The9

Rumours coming out of Sion today that Drogba's bust his elbow in the 3 x 45 minute periods friendly with Japan and will be out of the World Cup. Linky now on SS : http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,11095_6191099,00.html Massive blow to them if so.

You could call him a "centre half".

Just realised that the match Drogba was playing in is that "three halves" game with Japan I read about the other day. All 23 squad players are playing for both sides and the game is 135 minutes long split into 3 x 45 minute periods. That's going to cost them if the injury is true. We all know how deadly Kalou is from 5 yards with an open goal...

But to be fair TalkSport are a load of sh1111t-spreading w@nkers. Usually... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/world-cup-2010/teams/ivory-coast/7803408/Injury-scare-for-Drogba.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/world_cup_2010/8722236.stm

Not yet, but I wouldn't have had any control over it if it had. Risk management and all that.

Hah, but the Saints venue sells ALCOHOL.

Hardly the point, firstly it's on the Main "bored", secondly it isn't marked as the kind of thing that will drop you right in the crap if someone vaguely important happens to be walking past.

LOLz. I shall be spreading my time evenly between venues with tvs near my office and tvs near my sofa.

Thanks for making this thread NSFW gents... FFS.

Yeah, had a suspicion they were off but I couldn't be bothered to check - haven't seen any Hull stuff either but have a vague idea they're off too. Think I've seen your username hovering around the forums there ! The only official Arsenal stuff references the 1971 plain kit, all seems to make sense which is usually enough. Though there are some good efforts at "fake exposing" here : http://arsenal-mania.com/articles/3108254/If-this-is-our-2011-kit-I-would-buy-one-now.html, the one from Arsenal insider is clearly just a TOFFS shirt with the nike logo and crest on it, and the Silvestre coaching top pic is funny out of context. As for the Saints kit, there are enough "acquired taste" comments from ITKs on here to figure out its neither a plain sash nor regular stripes... but it must be pretty classic looking for it to be a Tailored By shirt. I do wonder if quarters might be in the pipeline...

It's just a bunch of footage with a crappy jagged spinning date graphic on it, I've seen better for primary school projects. At least they bothered acknowledging that there's a kit release due.

Looks like a good opportunity for a wind up for TT. Amused by the "he's not good enough for us" and "we had him and let him go" lies from teh Skates.

Well I'm glad someone appreciated it

Er, no they don't. Especially not the Umbro ones in England (Sunderland, West Brom, Blackburn, West Ham). Of all last season's Umbro wearers only the teams changing brands (Hull, Birmingham), and the Blackburn away kit have been released - and the Blackburn away/3rd is a dog standard 2009/10 design anyway. FWIW, Arsenal haven't unveiled their new kit yet, nor have Man U - though I have seen both of them on footballshirtculture, there aren't any official releases and you can't buy the shirts yet. Ditto Chelsea's new away kit.

Which magazine would that have been then ?

Fine, if you're that concerned, why don't you give your house to the club as a gift, a bit more cash and they might be able to buy Wotton an ivory back-scratcher or something. You have no control over how it is spent anyway - how about all the purchases the non-renewers now won't be making, you can knock that off the "profit" immediately ? Sell a few crappy squad players and get them off the bloated squad's wage bill, they'll make that amount back in a couple of months. Why penalise the fans ? I don't think criticising the fact that I am now unable to purchase a ticket to see Saints THAT I VERY MUCH WANTED TO BUY is unreasonable. No notice of the change = Bad decision for the fans, maybe not for the club No payment plan = Bad decision for the fans, maybe not for the club Additional charges = Bad decision for the fans, maybe not for the club Consequences = fans peed off, and fans not attending. Bad for the fans, bad for the club unless they can get a significant walk-up. If the club doesn't want me to be able to buy their tickets, then I'm not going to put myself out for them either. They can hope we're going to have loads of people on a walk-up basis, but so far that non-renewal figure is running at around 30% on here - and they're going to be completely dependent on the team winning all the time and people going match-by-match to make up that shortfall. It's a gamble from a financial perspective, and an absolute disgrace in terms of exploiting their club loyalty from the perspective of people who want to buy STs but can't. And the one thing I WON'T be doing... is stopping moaning about it.

Success as a business can be acheived despite a lack of success on the pitch - or as in this case, failure as a business can be achieved despite success on the pitch. If the club doesn't perform on the pitch this season Cortese will have managed to lose supporters AND make less money, and even if they do perform there's still the possibility people will be disenchanted enough to not care to attend anyway. There's an elasticity of demand for match tickets, and people are a LOT less content to stump up for any old rubbish in the lower leagues.

Get a 0% credit blah...

I'm assuming it'll be £40 for the shirt. £3 for the collar £5 for a sash £12.50 for the Anniversary badge as long as you buy it there and then, or £56 if you want one added later. And so on...

Absolutely none of the Umbro kits for next season have been leaked anywhere, they're obviously much better with their sweatshop-a-like security than everyone else. If anyone would have it this lot would : http://www.footballshirtculture.co.uk. And they don't.

I'd probably be swallowing it if I had £300 floating around, but as it is, as I don't have it, and I won't be paying a £10 premium per match compared to the ST cost which I think is reasonable for div 3 footy, so I won't be going. If I'm not going, there's not much point in me buying any kit, which I've bought the whole caboodle of in every season since we came to St Mary's. So that's another £150 I've saved. I'll give Cortese one thing, he's got me re-evaluating what's important in life. Also just noted that this assumes sell-outs for every match... cough.

Maybe Rickie and Lines chatted about it when Saints murdered them after that then ? Its hardly unheard of for ex-teammates to try and get each other decent moves to one of their new clubs.

Interestingly the 50% off deals were originally scheduled to expire on May 30th, that's changed in the last two weeks (presumably in response to May 30th passing). All that tells me is that the person in charge of the kit launch date isn't telling the online reduction monkey anything useful. What. A. Surprise.

Assuming we sell 10,000 STs (I can't see how, but we might). Minus the segregation and away fans, on average about 2000 seats. That leaves around 20,000 seats per match, or 23x20000= 460,000 seat sales per season. If costs are either £2 or £3 per booking and that most bookings aren't multiple tickets, that's about a million quid they're making from these charges. Even if there are 15,000 STs and 3,000 away fans at each home match(!) leaving 14,000 x 23 = 322,000 and one £2 booking fee for every 5 tickets bought, that's still over £125,000 in booking fees alone.

Used to, yeah. Cineworld Unlimited card. It was £10 a month to go as often as I liked back in 2000-ish. Decent value, affordable, I didn't have a bunch of unavoidable financial commitments and there wasn't a recession on. It was a good idea when my local cinema was a top-level 13-screener, but I don't go any more. Southampton's Cineworld is not the highest standard and has only 4 screens - meaning my chances of seeing lots of good, high quality stuff for my up front payment is limited by the likelihood of those films appearing. You might get the odd blockbuster but mostly it'll be average fare. Also, there are cheaper ways of watching films nowadays which don't involve being exploited by cinemas on a film-by-film basis, with all their daft booking fees and exploitative pricing schemes.