The9

Can you quote the post to get the URL and then cut and paste the URL into a browser? That usually works.

It is amusing that the angle taken is "obviously he'd stay at Portsmouth but for the takeover which means they can't afford to pay him more right now...".

They'd better not go after Mike Flynn. Thierry Henry has been glowing about him and we all know how highly the Skates rate his opinion. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/40071169 On the bright side Flynn is ex-Wigan too, so...

BTW my cup final date has now passed. No buried news. Hey, I wonder if we're waiting on Wenger?

If he's going, Saints will want to present it as "he did well enough to get himself a better deal elsewhere" knowing that the louder complainants are likely to be glad he's gone rather than whinging about the club not trying harder to keep him. IF he's off, I'd expect Saints to have given their blessing to speak to others as we do the same.

I'd be fairly annoyed and a little bit surprised tbh. The club has a set of principles and usually looks at the bigger picture. For me it's not about the manager but about whether we slide into "becoming like other clubs" or retain our longer term position. Being competent at the basics of running a club and not doing stuff like (eg) signing Zabaleta is one of the things that's given us a leg up on most of the Premier League clubs in a similar position, who splash cash on ill-suited players or name has-beens. Stuff like picking Stephens from February suggests they were prepared to take a short term hit in the interests of player development, but having done that, it's a bit off to then dump the manager who's had an inexperienced CB playing in the back 4 for 5 months through no fault of his own. Mind you, this does conflict with my "we might still sign Cáceres" argument, and there have been enough weighty rumours about other clubs wanting Puel to think it's about him getting a deal elsewhere rather than *whether* he gets the push.

Sort of thing any agent would say if a player has just left not having been first choice though. Try and make it about the club's choices not the player not being good enough. Of course the main question is what are Saints going to do with Stephens and Yoshida next season, when the goal will be to finish as high as possible, and not to write off half the season testing things out having sold the captain. It could be that we think Cáceres could do the job but are waiting to see who else is available.

The third one is the one he said 'that's the kit" to. I'm interested to know if Pilchards is speculating because I've still got some nagging doubts about whether the side bit is striped rather than solid red and someone said the main front stripe was narrower too, but I'm also fairly sure that was second hand information.

Speculation or ITK?

He's a free agent in a position we're short in, who is now familiar with the club. Lower down the leagues where budgets are tight and options many, clubs do this kind of stuff all the time.

The voices for change are always louder than those supporting the status quo. Same goes for referenda votes. There's often a majority happy enough with things as they are that they don't feel there's a need to do anything to keep it that way.

Krueger didn't "refuse to back him", he said he wasn't part of the football stuff and there was a review of that the following week, just like there was every season. Beyond that he didn't discuss the manager.

I showed my "source" the Patrick style mock up. He said the badge wasn't central so I shared the earlier version. He said "that's the kit". Couldn't get confirmation if the collar was striped or not but definitely a "wing collar". Not sure the back was seen in any detail so can't confirm that but seems logical it'll be white at the top for the name with some red coming in down the sides. That is speculation on my part though. Haven't had any detail on away kit other than yellow with navy trim.

They definitely would have sold Schneiderlin and Fonte earlier though.

Tbf his agent is going to play up the possibility of Saints wanting to keep him to make him sound as valuable as possible. If he says "Southampton didn't play him and didn't want to keep him" it doesn't reflect well on Cáceres and potentially puts others off wondering why. If they try and make out that he's more important than the position Saints used him in he looks as good as possible AND it implies we weren't prepared to pay what he's worth. In short, posturing by his agent.

It's just their third kit with stripes, nothing to suggest we'll actually use the template, but you can see where they might want to use it for us in the future.

I must have misheard the first time (or possibly another friend of mine who also asked might have done). Went back to the source to confirm earlier.

Had a bit of an update today. Badge isn't in the middle so basically it's one of the earlier designs, shorts plain black (don't think there's a white stripe), white socks with a red hoop.

It wouldn't be too difficult to just feed the red stripes in under the arms on the back to allow for that though. Update from others' recollections today says the sponsor looks smaller than that and the white band is not quite as wide, which leaves a little more room for the red stripes at the side on the front (which I believe are a couple of stripes rather than just a red area)... and I don't think the collar is striped. Slight concern we'll get a Colo Colo away kit template the year after just because it has stripes, but I'll share that another time. Oh, and for the lolz, I was at a bbq tonight and a mate of mine who isn't on here showed me a mock up he'd seen on Twitter AND that had been shared by the bloke I know has seen the kit and gave me the information in the first place... It was the last mock up I did with the UA logos on the sleeves and I had to show him this thread to prove I'd created it.

The bit the number goes on is solid...

£4.8m. Why do you ask? I'm fairly sure if we had a system where people at the club were getting a cut of transfers we'd be flogging off players whose contracts were running out a LOT more often than we do. We could have got half a million for Martina at any point until the end of January for a start.

You'll have to be more specific then.

We were only a goal behind when we had a player sent off against Spurs, which is why we got stuffed. Hull at home we were flat as hell, had played 3 days before and they'd had a week off and were playing to stay in the League. Now you can start an argument about motivation but that's the only game in the entire season where we didn't look like we were at least as bothered as the opposition.

They can be pretty crappy in some cases though.

Hopeful our "solid back" looks more like this, albeit in different colours to the new Juve shirt: