The Kraken

Given that the Echo aren't allowed to use Saints logo in their publications or online, it's not beyond the boundaries of suspicion to wonder if they're blocked from showing the image of the new kit. It would certainly not be unlike Saints to retain all image rights so that the only place you can view the kit is on their website. We'll see.

No, not good. A bit of an own goal by the club as they'll miss out on a fair bit of free publicity and marketing. But they seemingly don't want to go down this route (season tickets, match tickets etc) for some unknown reason.

Stop being negative Turkish. Nicky C has said we're going for the Champions League, and so it shall be.

I think Cortese probably has a better grasp on how modern footballers work than most people. While the typical SaintsWeb head-in-sand merchants have seen this as a massive shock, you can be sure that this will have come as no surprise to Cortese or Adkins. They will have known about his intention to move on from New Year. And they've had that time to prepare a suitable replacement. What will be truly shocking is if we decide to "replace" Chambo with Guly or Lee Holmes.

All lies. Journalists never tell the truth. Plus he loves it here.

Not really a fan. Too much white, and I think the collar looks dreadful. Still, I wasn't going to buy it anyway, so meh. 5/10 for design awards though.

It's not really a lot different to when we sold Walcott though, is it? And the market has sky rocketed since then. Cortese trying to dictate unreasonable terms would be the only reason I can see this stringing out. I think the likelihood of him being here in September is miniscule, I'm fairly sure a deal has been agreed in principle between the player and a club (maybe more than one), its just the terms that need ironing out and this newspaper article is Chamberlain's way of accellerating that.

He doesn't think that though, does he? He's already said as much, and that he clearly is not viewing it as a sale and loan-back agreement.

There we go, knew you could do it.

Keep telling yourself that, it's bound to make it true.

Sounds like he's desperate to stay.

No, that's about as close you'll get (with direct quotes) to someone saying they want to leave a football club without actually handing in a transfer request. But I'm sure there will be plenty on here to suggest otherwise, and that he's fully focussed on another year with us in the NPC.

All made up probably. The Mirror got it wrong before so they must have done again. Apparently.

Chamberlain's not going to leave. All journalists are liars, and his quotes on the subject are made up anyway.

Another Star Trek effort; no thanks.

Well, we're talking an ideal world here, but I consider strengthening in these areas would put us up there with a team such as QPR, Swansea, Norwich etc from last year. But let me say that I think the current squad would finish between 10th and 16th, so its not as if I think we're in dire straits. Centre Midfield, for which we now have Cork. Very good signing. Centre Back, I think Jaidi will get exposed by a better quality of striker in this division and Fonte needs a better partner. Centre Forward, Adkins seems to agree with this one as we've apparently seen with the progress with Sharp and possibly Maynard. They're the most important 3. From there, I'm not overly impressed with our options at right back, particularly in an attacking sense, Butterfield and Richardson for me are lower level Championship / higher level League 1 players. And then, instead of last year's Forte & N'Guessan option, a better impact player to give a real option to Lallana & Chamberlain. That's the ideal world of course.

That's totally theoretical though, isn't it? Norwich have just as much chance of doing that as they do of using the Sky money to further reinforce their squad and infrastructure to solidify their position in the league for years to come. Saying that our way is the right way, when we haven't even achieved it yet, is a bit naive.

The team ethic (especially on the Adkins bus) is obviously mostly important. I just have a notion that we needed to improve with 4 or 5 players if we were to have a realistic go at the top end of the table. Of course I have nothing else to base this on than my opinion of what I have seen of our team and the Championship in general, but it's also why the Norwich comparison concerns me.

I'm not saying that at all. Norwich signed first team players. Ruddy played 45 times in the league last season. Elliott Ward played 39 times. Andrew Crofts 44 times. David Fox 32 times. Simeon Jackson 39 times. And Andrew Surman 22 times, in a season significantly curtailed by injury. That's not buying lower squad players at all. Norwich also showed that you don't necessarily NEED to do a Leicester and spend huge amounts on high profile players. That's not what I'm advocating at all. They have a good manager and he outlined some very shrewd signings.

