Ted Bates Statue

You could have easily written this 10 or 15 years ago. Really disappointing that despite all the advancements, we are still clinging to these outdated notions of prioritising physicality and 'winning' over skill and development.

Go back another half century and pink was seen as a male colour... fashion eh! A lot of our away shirt designs have left me cold but if we do something special when wearing them, suddenly they become iconic. Case in point - Anfield 2017, Simms passing to Long in that weird Under Armour black kit. Good times!

Many people say that we're by far the greatest team the world has ever seen, so I reckon he has definitely heard of us, unless he's an idiot.

Tickets for Millwall on general sale now. I have good memories of Pelle scoring his first goal for us there in an August League Cup match. That must have been about 10 years ago, bloody hell.

Agreed, although I've seen kit photos that looked fake and then been shocked when they turned out to be the real thing, so I only expect to be surprised either way. In the last few years away kits have become pretty wacky so I suppose this is in keeping with that mentality. Looks normal for a goalkeeper's kit, but I suppose it wouldn't sell as well if that's all it was. Besides, we'd only play a couple of times in it.

Obviously in a minority but as there's no longer any Dalek2003 to make the point, with a lot of hindsight, I don't think Lowe did that badly and it was mainly his pompous manner that rubs people up the wrong way. Obviously didn't get the investment we needed, but with the stadium and academy he set up a reasonably attractive platform for Liebherr to take over and reap the benefit as we got back to the PL. Also, there seemed to be uproar at the time, but if we took Hoddle back we might have not gone down and we would have accepted him soon enough. For anyone who disagrees, Mike Wilde turned out to be the personification of "be careful what you wish for". We're quite ready to give our opinion on the latest weird kit, but I wonder what sales were like of those "Saints Go Wilde" t-shirts? Didn't recall much criticism of it at the time. Politically, that's another matter. His Brexit party is what helped get us in the current mess in the first place. Reform had a candidate talking up Putin in Salisbury of all places - sums them up for me really.

Entirely logical timing but dammit I wanted to be able to bitch about this today, not in two weeks

Got another half hour of this shit to watch then

I bet the contents of my garage that Draper Tools are not going to be on the front of the shirts.

We did have a Park and Ride scheme in our last season in the prem which got discontinued after relegation. Guessing the vouchers fell by the wayside in similar circumstances.

Looks decent in the publicity photo, but not sure why Puma are obsessed with giving the stripes a curved bib appearance. Also it's a solid yellow back. Ah well, we managed with pink and red this season so I should be able to cope with five years of this sort of nonsense.

Or that left back we had whose surname began with B and ended in D... no not Bertrand... Olivier Bernard...

I enjoyed watching the 2018 World Cup on iplayer with this option but it doesn't seem to have been offered since. I'm guessing that as there was no commentary on that feed, it wasn't as popular as it could have been. I think the closest you can get to this kind of thing more recently is by watching in VR which would offer a selection of views from the stands, but I think there wasn't enough demand for it and Sky have stopped bothering with it. It's a bit of a shame that broadcasting seems to be going backwards in some aspects.

Doesn't seem all that outlandish, for the sake of a minor typo. Agree about the ladies team though, I imagine it would remain Starling Bank as there must be a year or two left on that.

Must have been a good one to have been declared goal of the millennium. You sure it was Valery?

Five years ago it took him an entire season to get up to speed with us. It's not going to be any better this time around. I'd rather roll the dice on a younger prospect who isn't just going to collect his salary without contributing very much.

We had Sam McQueen as a perfectly good understudy, but you know how that ended up. I believe Matthew Targett was sold to fund the transfer of one of our strikers - Che Adams possibly. I'd be happy to have him back. It does look like the purse strings are tighter now. Not sure if how much is down to FFP or Sport Republic going in the other direction, having blown the bank to prop up Nathan Jones.

I'm so sorry to hear this news. I am an occasional reader of the UI and would read Elijah's posts with interest. I was going to sign up to express my condolences. I had no idea he was so young. It is perhaps a small consolation that as his last memory of seeing Saints in action he was able to experience the elation that we all felt at the last home match and at Wembley. My best wishes to you and your family. PS - I was interested to see that you were name-checked as the creator of 'On The March' and that Branfoot cover. Tried searching for it earlier without luck. If you have a google drive account maybe worth scanning and uploading past issues as an online record of the news and views of the past... just a thought.

I've used Pepipoo forums in the past for legal traffic and parking issues, maybe try posting on there. Funny how some people enjoy chatting shit about football on forums, whereas others prefer to help people not get screwed over by private companies and overbearing local authorities.

I'm not a fan at all but going by our 2nd, 3rd and other custom shirts in recent years, wacky designs are very much in fashion and they will be around for a while yet. Reminds me a bit of the crazy goalkeeper kits of the 90s that must have been designed to make attacking players cross-eyed as they bore down on the opposition's goal.

Can we at least get the super league clubs to stay out of the domestic cups? They are always so worried about fixture congestion so they could just sit them out to piss around with more Champions League fixtures instead. League Cup is already downgraded to give a Europa Conference place and a poor league season can't be saved by winning the FA Cup, as Ten Hag and Wenger have shown in recent years. After the excitement of winning 'lesser' trophies like the JPT, playoff final and coming so close to winning the EFL trophy, I would be well up for something similar to the Full Members Cup: all the fun of a knockout tournament without sovereign wealth funds or oligarchs pissing in everyone's bonfire.

His angle was that he was very happy at Saints, but in the unlikely scenario that Liverpool would came calling, he would be off. I think the difference is what riled people up over Lallana, who was naively suggesting he could stay for his entire career. And I suspect the club was quite happy to profit from both. I'm looking forward to this blowing over, only for it to resume with a vengeance when he does his big 'sorry not sorry' interview with Adam Blackmore where it was entirely Les Reed's fault. I'll settle for him helping us stay up, not like we have any control over the decision anyway.

I have been thinking about recording matches off Radio Solent (or at least the online broadcast) for a while, to listen to them as podcasts when there's nothing better on the radio. Wish I managed to do it for the playoff matches. Sky broadcast doesn't quite capture the excitement for me when watching the footage back. Take for example the footage of AA's goal at Wembley when they're blathering on about the Gray family for most of the minute's build-up as we moved the ball up the pitch. I trust Blackmore and Tessem didn't make the same mistake. I might try and give it a go next season, although I highly doubt they'll be anywhere as exciting as some of the matches this season.

not sure it can be called 'popularising' when it's only one member carpet-bombing the forum with the phrase