The Kraken

Anything less than the play-offs would be a massive failure for them. Their chief-exec keeps banging on about his limited budget, but its still well up in the top 5 of 6 of the division. even if they'd have been given -10 they'd have had a decent chance of promotion. And div 3 has three automatic promotion spots, top 7 gets you into the play-offs. To miss out on that would be an epic f*ck up. I don't think they'll win the division but pretty sure they'll get one of the automatic spots, their budget alone dictates that they'll do ok.

The whole "policy" of having half a squad full of academy graduates is a pipe-dream anyway. A great ambition to have, but neither a ground-breaking one (every PL would like to do it if they could) nor a terribly realistic one. A PL bench with 7 players gives a squad size of 18, that means at any time we'd need 9 players good enough to play for the first team. Even to fill half a team we'd need 5 of 6 academy grads; a very tough ask at any time. But then I think the talk of the "policy" was just talk anyway. Saints have always had an excellent history down the decades of bringing youth team players through, a continuation of that would be just fine.

Good. Competition for places is exactly what we need. Cork got taken off fairly early in games towards the end of the season, if anything he looked weary from a long campaign. Fair play to Schneiderlin for keeping the performance levels up to then end. Having three players to be able rotate is sensible for a side looking to push on and improve, and also gives us more potential for midfield variation against different sides.

It was great for a year, the second year was great as we got out of it. Doing more than 2 years in the lower leagues would have been a chore, the relief to get out of it when we did was enormous. The Championship, I'm still of the opinion that that was my favourite year as a Saints fan, although common logic will dictate that you strive to be in the highest division you can. That lot should have a laugh for a year or two down there, and I'm sure they will. But if they languish in League 2 for any time (or even League 1 for that matter) the novelty will wear off pretty quickly.

The Premier League and Europe were also a great thing to be in, when they were there. Not any more though. Oh no. Boring. Really boring, and only for plastic fans. Division 4 is only place to be for real fans.

Frontrow.eu used to be frontrow.com but changed after legal difficulties, so I'm sure something similar will happen again. And its not as if there's a shortage of streaming sites. Its a bit like Napster being shut down; just for show, it'll make little difference whatsoever.

the only saving grace would be black shorts and white/red socks. Sadly it simply will be all red. Dear lord, our identity and branding changed overnight.

Colin, you are Cortese's dream customer!

The best protest is not to buy it. That is a protest that would work, never mind a pointless Facebook campaign that will achieve nothing.

Considering I knew it was an all red kit, that shirt is even worse than I was hoping for. F*ck me. I just hope no one buys it, it's scandalously poor. Sadly there are enough people who will buy it come what may, despite it just bring an 80s Adidas t shirt with a p*ss poor looking badge.

Well he clearly hasn't learnt anything from being sentenced to more than 6 years prison for it in his life, so I don't think a spot of community work will make much difference. Especially as he'll likely just be intent to do it in the buff yet again.

Well feck me. I don't think I'd have ever got that. Good question though.

Need a clue.

Edit: never mind!

He sounds like an idiot.

Dammit. I was going to put forward Steve Guppy, but he's a one cap wonder.

Steve Finnan.

It is more than from years back but I don't have a problem with it. No-one forces you to buy the shirt, and if people stopped buying shirts then the change every year wouldn't happen. So it satisfies demand. And you can't really complain if you buy an item of clothing and a year later it needs replacing.

Click. Click. Click. Click. Nope, those links seem to be broken for me.

Also, wasn't in November time and not a summer competition? I have no idea why the atmosphere was muted. All Saints Day?

Gordon Arms changed hands fairly recently, a month or so back. Not been and tried out the new owners yet, may give it a go next weekend. Rockstone is pretty decent for grub, but their tripadvisor site is worth checking out for the adverse comments they get, the owner is clearly a very touchy and sensitive soul!

I'll pay up when it gets formally announced! I'm still clinging on to the notion that I might be right!

Pretty sure it was against Bayern, don't know about the atmosphere, other than that they thrashed us?

I really don't get the problem people have with looking like Stoke or Sunderland, and using that as justification for doing something different. We don't look like them; we have a Saints badge, and we'll (probably) have an entirely different sponsor to either of them. So we'll look like Saints.

Blimey, I remember watching him playing for Eastleigh once.