The9

You're right, comparing Kenwyne to Taylor-Fletcher is indeed OTT. Kind of like comparing Saints to Dagenham and Redbridge.

So did Burley sign crap players, or did he sign players that should have got us into the top 2 ? Someone needs to get their story straight.

Gary Taylor Fletcher hasn't been transferred to Prem clubs for a total of £14m, so clearly some managers (one finished 10th and one 13th this season) rate him much more highly.

And but for a nightmare by Leon Best he'd have led that team of "terrible signings" into the Championship Play-Off Final...

I must have gone to it, I only lived 12 miles from Ninian Park at the time and it was my last NYE up there before I moved back to Southampton. I can't remember ANYTHING about it other than the sign in the toilet which said "please adjust your dress".

No idea what you're referring to.

The weirdest problem our Sunday side had last season (40 players or not) was the daft proportion of people who couldn't, or wouldn't, drive. I suspect this is an anomaly, but it might also be symptomatic of the cost of petrol spiralling - as a Southampton-based person collecting someone from Dunford for a match in Cosham or thereabouts (we were in the Meon Valley League), we were doing 90 miles a match for Sunday Division 4 football ! It's not necessarily a fair reflection on football to take the average height of footballers NOW, as bigger, stronger players who are as skilful as smaller peers will probably be rightly selected - but a survey of their heights when at the age of 10-15 might be more enlightening.

Recently I can't imagine anyone had particularly high expectations for Marsden, but his performances with Bridge really were essential to our success in 2003. Pahars worked out better than we could imagine too. On the flip side, very high expectations of Mark Hughes that came to naught. Perry Groves..?

That's good to know anyway. I think there's probably a market for authentic older shirts without sponsors too...

There are a lot of strange failures to maximise financial revenue at the moment. Who knows what the rationale is behind this one. Anyone saying "it increases anticipation" sort of fails to grasp the concept that the club could have announced it 3 months ago and people would still anticipate it the same until the thing is actually out.

They sold all they had for the timescale they planned, and keeping them would probably impact on sales of the new kit. A really smart move would be to get a load more in store in October and market them as retro items for Xmas and then indefinitely - but in the short term they want everything clear for the new kits. I can never work out why clubs don't insist on being able to reproduce old styles accurately for sale in their club shop when there's such a retro market and they already have the product plans out there. The sharty non-authentic retros we currently have are cack, e.g. if it looks a bit like the broad stripe kit but doesn't have a Patrick logo, why buy it ? Having said that the polyester ones are much better than the horrible cotton fails from Score Draw.

That would shift a few copies.

You'd like to be running out of any product running on a one year cycle at the end of that cycle, so they got the numbers pretty much spot on I'd say - it's the only kit we've had in years which hasn't needed flogging off at the end of the season at a discount. As for not launching new stuff due to accounting periods, well THAT is insane. Maximise sales and let the accountants worry about it !

One. Crouch near post header. But mostly we didn't use them well.

As Gecko's already done this and currently lives somewhere like Surfer's Paradise I'm sure he's happy enough

27 goals in 2 seasons for Saints in the top division is not a flop.

You couldn't do a "hope you die soon" cover then either, as misunderstood as it was. And aside from the equally likely chance for litigation (after all, the law hasn't changed), I think your point about the different fan base is wide of the mark too, the last edition of BS I can remember was from 2005, not 1989.

They've been wearing a blue home, white away and black third kit since about 2005. What's weird about it is the shirt and shorts are black and the socks are blue.

Interesting bit of logic with the argument that "The average age for a Premier League debut is becoming older, 21 or 22 when before it might have been 17 or 18"... surely that's due to the hundreds of players who develop in their native countries and are then signed from abroad only when they are established Prem-standard players already, which drives up the average age of debuting players ? That stat is not saying "it takes longer to develop young talent", it says "far fewer young home-developed players get in the teams at all, due to all of the ready-made players we get from other places".

We, being more than one person, most certainly have.

Funnily enough it got relaunched around 2008, looks like someone decided not to pay the web team along with everything else. Aside from that, it's, er, exactly the same as Saints' and lots of other FL teams ?

Often wrongly.

Get your stadium crap out of our kit thread !

We've already been harping on about the away kit in the other thread, thanks. Can't see any reason for this to exist as well, and I'd suggest if you don't like it, don't read it.

There are a few Premier League clubs who are charging the same for STs now as 5 years ago despite the VAT increase and Bolton and Fulham of those are more successful than they were - but few are developing their grounds any more so it's a difficult comparison. Most built them appropriately in the first place - as Saints did for our goal of Prem Existence on a Shoestring in 2001. Bolton built a new ground which they rarely fill anyway, and Fulham have developed as far as possible but sell to neutrals and have an aggressive marketing policy (which includes cheaper tickets and ST holders bringing a friend for free, as it happens). They've also been in a Europa League final in the last 14 months. Plenty of Premier League sides have frozen or even dropped ticket prices (or have staggered ticket prices to reflect demand) despite higher wages than those in the Championship - the tv money pays for it.