The Kraken

Hope it's not any of those mock ups; they're nice enough in their own right but I cannot find anything about them to identify SFC. The ideal away kit for me is based on the 1976 FA Cup kit. If not that, the old dark blue / light blue Rank Xerox kit. Anything else just disinterests me.

To qualify as home grown, a player will have had to be registered for at least three seasons at an English or Welsh club between the ages of 16 and 21.

I would agree, were it not for this absolutely classic effort.

Check out post 10, in reply to my original post. By far not the only one I've seen when discussing this previously.

I always said the stadium was over-rated, and its really just a bit of a dump.

MerceSaint, good post. Just because we are in the midst of a 5 year plan, I don't see why so many people equate that to aiming for a mid-table finish. We had a 2 year plan to get out of League 1; despite the -10 in the first year we know all about Cortese's ambitions to achieve promotion in 1 year if we could. Some people seem to expect the club to go into an almost dormant state for 2 years, stating that is "consolidation". Cortese has never IMO seemed the type of person that would accept that. He's a realist I'm sure, and thinks it may take more than just one year to get promoted. But the best way, surely, to improve year upon year is to be up amongst the mix of the promotion zone. Not sitting around unpressured in mid-table.

Who's panicking?

Have another read; I suggested we didn't need 7, but we did need 5. I did outline the positions on the other thread, I can't be bothered to type it out again so I'm just C&Ping. Since then the AOC bus has rumbled on, so if he leaves I think we need a replacement.

Why is it 7? I've never mentioned 7 for us. That was Norwich. For us I think we need less. At the risk of repeating my post on the other thread about Norwich; there are many, many similarities between us and them when they came up to the Championship. Points per game throughout the season (Lambert v Adkins) was extremely similar. So there's an argument we had similar strength sides. They then bouth 7 players, 6 of whom became regular first teamers throughout the season. And they earned promotion off the back of it. So there is a benchmark of how it CAN be done. Ours may well be another way for it to be done. I just have less faith in our approach, as I said on that thread I believed at the end of the season we were 5 players off of being a promotion-capable team. Cork is a great signing, but I still think we're looking for 4 more to challenge. If mid-table is accpetable then fine, we don't need any more players. I just don't think adkins or Cortese is targetting that, and I don't think you neccessarily have to "do a Leicester" to achieve success in this league. Lambert is a good manager and did it his way, Adkins is also a good manager; time will tell how successful his way is.

Calm down dear. And go and ask Cortese if he thinks we're not aiming for promotion this year. Or Adkins. I'm yet to see an interview where either of them say we're aiming to just finish 12th.

This is the weird thing I guess. There is the obvious 5 year plan, I completely recognise that. But that doesn't mean the aim is to just sit around for 2 years and then go for it properly in year 5, does it? Building a team for 2 or 3 years time is very dangerous; look at AOC right now to see how quickly a side can be destabilised by having key players turned to other clubs. I doubt Cortese is happy to say "yeah, we're going for mid-table consolidation this year". In fact I'm sure he has hinted before that we're aiming for promotion. I'm not advocating spending millions either, before that gets levelled at me. In the other transfer thread I highlighted how Norwich had gone up, by signing 7 new players relatively cheaply but still significantly improving the side and sqaud.

It's still opinion though, isn't it? Besides, I don't think adkins has said "we only need 1 or 2 players then we're good enough to win the league". He's said that we'll be bringing in 1 or 2 more players. It's all opinion. S-Clarke may be right. Adkins may be right. Or I may be right. We'll know one way or the other in 9 or 10 months whether this squad (plus whatever additions we see) can make a challenge for the league. Just becsue I have a different opinion to how good our squad is, it doesn't make it invalid.

That's not a fact, that's your opinion. Some (including myself) feel we need more signings than that; for a shot at promotion, anyway. Still, there's a perfectly good transfer thread which this could easily have gone into....

I'm not in posession of one, so I don't know. But it would make sense that the ticket wallet gets sent out with tickets 1-8 and all the promotional gubbins. Then just the 9-23 tickets are sent out in November. But that's just my guess, maybe someone who's paying by installments will be along to clarify it.

Per my post above; it's the way the club are sending out season tickets paid in installments. Matches 1-8 are sent out (on the payment plan) with a 50% up front payment. Matches 9-23 only get sent out following 3 further payments in September, October and November. So there is no chance to abuse the system and be in posession of tickets you haven't yet paid for. So the 1-8 tickets got ripped out of some ticket books and sent out, then someone mistakenly used those tickets books to send to people paying up front.

Also, rather interestingly (or not) since 2005 Jack Cork has played for England at U16, U17, U18, U19, U20 and U21 levels.

11 apparently; 1 goal scored.

I don't think it does. It looks like those who paid installments have got tickets 1-8 up front. Those who paid in full have received the rest of the tickets from those same ticket books. Still a massive ****-up though.

Unfortunately I'm going to have to "Matthew Le God" you; Cork joined Burnley in Feb 2010 when they were in the Premier League.

The difference between him handing in a transfer request and us just selling him lies in the loyalty bonuses that are built into players contracts. When we sold Wayne Bridge in particular, he formally handed in a transfer request which then absolved the club from having to pay loyalty bonuses to him for the rest of his contract; even though he wouldn't have spent the rest of his contract at the club, without a transfer request we would still have had to pay those bonuses. So there is a genuine financial incentive to the club to receive a formal transfer request from the player. It's probably why you see so much agitation from the player in the press for a move before an actual formal request to the club to do so.

Just because you don't agree with it, it doesn't mean it's unjustified or senseless. What a stupidly arrogant thing to say.

Agree completely. Having a white portion of shirt and a not-quite-white sticker over the top of it just looks utterly cheapskate. Why can't the sponsor just be integrated into the kit design? It's not as if there's a need to print a load of sponsor-free shirts, surely?

:lol: Saints' customer service at it's finest yet again!!

I've read that three times and still don't understand it.

Seriously, do you think this has come as a surprise to the club in any way? They've clearly known he wants out since New Year. Chamberlain himself has said he's been in various discussions with Adkins about moving on, and it's fair to assume that those discussions have been going on for some time. It would be massive dereliction of duty if the club haven't already sourced a replacement for him