The9

There's a mock up of that already on the thread (before Huddersfield used it and before I noticed Umbro have made all the feet on their socks grey this season) :

I think it was mentioned early on in Katalinic's post (was it #46) where he said something about the collar, and we deduced it sounded like the Cosmos style, I think he also mentioned the Brazil-style away kit in yellow (which I chose to ignore when speculating on a black/red away like the presumed white/red home kit). Since then there's the more recent comment on the last page mentioning black on the home kit and again the away looking like Brazil.

Some black on this one using the Livingston model and the rumoured Cosmos collar. Also reintroduced the ad panel, as I'm pretty sure aap3 will use one :

All the Brazil mentions mean its probably yellow and something, anyway.

Seems to tie in with a couple of comments, but unless they're going with the "shoulder" or the "hoop across shoulders" design like Livingston and Blibao/Sunderland aways with a conventional striped pattern, I can't see an Umbro template with the contrast colour on the sleeves.

On this occasion he's actually right. NickG did actually slag someone off before Alpine even posted on this thread. Not that anyone should care...

Actually, I've just remembered, this is the most excited I've been since we signed Lallana on a new 4 year deal. That's about the only contract extension I've ever been as excited about as a new signing - because it meant we could afford to keep one of the best players in the division AND that he was committed to getting us out of there.

Honestly, I couldn't care less if anyone else is excited or not. I am, and everyone else is entitled to their own opinions of it.

You are right. Brilliantly the first match where all 3 played 90 minutes was our appalling thrashing 4-1 at QPR when Lancashire got sent off for nothing much in the first half. So they can share stories at boot camp... They also all started our capitulation against Swansea at the Liberty which was one of the most one-sided matches in history and how we only lost 3-0 I have no idea. Pekhart came on for Schneiderlin after about about an hour of that. On the bright side, they're all better players now. Well, Lallana definitely is, anyway.

Because I've never seen him do it, mainly, but also because his form dipped last year not improved, and he's not the most mobile "big man" I've ever seen. He's a decent passer, but I want a striker to be in the box on the end of stuff, and he just doesn't do that often enough, partially because of his linking play, and partially his build/fitness. In 2009/10 I'd have said Lambert was slightly better than Holt. Last season, no contest, Holt was well ahead.

I should think the answer is "nobody", hence the various new rules and ticket taxes...

I'm actually more excited by signing Cork than any of them except Phillips. Skacel is the only other one who meets the name, quality and expectation standard of mid-table or above Championship, and that took so bloody long that it was more relief by the time it was done. Fonte was pretty good but we'd had a few decent signings by then to temper the enthusiasm and he was a centre back I only knew Palace fans had said good stuff about, never really expected him to be as good as he has been. Barnard was alright but a lower league striker I vaguely recalled from having been at Spurs ages before, and Lambert I knew nothing about as I didn't watch any League One before we were in it and I didn't really think much of us signing the top scorer in the division, because as far as I was concerned, it was a crap division and we might already have had better players with the club as far as I knew. Ah the naivete of the "big club" fan... Agreed that Cork's not in the Keegan class, but he's a good signing with a lot of potential that we're going the right way, signing the kind of players who can make a difference and get us from very good League One team to good Championship one quickly. The fee over (probably) over a million means we've almost certainly got some cash to spend as well.

If he's more than 16 years old, and therefore has any recall of Saints being in the top league for 27 times longer than Burnley over the past 35 years he deserves a kick in the nads for "Burnley are a massivley bigger club than southampton". It's not 1960.

I'd like to point out at this point that someone had a go at Kevin Phillips on the "most excited by a signing since..." thread, so only the one about Saints fans not taking to black players as easily as white ones and we'll have ticked all the boxes.

Replace months for seasons and I'll agree with you - his number of England caps is the obvious stat that shows where he was on the radar to me. Hard worker, decent straight line runner, some great goals, but nothing special regarding agility and he couldn't beat people, really nothing special most of the time.

Yikes. He was barely even the best player in that team...

I'd say our problem this season at the moment with the squad we have is a lack of pace up front, assuming Johnno Quick isn't in the starting line-up. Oxlade-Chamberlain, if he's still around, might be able to compensate for it, but other than those two, we look pretty pedestrian and will have trouble breaking down more organised defences if we can't turn them or ran at them with pace in the middle and make the defenders do things they don't want to do. Too many good markers and headers at CB in this league for us to be still over-reliant on balls in the air. We do need someone else at the back like Jaidi or Fonte, but who can play every game. Martin might be the solution if he can get a run and learn when not to wang it into the stands, and who knows, despite all the slating, Seaborne might be an option too.

Their defence mostly sorted itself out after Ferguson went back there - with a few exceptions (against Saints was obviously one of them) they went from winning 4-3 to winning 3-0. Not really sure what they did, their 4-3-3 / 4-5-1 still left the defence exposed quite a bit, they just didn't leak as many - and they kept a clean sheet against Huddersfield in the PO Final too. Having said that, if we took them apart, a few other nPC teams probably could too. And CMS-less they may not be able to outscore the opposition any more if that does happen.

Interesting to see card booking fees might go, though the majority of that article seems to be one bloke trying to get money back for a service which arguably was performed (transferring the money) even though his flight was cancelled. So then we've only got extortionate prices, ridiculous booking fees and the general crappiness of delivery firms to actually deliver things to worry about !

Yeah, but I'm pretty sure they can't enforce the first 15 minutes of it, and if you wanted to leave immediately they can't make you pay. It's my understanding that legally there has to be some leeway for people to obtain the means to pay, or amend any error in being in the wrong place when they don't need to be. I'm sure we've got a traffic warden or police person on here who can clarify if that's the case.

I pity you if you can't sympathise with the bloke to some extent, and wonder how far you'd be prepared to put up with that particular combination of ST price hike / change in eligibility rules / change in parking fees / change in parking duration / change in ticket collection rules, all costing him more money, allied to an intransigence on the part of the club official to grant him discreet special treatment to the tune of precisely £1. After all of that "putting himself out" just to buy his ST, I'm not surprised he flipped. It does seem that he got his money back though... which bizarrely is the least cost-effective way the club could have dealt with the issue.

I suspect Burnley were just stooling for time as well.

I think I'd go for Bale as well, even as a 17-year old in a decent Championship side he had 6 months of being outstanding and affecting the entire game from left back, which basically shouldn't be possible at that level. If we got him now as he is now, he'd be incredible and the rest of the team would have about twice as much space. Him and Lallana would probably be better than even Bale and Skacel, and that was pretty impressive. Shearer would be my second choice, we haven't had another striker like that with that regular level of performance since I've been watching Saints. Beattie took a long time to get to Shearer's level and has been off it for about as long since.

The fuss is about the fact there are two massive empty car parks serving no other purpose which people are probably now not going to risk using through no fault of their own, when the club should be encouraging as many people as possible to be confirming their attendance this season. The whole thing is a bit stupid on the club's part, especially given that there ARE other places to park (as long as not everyone turns up at the same time), so they just inconvenience their customers.

The issue here really, is how much does the club need that £1 from someone who's just forked out a minimum of £380 to them, and to what extent are they prepared to take the risk ? That one bloke doing what he has done now means they have to get 500 people to park there for over 15 minutes in order to recoup what they've lost in him returning his ticket. That is of course assuming he doesn't come back and get it another time, or attend on a match by match basis, which might (again) be the point of all this... and if he goes to every game and picks his ticket up, then he's then got 23 additional occasions in which he might have to pay a quid...