The9

I don't think Antonio improved much, none of the matches where people have said he played well were at the end of the season other than the JPT Final. Not sure which Charlton game was being referred to, as he was substituted in both home games against them. Puncheon is a difficult one, certainly has a touch of the Fabrice about him and some loose passes, but his delivery and workrate are much higher, he's more positionally flexible, and in the matches he played against Saints before we signed him he was outstanding and you could see why we'd pick him up.

Well, I missed the first 15 minutes so I couldn't tell you what I think the reasons for that were. If I'd have missed the other 75 I'd have probably been grateful.

Of course, and who's to say he won't suffer a career ending injury and become a huge waste of money for £500k. Or become Saganowskified in his effort once a contract is secure. All I've provided there are his stats, and all you've done is indicate he might get injured.

I don't have to, when we can sign someone for nothing with all the experience he doesn't have and more ability.

If we have a load of injuries we'll lose some games we wouldn't with a first choice team. Same for everyone. The difference is that we've got the kind of strength in depth most of the teams in this division would kill for as well, so we shouldn't be affected as much. Regarding Connolly and Barnard, Barnard looked incredibly fit and sharp against Reading and didn't seem to be tiring when he was "saved". Connolly you can't expect to be fit all the time with slower recovery, and we were lucky to have Lambert fit all season last year, and it probably won't happen again. Lallana can play up top if needed, and Ryan Doble has impressed me the couple of times I've seen him, though I think he's better suited to a creator role. But it beats Euell, McGoldrick and Paterson.

Ok, but he made 33 appearances (14 league starts, 14 subs and 3 (2) in the FA Cup), and was very useful in 4. I readily accept that he's finding his way a bit and he's got something about him, but HALF A MILLION QUID for a bloke who started under 1/3 of our league games last season ? After joining in early October he was eligible for exactly 46 games inc Cups... and started 17 of them.

Am I the only person (except Stevo) who isn't bothered whether we sign Antonio or not ? He had about 4 decent matches in 6 months last season, mostly v MK Dons, a spell v Bristol Rovers, and the JPT Final. Other than that, wasn't he taken off after about 25 minutes at Wycombe away, and on the bench for most of the season ? We have the resources to sign better, though I won't have a problem if we do sign him either. It's just that he was only about 5th on my list of Reading players I'd like us to sign after last weekend. It's also hardly a shock that after the "sign him up" chants from the Northam on Saturday there are a load of "we're signing him" rumours being put about, probably by n0bbers who are so desperate for their mates to think they're clever they'll pretty much do anything for attention.

Unlikely, the point is not that we've sold more tickets than in 2009/10, but that we have almost certainly sold significantly fewer than we might have been expected to have done for a season when we're odds on to get promotion. That is entirely down to the failure to provide a payment plan to allow the less fortunate (or unwary) to benefit from the lower per game prices offered from Season Tickets, due to the club's newfound policy of exploiting every possible revenue stream to the nth degree at the expense of the goodwill of just about everyone - which in this case is embodied in the Cortese Taxes of online and telephone booking fees, and also the on-day match ticket fee. With a supporter-friendly policy for ST sales -say the £17-ish per match ST fee spread across 4-6 months of payments beginning back in March/April - we'd have probably shifted getting on for 20,000 STs this season, and that's without including all the empty seats guaranteed by the free Under 8 tickets that I know about half my ST holding mates have taken up, which are counted in the supposed ST "sales" figure. There's also absolutely no reason to think we wouldn't have got many more than in the administration/relegation season in the Championship, given the same pricing policy. But we haven't. On the bright side, we've got a good team at this level and a great kit, and should win plenty of matches. Let's hope we have the expected success on the pitch too, or Cortese's pay-per-match price model is going to die right on its ar5e.

There are a few things about that csv file above I don't like. Kick off time is wrong for tomorrow, can't see the point of putting "Southampton v" in any of the matches as it just obscures the useful information (opponent) in monthly calendar view, and also in what universe have games ended at 16:45 in the last 15 years ? Having said that, good starting point for anyone who wants to do their own file, which unfortch I don't have time for this year...

Now, is he going to get the number 24 shirt he was assigned for the Reading friendly, or something a little less obscure (Forecast is 23, somewhat bizarrely)? We don't have a #13, which he's worn before, but Callum McNish has nabbed his old #28 shirt.

Cheers, but I'm not sure we need your permission. Another "p1ss off the establishment in the interests of making money" initiative. He's either a business genius or an egotistical a55hat who's going to find out the hard way what English football likes and doesn't like...

Assuming you don't have a PS3 and can't just import a png file, I would suggest to any 360 users using the crappy Live Cam on a Saints shirt to take a picture, making it as central and large as you can in the capture area, then making the surrounding area transparent, and finally going over the colours with the paint tool to make them brighter/more accurate. I did it on PES2009 and it looked awesome. If you just want to draw one, there are probably some grids in the Editing Forum over at evo-web, dunno, I haven't been there for ages and editing PES on a 360 is such a futile exercise due to Konami/Microsoft's snootiness regarding save files.

