The9

Can't say I'd be keen on signing Hans-Jorg Butt solely due to his age, and Obertan looked crud against Saints when forced to play 5 yards out of position, plus Halford has been gash for his entire career, but the rest of them have at least got an on-pitch upside that we would benefit from, albeit expensive wages or rubbish attitudes in some cases. Somehow I don't see Adkins signing El Hadji Diouf though. John Carew would be an absolutely stupendous signing, saw him for Stoke against Brighton last season and he was utterly awesome, different class. Johnny Evans and Joe Cole would be too.

Well, that was difficult. http://www.fanfootball.co.uk/images/liverpool-fc-new-home-kit-2009-countdown1.jpg The bit of the URL you can't see says "liverpool-fc-new-home-kit-2009".

You obviously haven't noticed the p155-poor photoshop on the "S" of SFC... I'm guessing it's a Liverpool kit launch (from 2008 ).

Thinking tactically, I'll go for the out-of-contract free agent Oscar Gobern.

Of course, but there's nothing in that statement that suggests it...

It won't be.

I can't see them finishing above half way and fully expect them to struggle, like they started to at the end of the season when they had to play a couple of half decent sides.

Oh, and if anyone fancies a weird rumour from that bastion of truth football-rumours.co.uk, here's one for you : http://www.football-rumours.co.uk/southampton-rumours.php That's a pile of assumptions right there. 1) saw a kit that looked like Sunderland's without a badge and therefore believed it to be Saints (when it could be Sunderlands!) 2) Inferred from that that the badge is changing, based on there not being a badge on the shirt and forums like this one making up stuff about the badge changing. 3) No mention of the Cosmos collar, which the Sunderland kit doesn't have, or the sponsor, or any other verifiable details to give credibility to the story. 4) If you're reading this, as you "read the Forums", feel free to add some meat to the bones !

And this is just a fantasy kit anyway, AS Monaco were wearing Macron (!) last season and haven't announced any change... yet.

Strangely I only saw the pic of Puncheon and Barnard a couple of days ago as well, must have been a link on here that indirectly led to it. It must be old news, for the very existence of Puncheon and Barnard in the same photo when linked to Saints. Neither are exacty PR-friendly for the club at this time...

Nike have made hundreds of awesome kits. Arsenal's 1995 kit that saw Bergkamp's debut for a start, and the PSG kit of the same era. Their World Cup shirts of 2002 for various teams are classics already. Anyway, we have an Umbro deal for another 2 seasons, corporate ownership aside.

Mine isn't, the South American templates are a rule unto themselves, like the Japanese ones, they have designs you never see anywhere else. Speaking of which, new Man City shirt is a bit... "hmmm". As far as design concepts go, "the dots reflect the pattern of a soundwave of fans singing Blue Moon" is a pretty tenuous link.

This sounds remarkably similar to last season, when the problem wasn't so much the removal of the instalments but the lack of notice and complete change in policy. The club really has got a long way to go with their treatment of its "customers" at the moment.

Gutted.

First isn't a problem, second, my mum's dead. Nice work toolbox.

BBC do it on July 1st as that's the official breakpoint between seasons, whereas Sky do it when the hell they feel like it because they're not bothered about stuff like that.

Considering I don't think there wasn't a person on the podcasts I haven't met numerous times, and that I've heard all of the similarly familiar grandprixbunny podcasts, I never actually got around to listening to the Saintsweb one. I suspect stevegrant (he is a real person, amazingly) moving about 70 miles away from the other contributors may have had something to do with it's waning appearances. That and his failure to ask me on to talk about myself for half an hour. Oh yeah, not being on iTunes, that was mostly it.

Dammit, no.

Raaaargh raaaargh raaargh I thought it was a player etc. Quick enough ?

It's the away kit from 2008/9 which was replaced by the navy/yellow thing in 2009/10 and the black training top effort in 2010/11, so even more out of date than 2010. None-too-coincidentally it was the away kit the last time Saints played in the Championship, which tells you all you need to know about Sky's commitment to lower league football !

He sounds like he's going to be out of his depth, but good luck to him for trying.

Lolz, wondered if you'd see this Be glad I picked the Dean Court goal to link above, not the St Mary's ones .

In Le Tournoi, 1997 ? Absolutely, a very very rare goal that moved so much. Although ironically I recreated it up the park a few weeks later. Seriously. There was me, a pair of Predator boots, a couple of corner flags for markers and a 1994 adidas Questra ball. I had about 50 goes at specifically trying to recreate it, using the same ball and it veered like that precisely once, from hammering the ball half way up, right through the middle with the valve to the left. I got it to go left to right though, cos I'm right-footed and it was off the outside of the foot. There was no keeper - and it went around the "wall" (i.e. marker flags) which were about 5 yards to the right of the post. As for "Hassli's goal is not something you're likely to be able to recreate up the park" - it's really not that difficult to tee a ball up for yourself and then lamp it into the net, and getting that rapid dip is easier to do on a vertically falling ball than from any other position. Pratley's goal was more special for the context and because of how infrequently those goals happen in football considering how often keepers find themselves at the wrong end and unable to get back in time - plus he hit it from his own half.

Yeah, there's a link up there, I've seen it, it's decent. But it's decent in a "nice goal" kinda way, not a "wow that's amazing and I'll never see anything like it again" kinda way. On the Patented The9 Wow Factor Scale of 1-10 Rasiak's penalty rebound being a 1, Maradona's Second Goal against England in 1986 being a 10 that's about a 8, Beckham's v Wimbledon was a 9, along with all of Xabi Alonso's from his own half, and on a par with Pratley's "open net" goal in the Play-Off semi to deliver Billy Davies his P45.

Actually I continued attending matches to give the club as much money as I could, gave a load of change to some people with a bucket, and went to the Saints Aid gig (which was good and well meaning, if not profitable) and bought a couple of t-shirts. Short of that I'm not sure what any one fan is meant to do to save a football club. I'm not sure if I'd pitched up on Sky Sports pretending to have millions that it would have helped much - I think we already had one of those. And I couldn't get my monkey chicken petting zoo plan passed by the City Council. Matty's reluctance to be anyone's public face after the Pinnacle situation is perfectly understandable, though, unlike your sweariness. I suspect that since then Cortese's offer may have been withdrawn, and he has probably taken umbrage. Plus if even half of the Benali house story is right it wouldn't be surprising if it was mutual, either. Was there ANYONE who wasn't at some point expecting Matty to be at the All-Star game to sign off an excellent season with some good off-pitch news too, even so ?