The9

Do you get any pre-match instruction ? Obviously the multi-ball removal thing somewhat pees on your chips, but can you confirm whether or not you spend 6 days a week at Cortese Camp being drilled in towel-using and appropriate ball returning speeds (and how to disappear at 1-0 up with 10 minutes to go)?

If there's no petting zoo I'm boycotting. Every time I see that video my brain starts screaming "EXTENSION, FFS, and capitalise, and by all means use the apostrophe". But it's my burden.

Mackail-Smith played in the Championship in 2009/10 - and used it as motivation to improve himself when back in League One in 2010/11, to the point that his former manager on returning to the club hugely praised the improvement in his game, calling him "unrecognisable" or something similar. As he's now signed for a recently-promoted Prem side I suspect he's going for the same approach again. Either way, if we were going to sign the leading scorer in the division from a divisional rival when clubs higher up the league were known to be interested, we'd need to do better than a bid which was described as "embarrassing", further negotiation or not.

As the five year plan is for a return to the Premier League he hasn't achieved any of it.

That would at least inform the argument.

Only a couple of times for the reserves about 2-3 years ago, and really, nothing to add to that. He was mostly competent in a centre-back kind of way and I'm quite surprised he's got as far as he has.

I'd say split between the first one with the original large font (the one you've posted has only just appeared and there's no reason at all for the red space at the bottom, which isn't on any of the other designs) and the second one.

Or ever did. We pretty much used to lose loads of games on tv because we used to lose loads of games generally.

I'm 5ft 9 now, it's just bloody ridiculous that because some meathead got pubes at 8 and could hoof a ball the length of the pitch before he got to big school that he'd get signed up by some scouting network when it would be patently obvious that by the age of 16 most other kids would be able to do what he could AND maybe show a bit of skill as well. It's a difficult problem to solve though, there aren't enough kids in, say, 3 month groups to be able to isolate them so they get to compete against similarly sized kids - and there's no benefit in group kids too "alike" anyway, a variety of styles to learn about and deal with is a good thing, not a bad one. It's purely about allowing the skilful younger ones to shine alongside the physically bigger kids. The stats about players born in Sep-Nov are astounding though, and similarly the first three months of the year in Europe where it's based on a calendar year not a school year

I suspect the implication is that he'd rather pay decent money for someone good who'll make a difference than fork out peanuts for someone who makes little impact. The issue of the player's availability is moot.

I pretty much agree with you, I've mentioned a few times over the past couple of months that the bottom half of the Prem is now comprised of interchangeable foreigners in different coloured kits. Mind you I've also mentioned that the attendance prices should be lower in the Prem because the tv money more than covers costs compared to the Championshpi.

Two draws, a defeat and a don't know. Though compared to our usual opening day performances that's not really a bad record.

Brilliant, we can move out of the bottom three to a lower-midtable position before kick off...

I read that this morning, the whole "you're tall, therefore you get in over some more talented shorter kid" thing has always hugely p155ed me off, not least of which because I was about 5ft 3 when I was aged 13 and most of the lanky donkeys in the local representative teams spent the next 10 years working their way back down to their actual level through the local non-League sides despite their sometimes Premier League academy experience. January born, FWIW. .

Let Deppo choose.

Well it is. You may as well use Comic Sans. http://comicsanscriminal.com/

I've tried sticking both of these in Photoshop and this one looks terrible next to the clear imagery of the Gecko one. I liked it at first but it just looks second rate in comparison and the distressed font is amateurish rubbish for the sake of it - as well as not a vector.

Do you mean the slogan, or the font ? I think the slogan is the one thing pretty much everyone is happy with.

Everyone else has pretty much reached a consensus that you happen to disagree with, which also happens to be based on those Liverpool concepts of basic red with white on and a basic, clear, non-grainy image. The chicken bucket doesn't look anything like any of the designs we've got. I loosely agree with dune that some black (maybe letter edging) would be nice, but still think there's been nothing better than the Gecko's "not a competition but determined to get this right" one. I can't see the point of the "stencil" lettering / font type in Gecko's #2 or the style in the #3 options as I don't think they're better than the original. At this point, go with the one most people have said they like, or it'll be tweakdom forever.

"Ownership" of players is rapidly becoming an outdated concept - with the financial regulations coming in, teams are going to be looking at more ways of getting players relatively cheaply and not getting stuck with rapidly diminishing contracts under Bosman, and if that means signing players for a short time without the overheads, then let the suckers like Chelsea hoover up the talent and then get them temporarily at a reduced rate, as they can only pick eleven players at once but they can pay for as many wages as they want.

To answer your "at what price I ask myself" I can confirm Bullard cost Hull £5m.

LOLz. You are forgiven. I've put them up there precisely to show that they DON'T look like the KFC images. You made a fair (if sweary) point too.

Oh yeah, and just so we're criticising from an informed angle, we don't want it to look like this : or this

The more I see the "clean" graphic compared to the grubby distressed lettering and picture, the more I like it. Much as I'd like the text on a single line, having it on two lines means the image of Markus can be bigger. The distressed lettering just makes the flag look old, it's design for design's sake and it detracts from the overall flag. Also, the #123 pic is too grainy. In summary, Markus waving with a nice crisp font works for me. Also, not sure anyone's mentioned it, but the Saints crest is copyrighted, and we wouldn't want to get into that issue.

I think that's a good quality for a young player, to be able to take instruction and want to do as the manager says. Football can be a tad over-complicated at times, and it's not like Gobern had a run of games to be able to slot into a regular role - he played a completely different role away to Brighton (very well) the week before as well, hardly surprising he wanted to be told specifics.