Well THERE are two quotes that directly contradict each other... FIFA10 and to a lesser extent FIFA09 are good games (FIFA10 is bloody ace and I haven't even seen PES2010). Before that it was a steaming pile of shoescrape. To even claim the over-dribbly and ruined online PES2008 and the actually pretty good if limited PES6 on PS3/360 were inferior to the balloonesque FIFA08 with its backwards diving headers and crummy AI, or ANY of the utterly laughable button-bashing iterations between FIFA99 including FIFA07, is precisely what makes you that fanboy. Can't wait for FIFA's Player Creation Centre, if they can get that even close to PES's player creation it will improve the game about 50% in my eyes. You just can't beat creating your teammates and kit and seeing them onscreen, or getting the pros to actually look like the pros - which is still FIFA's main flaw up to WC10.

Surely all both articles have done is identified a fall guy, and a very predictable one at that.

"Heard a rumour" ? It's been posted on here about 3000 times - I even mentioned it in this thread. Still not convinced it's true either, he had a 2 year deal in 2008 with the possibility of a one year extension, I'm fairly sure it would either have ended on 30 June 2010 (clearly not) or it will end on 30 June 2011. If he mysteriously disappears later this month I'll be very surprised.

That's probably the best description I've seen. He was nearly 10 yards from ANYTHING at all times, and he also got a nice big chunk of Reading player shirt in the box the only time he did get near anyone, and should have conceded a penalty for it. One of the least effective footballers I've ever seen, and I've now seen him play about 5 times. The ball goes all around him because his teammates know he's useless, and the opposition go all around him because he's useless. I'm also not quite sure about this "he signed in August so his contract expires in August" thing. All football contracts of over one year expire on July 1 - he had a 3rd year option when he signed, and he has a squad number, so I'm expecting he'll be lurking until next summer, unless we can persuade some suckers to take him off our hands or talk him into an early release. Absolutely the physical embodiment of what's wrong with the culture of football. It ain't what you know..., and once you've proved you can stick the training you can sit out a contract in the reserves and then usually get another one a division below until you eventually run out of options. That's a 7 or 8 year career of getting found out - if you're lucky enough to start high enough. I bet he was a really tall kid aged 11 though.

To be honest aside from the decrease in revenue, as someone who's already bought it, the only real problem I can see is a minor reduction in the number of times I can do the "oh no, someone's wearing the same outfit as me" joke in the pub, and that may not be a bad thing.

I can also vouch that you are not alone, docker-p has been very vociferous on here about Saints not having stripes.

The club has only been "caught out" because their estimates were too low. It seems they didn't have the confidence of their marketing. And to say "the new shirt has sold more in 7 weeks than the last one did in TWO YEARS" is a tad misleading too, the vast majority of shirt sales happen in the first couple of months because it's such a short-life product that people know if they don't get it immediately it's already going out of date. An appropriate comparison is sales in the first 6 weeks - and even then with the rider that this is a unique kit and a was clearly, even as a simple polo-shirt, going to be a very popular design. We probably didn't shift more than a few hundred home shirts between September 2009 and May 2010 with the exception of a few Christmas presents from unknowing parents. The issue is still that the club could an should have anticipated that the shirt would be this popular, for all the reasons I mentioned above and in a previous post (which are including, but not entirely limited to, the lack of sponsor). Equally, if they're getting more of the dull black away kit in at £40 a chuck, they're idiots.

Me and Alpine at the very least makes "we" appropriate.

Is it signed ?

Crouch may not have admitted to it, but it was hardly a secret : http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-552731/Arsenal-capitalise-Southamptons-problems-save-3m-Walcott-fee.html

Fair enough, but that's not increasing the demand from waiting, that's just meeting demand which is there anyway.

I wouldn't say preventing people from buying something which has a VERY limited shelf life as a new desirable fashion item is good marketing - and the away shirt needs all the help it can get. Even I'm considering not bothering getting one of those, and I buy all of them, often in duplicate. My argument is that we'd have shifted shedloads in the run up to the new season anyway, forcing people to wait is as likely to turn people off buying one as it is encourage the gullible into getting one because they're a "hot item" - any idea of the shirt having prestige from the limited supply is removed the second you step into the ground and see the thousands already sold, and once its been out for a couple of months it's no longer perceived as new or current, especially if other people already have it. The numbers of people patiently waiting for new stock will diminish the longer they have to wait, not increase, and in the current economic climate people will find other things to spend the money on.

Don't forget that the last kit came into being when we were in financial crisis and we'd have probably ordered lower amounts for the launch as a result - that first Umbro kit then unexpectedly lasted 2 seasons (due to flybe renewing for another year and the money situation) so any new kit order to Umbro placed at the start of last season under Cortese's leadership would only have been for top-ups (and replacing the long out of stock hooped socks) and would have been at much lower levels than a new launch. The initial demand for the "new" kit would have been met in the summer of 2008, not under Cortese in 2009. Last summer saw an away kit launch, but they never sell as well as home shirts - anecdotal evidence of that is the lack of black shirts on show on Saturday, compared to a plethora of sash kits. So maybe the stock level decision was made on unusually low 2008 figures, a low 2009 top-up figure, or a low-compared-to-the-home kit 2009 away kit sales figure ? Whichever way they've ballsed it up because the kit was obviously going to be hugely popular, for its classic polo styling, England similarities in a World Cup year, and also because it doesn't have a sponsor and is a little "different" but not tasteless in being so. Any fule could have foreseen a sharp spike in sales and a plan should have been in place. Glad I bought my 2 (short sleeved plain, long sleeved with name on the back) and the one for the missus (her married name on the back to match mine for wedding day comedy purposes) before I went on honeymoon anyway.