The9

I'll give him vision, I'm not sure I'll go with insight. Assuming all of this is true, they obviously have a plan. I just hope it doesn't involve having Kevin Keegan as the team's manager, that's all.

Maybe you should blow up the stadium with a flybe plane then.

God, Keegan would love you. Just keep smiling. I just think there are endless better candidates and people are falling in love with the idea not the reality. Hell, I'd even welcome Hoddle back ahead of him in terms of expected on-pitch product... but not Redknapp (which incidentally was the last time we had this kind of uniform love-in over an appointment potentially made for all the wrong reasons).

In the interests of balance, this is what I think Keegan would bring us positively : 1) Feelgood factor, for as long as we didn't actually lose any games. This may be December 2010 when we're top of the Championship, it might be August 5th 2009. 2) Increased merchandise sales. Allied to a nice Rank Xerox style away kit, number 7 shirts which DIDN'T have Le Tiss's name on would be flying out of the window, and we'd run out of K and E letters in the Megastore. There would be a Hampshire-wide shortage of Afro wigs. 3) Enthusiasm. Which might help the kids a lot, assuming we're not signing Ronaldinho and the like to replace them. 4) Enhanced status. We'd be a big club in League One. Which we are anyway, but we'd have Kevin Keegan. So we'd be on telly slightly more often.

Oh, sorry. Right, well there's : 1) Tactical naivete - evidenced in Newcastle's lack of defending (in 2008/9 and even in 1996), England's Euro 2000 debacle and the early qualifiers thereafter. And the whole of his Man City stint. 2) He's a quitter - walking away from Newcastle (twice), Man City and England. Can't remember what happened at Fulham... 3) He's a chequebook manager who is only successful when he spends vast amounts of cash, or his teams are significantly better than the others in the League (Fulham, Man City outside the Prem). His greatest management success is actually failing to win the Prem with Newcastle at a time when Blackburn had only just chucked money at winning the title and succeeded, and blowing up on tv in a way that is still mock-worthy 13 years later. 4) He's over-emotional and can't deal with not getting his own way, leading to 2). 5) The money spent on him as a manager would be better spent on improving the team. If he's Director of Football it's just money wasted. Conversely, if Pinnacle have that much money that they're not BOTHERED about wasting that kind of money, I'd point them at Man City's massive successes last season... 6) He has very little management experience in the 3rd tier of English football, and what there was is getting on for 10 years ago - and he had Fayed's chequebook, which Micky Adams arguably did better with. 7) He doesn't actually need to be involved with football, so has little motivation for success. 8 ) He's rubbish at riding bikes on gravel. Oh, and as far as providing "facts", I'm the one who posted Keegans actual managerial career dates, rather than engaging in a sidetracking debate about who meant what by "div 1"...

Well, it is exactly the kind of money-wasting, fan-pandering, ill-thought out scheme that Crouch has been associated with so far... In the interests of balance that's as opposed to Lowe's money-scrimping, fan-ignoring, ill-thought out schemes...

It was 1980. I was 7, I was probably still celebrating Newport County's promotion to the League Saints are currently in and their Welsh Cup win over two legs against Shrewsbury. I knew who Keegan was, but Saints were just someone with a similar style Patrick kit to "The County", who were in my Panini album, that Nicky Leighton in my class liked. HE ended up one of those long-hairs with black rock band t-shirts on. As you can tell, despite having been a football fan for all but the first 2 weeks of my 7 years, I didn't even notice.

Whoopsie, that's cut and pasting the midweek dates for you ! I'll see if Steve can upload an amended one - cheers for letting me know. I have now changed the file and sent it. Will probably be online sometime in July if yesterday's update was anything to go by, LOL.

Just as well, cos they're not. However, the just released Lyon away kit is : And God help anyone that tries to get me to wear a Saints version of THAT abomination, yellow or not. FWIW, your second batch of designs were much nicer, especially the home kit - I like the gold, though it's a bit of a Skate-ish idea based on the last two seasons... Love #s 1,3 and Away from Carozzi/Fido though.

Nearly 10 years ago, don't forget to factor in a bit of inflation (not so much the last year or so...).

They could start charging Franchise fees and we'd be sorted.

That would depend what you meant by Div 1. He managed Newcastle in 1992/3 in Div 1 (now the CCC) He managed Fulham in what is now League One in the late 90s, then Div 3. He managed Man City in 2001 in Div 1 (now the CCC) too. But only one of those is the level that we're currently at. Kevin Keegan's managerial career Team From To Games Won Lost Drawn Newcastle 16-01-2008 04-09-2008 21 6 9 6 Man City 24-05-2001 11-03-2005 176 77 60 39 Fulham 07-05-1998 09-05-1999 61 38 11 12 Newcastle 05-02-1992 08-01-1997 251 138 62 51 Just for the record, I think it's a terrible idea, and the arguments against are many and varied. The argument for seems to be "he's a big name and it will get people to attend", but how long will that last if we leak goals and lose games as he chucks 8 players forward and then leaves the club in late August as is his wont?

Woo-hoo bloated squad !

...don't let him anywhere near us. Thought I'd finish that for you.

Pah, driving there and back, what's wrong with you people ? Might fly to Carlisle.

Can I let this slide without mentioning the failure to cut costs across all management in the intervening 4 years..? Nope. Sorry, same old. Hopefully tomorrow we'll have a new set of problems.

Already done. Link : http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/fixtures, file is at the bottom of that page. Not sure about "clever" though.

Well quite, after all people were posting "just wait, they'll pull out to get the price dropped in the final week before the bid eventually goes through" about 2-3 weeks ago. Long and short of it is we won't know until Friday, and we may not know even then. And THEN is the time to panic. Again, with the fixtures already out, and the non-League ones to follow very soon, there is precisely zero chance of us playing in the Conference this season. It will be League One or a year in the wilderness, maybe starting from non-League the season after.

I like the boggle-eye smiley on the badge, but I was thinking more of a poorly washed white (bluey-white-grey) t-shirt with wee dribble, pooey mud colour and random bloodstains.

It's still a two year old Umbro template. West Ham, Blackburn, Everton and Birmingham (amongst others) had kits in this exact style in 2007 and stopped using them in 2008 or kept them for 3rd kit use only and are now replacing them. In fact, everyone has stopped using it except for third kits for non-League teams who don't know better (Forest's black thing this season which was from the season before is also ending, Wrexham are the only ones I've seen introducing a similar style). Also, you could buy an Umbro England away kit in the equivalent style for £4.89 three months ago from Sportsdirect.com, what makes you think anyone will pay £40 for one with a Saints badge on it that's already two years out of date ?

I think the point is that most people on here are arguing that he didn't get what he deserved, and the punishment was, if anything, too lenient.

The most interesting thing I noticed from the training pictures was that the club has somehow found a way to purchase a load of new training gear despite the financial situation and exclusivity... seeing as they didn't manage to find the money for new hooped socks for the reserves after February last season and they ended up wearing Forest-style red...

PS : The Pro-Star "Sporting" Jersey... :smt046

A combination of dull washed out bluey-white with yellow, brown and red stains would be better. :cool:

You know how you always end up with loads of change after being out on the lash ? They didn't want to pay the excess baggage fees for the flight back. Funny though, cos it was late in the game and the Tahar El Kelloggs tackle was probably only 10-15 minutes before the end of the season. Good old Silver Boots.