The9

Can't say I'd ever noticed any problem with people parking at the ground all day any of the times I'd driven down there to pick up tickets (which is a lot more often now there's a Ticket surcharge).

Surely Owen Hargreaves is never going to play more than 5 more matches in competitive football, spaced out over the next 10 years or so ? I have more faith in Stevo's knee than Hargreaves playing again.

Can't believe you didn't namecheck Andrei Kanchelskis. And it's "Rickie", for reasons best known to him.

That is the sleeve.

Which car park ? Northam or Chapel ? I've been in the Northam buying tickets for longer than 15 minutes before and still got out for nowt... Also when I went down to see the FA Cup (Chapel Car Park for the Megastore) I was there for nearly an hour and got away for free but my mate who had arrived 5 minutes earlier than me had to pay. Seemed a little harsh.

That's genius. Criminally insane, but genius. People could practise by using the crosses on the shoulders of the current England home kit too.

Bog standard Puma template they're using for everyone this season with the two stripes around the shoulder area with hoops added - but nicer than some of the gash they've had recently. Image removed as there's not much point duplicating the post which just appeared above... I do hope we are aware of just how much Saints fans are anti plain backed shirts... that Reading reminds me of Carl Zeiss Jena at Somerton Park in 1981 (from a previous life...).

FWIW I was in the club shop in West Quay last night and the stripe logos in use on the website are splashed all over the windows too. They are. like the ads on the website, one white background with red stripes and one black background with red stripes... it wouldn't take a massive leap to consider the home kit to be red and white stripes and the away kit to be red and black - I'm also wondering whether the "thin" stripes in the central band in the adverts might indicate that there will be normal sized stripes comprised of the thinner stripes. e.g. something that looks like this (without the dots) : |||||||||.............. ||||||||||............... ||||||||||| |||||||||.............. ||||||||||............... ||||||||||| |||||||||.............. ||||||||||............... ||||||||||| |||||||||.............. ||||||||||............... ||||||||||| |||||||||.............. ||||||||||............... ||||||||||| Pure speculation on my part though. I might mock up something if a day or two when I have time.

I would definitely use "speculation", which means "guesswork" instead of "bickering" which means "arguing". And I'd also suggest there is a significant, as opposed to slight, difference in the two. Particularly on a thread on which very few people have actually seen the kit, so no-one's going to know they're definitely right - it makes for a much more laid back discussion when no-one's convinced they're right and knows anything they say can be proven or disproven at a specific time in the near future. As for the sponsorship, there was a thread on here literally the day before Saints said "the new sponsorship starts today" in which Matthew Le God (of all people) said something akin to "if the sponsorship hasn't started yet, why is the aap3 logo on the OS with the words official club sponsor under it ?". So until July 1 everyone had assumed the sponsorship had already begun and there was no reason for the club not to have launched a kit with the sponsor on it. Actually, even if the sponsorship hadn't officially begun there was no particular reason for the club not to have launched the kit with the sponsor on it, they'd already announced who it was going to be, anyway. Seems that the club genuinely is doing everything it can to get all of the income into the 2011/12 accounting pot, for reasons I can only assume are to do with the new financial rules.

Maybe, but I suspect not !

A Saints manager getting the "new manager effect" ? I don't think so... We played some pretty good expansive, open, direct (not long ball) football, and it was certainly preferable to what followed the season after.

Some of this is true, but at least ONE of the owners isn't particularly pro-Cortese, so I don't think there's any kind of Party Line being followed, and I'm not entirely sure the capacity for debate is exhausted - although at the moment the topics might be... I do think the Deppo banning is a bit of a breakpoint though.

Quiet in here...

I should think there's £6bn of stuff they put in the wrong column somewhere. I worked in a government office and they couldn't keep track of 2000 computers and peripherals on a single site, which were replaced 200 at a time on a rolling basis every 3 months. This despite having a database, labelling everything on arrival and 4 full time staff who were meant to be tracking everything, I'm not remotely surprised that the MoD can't keep track of a ton of stuff which actually moves, could be anywhere in the world, and often breaks.

I forgot to buy a ticket, so I'll be spending my winnings on 2/3rds of a game of football at Sports Centre.

I agree with all of that, most of it is what I was saying in the first place - except that the Chairman chose to spin it as if it was indeed his decision, and as if promoting the kids was the de facto solution to everything - so it's hardly surprising he (still) gets flack for it.

Fair enough. FWIW, I think we're currently a top half side, I'd like us to be at least in Play-Off contention this season. Depending on injuries and a bit of luck, we might be. I certainly don't think we're in any danger of going down with the current squad.

Not directly, but like I said, they'll be compared to the pros they're up against when it comes to getting into the side. That's also why I said "the day to day is obviously a big factor".

Only the Ted Bates Trophy match against Bayern that immediately springs to mind, though one of the JPT early rounds (might have been Torquay actually) in 2009/10 was a fairly liberal attitude to seating, given the massive amount of empty seats. Pretty sure that one had seat numbers on the tickets though.

They would have been if Torquay hadn't been involved...

In more important news, this photo is also on a bunch of mugs (the ceramic kind) currently being sold in the club shop. Some of which have "SAINTS 3 WALSALL 1" emblazoned on them, in what already looks like a ridiculously small-time piece of marketing from a time most Saints fans will hope to forget soon.

Yawn. Sturrock's record at Saints would have easily kept us up.

It's not far from the truth. If you stick some paragraph ends in the rest of the paragraph you might get a response to that, too. Oh, ok, I've waded through it. You appear to have ignored our Championship relegation season entirely, which coincidentally was the season I was referring to. Almost all of the experienced players you mentioned had gone by then. And McGoldrick was sh1te then and still is.

Surrounding which included Premier League players in the environment to learn from at the start, and League One players at the end. The coaching and the day to day stuff is obviously a big factor, but you're only going to get judged on ability against the senior players at the same club. In that sense it helps you shine if they're not as good, even if it means it's less likely that you'll actually learn top-level skills directly from them.