Where have you got the notion from that I'm comparing us to Leicester? I've never said that. I'm comparing us to Norwich, and how similar we are to them. Leicester have got nothing to do with, so you've confused me. I'll outline my point to you again, as I'm sure you must have missed it. There are an awful lot of parallels between how Norwich & Saints have fared in the past few years. Relegation from the Premier League. Subsequent relegation to League 1. A lot of player transfers out and in. And, one year apart, a massive improvement with a newly hired manager early in the season which resulted in some great form and promotion. In League 1, Norwich's form under Paul Lambert and our form under Nigel Adkins are staggeringly similar (I know you love a points per game stat, I think it is 2.11 pts per game for Lambert and 2.14 pts per game for Adkins). So its reasonably fair to say that, at the point of promotion, the two teams were relatively of the same strength, give or take. What happened after promotion from League 1 is that Norwich further strengthened; they bought 7 new players. 6 of those players went on to become first team players; 5 of them played well in excess of 30 games in a season, Surman surely would have but for injury. Where these players came from is irrelevant; they came in and improved the team. So the point I'm making is this: We and Norwich were fairly similar in strength when promoted. Norwich deemed that more than half their team wasn't good enough for a crack at the Championship title, so they bought new players. We, on the other hand, have so far signed 1 player. Leaving aside losing Puncheon, Mills, Gobern (and the possibility of losing Chamberlain), we haven't strengthened to anywhere near the same degree. Even Adkins is talking about only signing 1, maybe 2 more players. Now obviously that doesn't tell the whole tale, some of our players may indeed be capable of stepping up and emulating their Norwich counterparts. But I don't think it's unfair to outline a personal belief that this current squad are not good enough to emulate what Norwich did, which is really the ultimate aim.

Exactly right. To try to claim that a successful penalty from 12 yards is less valid as a goal than one that goes in unwittingly off your arse from 1 yard out is a bit of a nonsensical statement.

"Names" don't mean anything, and don't guarantee success. In any case, they weren't predominantly from the lower leagues. 2 from the Premier League (Surman, Ruddy), 1 from the Championship (Ward), 1 from Glasgow Rangers (Smith). The 3 other players were signed from League 1 (Simeon Jackson, Andrew Crofts, David Fox), they had all had successful seasons with their respective clubs and all went on to become 1st team regulars. As did all the other signings except for Smith.

I agree with a lot of that, but I think the comparisons with Norwich are very relevant. You could argue that we're clubs of a similar size, and have had similar recent successes (and failures). Relegated to League 1, make a whole load of signings, new manager early into the season, much increased fortunes, and promotion to the Championship (albeit ours was one year later). Norwich then made at least 7 early new signings on their arrival in the Championship. So far, we've made one. Of course it's yet to be seen whether we'll make more (I believe 1 or 2 signings will be made but no more), but it also looks like we'll be losing Puncheon (who played in the Prem), Mills (who played in the Championship), we've also lost Gobern and there still remain doubts whether AOC will still be here come kick off. Of course, it's not all about a numbers game, and you could perhaps argue that our overall squad strength was maybe stronger than Norwich's when they went up. But Norwich have set the benchmark, and their way of doing it was to sign a number of Championship and above quality players. We may well yet do that, or indeed our squad may surprise peopl and actually out-perform the majority of expectations. But until it happens it's fair for some (including myself, by the way) to register an opinion that the current squad isn't going to be strong enough for a play-off push.

I can't really fault the club for the pricing of the tickets, £16 for adults and in particular £6 for kids is pretty fair IMO. Especially when you consider it's a whole day out, and you can leave and re-enter the stadium at will, so it's not as if there's no other choices for food etc.

Well this one is a strange comment. I can fully understand the club being criticised for not marketing tickets/season tickets enough, and therefore failing to maximise sales. But this seems to be a criticism that the club are actually over-marketing an event they're hosting!