I think Harding might be good enough for a top half nPC team (again?) but he by no measure of anything "dominated" anyone last season, never mind attackers.

Who, Burley? He made a few odd choices towards the end but there was a good 6 months before the Bennett/Makin debacle where people were constantly having a pop at how stupid it was to play wingers on the wrong sides, even though the benefits of inswinging crosses and players cutting inside on their stronger foot should be pretty sodding obvious. This despite it being de riguer at a lot of coaching seminars at the time and clearly up there with playing without recognised strikers as the Next Big Thing. Funnily enough Scotland went with a 4-6-0 not long after Burley left. I'd have Burley more as a "pushing the box" type over thinking outside the envelope, btw.

Something else I just remembered; if that collared striped thing (the Clifton) with the plain red sleeves actually is the new home kit, it actually WAS debuted on the OS about a month ago when that U-16 girls' team wore it - that's also linked somewhere in this thread (albeit along with a LOT of sarcasm about it being the new kit from me).

Just for the LOLs, I went back to the Umbro Teamwear page a minute ago and noticed the scroll-bar. To the right of the Chevron and the boring striped one, there is a kit called the Cosmos (it's the one with the contrast shoulders) and one called, of all things, Pinnacle - that one's the one which has the band right across the top of the chest and the sleeves. The irony of Saints wearing a shirt style named after the consortium that nearly stopped Liebherr's takeover would be a strange one. It does prove that pretty much all of the new templates for this year are launching immediately as teamwear, which is a change for Umbro (though there are noticably none based on the England home kit for a change).

It is nevertheless completely bizarre that despite definitely not being in any way interested in buying a football club and some fairly convincing evidence on here, that Paul Allen is now the owner of Seattle Sounders in MLS. Pleased to see that the hedge fund paranoia wasn't entirely unfounded, though I might have felt differently about it had we actually ceased to exist.

Having read the report on the OS, anyone want to start slagging off Adkins for playing inverted wingers - Holmes on the right setting up the first two goals and Forte and Chamberlain switching wings in the second half...? It used to be a stick to beat Burley with for the tactically stunted.

I went on there for the first time in years and loved their completely incorrect assumption about how SaintsWeb got the DataCo licence by selling out to have the site pseudo-moderated by Cortese, amongst other things. As if.