23 Replies to “Week 14 – Premier League Kits Round-up

  1. So what have we got here then……. Swansea’s shorts clashing with Tottenham, Chelsea bizarrely wearing their home kit at Man City, and enough said about the colour of that Liverpool 3rd kit the better

  2. For once, the advertising execs got the Liverpool colour spot on : They’ve called it ‘toxic’…There were rumours flying around over the Summer that NB were going to do the darker, Carslberg era shade of green, then this…thing…came out. I do like fluorescence in kits on occasion (Dortmund have been good at this historically), but that Liverpool kit…yuck. Ditto Nike’s first Wolfsburg kit – that one is gross, too. Overall effect of both is, I have to say, a bit…mucus-y.

  3. Illustrating my ‘sky v royal’ clash theory, I see City wore the black and red kit at the KP Stadium at the weekend…I will keep fighting on this one!

  4. I didn’t have a huge problem in telling City and Chelsea apart but can see how people would.

    When we have so many pointless changes, allowing such a ‘half clash’, to coin a phrase, seems odd.

  5. Like I said, when City had the VERY light shade of sky blue (Saab era Umbro or Reebok era), then things are fine at the Bridge (apart from a sock change, of course); but the Kappa / LCS ‘laser blue’ or the darker sky blue as employed by Nike causes potential problems (especially in dark / overcast or night games). Also, am I right in saying that Coventry always wore their away kit at Stamford Bridge?

  6. Ah. Well I’d say that one was OK; it is very pale, which coupled with the white stripes and shorts gives an overall effect of almost all white. I think we’re back to your ‘what constitutes a clash’ article, Denis!

  7. OK, bit of fun. If you take the 20 teams currently in the PL, what would everyone say is their best supplier? Here are mine :

    Arsenal – Nike
    Spurs – Hummell
    Man Utd – Umbro
    Man City – Umbro – Both spells
    Liverpool – Reebok
    Everton – Umbro – All spells
    Sunderland – Nike
    Middlesbrough – Errea
    West Ham – Reebok
    West Brom – Diadora
    Watford – Puma
    Bournemouth – Carbrini
    Crystal Palace – adidas
    Chelsea – Umbro
    Southampton – Pony
    Stoke – Puma
    Swansea – Joma
    Hull – adidas
    Leicester – Le Coq Sportif
    Burnley – adidas

    Now, all of these are personal taste, of course, and are based mainly on the strips I’ve liked over the last twenty years or so, but of course some of them are from earlier. I’ve also tried to work on the basis of a supplier that have issued consistently strong kits, rather than just the odd year. So for Chelsea, for example, I’ve picked Umbro because while adidas have done some stunning home kits for them, they’ve also done some forgettable away and thirds. Some stunners, too, but that one was very close. Umbro just edged it. And Utd? Well, for me their greatest period of footballing dominance and kit elegance was the Umbro one – only the grey kit stands out as being a miss-step, but viewed now, through modern eyes, it was actually (whisper it) **not that bad**. Like I said, just a bit of fun, but I (as always) welcome debate. One last thing : I’ve taken the TC era of roughly 1980 onwards as a starting point. Not that there wasn’t classic design before then, just that the logo/sponsor/badge/colour thing is harder to get spot on, so the last forty years have been more design oriented than the previous eighty.

  8. Spurs is always a difficult one – Umbro was a contender, as was adidas, but I picked Hummel because I saw a classic highlights show and realised what a classy set of kits they had then. Watford similar, but I think when Kit@ evolved into Puma they had some nice kits. There was a lot of thought that went into this one! Liverpool was tough too, because while adidas did some nice kits through the 80’s, they didn’t vary that much year on year, and I was never a fan of the ‘equipment’ era (and I would say the same as a Bayern fan). That leaves Umbro or Reebok. The latter shaded it for me because apart from the green and navy or ecru and black strips, which were a bit bland, I think the reds had consistently strong strips, especially in the ‘five trophy’ era in 2001. The only thing I didn’t like on the Reebok strips was the club crests, which were tiny. Part of me wishes that adidas had kept Reebok running as a kit supplier and not just a running shoe manufacturer – I think across Man City, Liverpool, Bolton and West Ham they did some great kits.

  9. OK, fair enough – good debate though, isn’t it? I have to admit Reebok kits were a bit ‘Marmite’; I liked them because they were different, especially the asymetric ones. I did like the adidas kits produced for Spurs, but I will also have to admit for a certain bias, being as they’ve been supplying Bayern since 1965! However, the years around 2002 – 04 were a mixed bag, design wise, so I can well understand where you’re coming from. What did you think of the Spurs Kappa kits?

  10. I couldn’t help but notice Middlesbrough’s goalkeeper wearing light green against Liverpool’s “toxic” yellow the other night, far from ideal.

  11. Wasn’t a great fan of Swansea in their away kit against West Brom; although there was a sufficient amount of white on the WBA kit, I think that only Swansea’s dark shorts avoided the possibility of a clash. Not easy when the Swans have an all white kit, so an away kit IS needed, but don’t they have a third this year?

    Also, glad to see common sense prevailing and Southampton unveiling a special kit for the Bournemouth game this weekend – white shirts with red shorts. I think without that game there may have been the highly unusual situation of the Saints going through a whole season with only two kits. Extraordinary.

  12. Bit bonkers, isn’t it? Surely (following on from previous years) an all red would’ve made sense? Eintracht Frankfurt had a similar problem this year; a Juventus like home, red and black away, so being a Nike teamwear contract they just issued a plain (devoid of trim) dull yellow kit for occasions when their two regular kits produced a double clash. And by dull I mean the shade : it’s neither yellow or amber but somewhere in between. I’m sure they’ll call it ‘Autumn Sun’ or some equally daft description.

  13. That Crystal Palace home is really starting to bug me. Not the design of the strip overall – that’s nice – but the fact that the trim on the shirt doesn’t line up with the shorts. Couldn’t one or the other slope so the edges line up? Or have the short trim thicker? It just doesn’t make sense from a design perspective.

  14. Yeah, just didn’t seem very ‘Spurs’, did it? As a neutral I like to see them in plain or minimal strips; this seasons’ ‘yoke’ I think is OK because it doesn’t come across as too ‘in your face’, but navy sleeves and ‘heritage sash’ nonsense do NOT work, IMO. Also, Kappa picked a weird ‘not quite royal’ blue shade for one of their kits in 05/06 too. For me, Spurs should be white/navy/white home; all navy away; all yellow third (and that is YELLOW, not gold that actually looks orange on TV). The three kits they had in 94/95, when I got into football, fitted this template (though the away had purple mixed in). You are right, though, Kappa suffered a serious miss-step with the 05/06 kits. Apart from THAT, though, I’ve always liked their kits – they have done some stunners in Germany for Werder Bremen, Wolfsburg, and Monchengladbach (even though, in the latter case, Postbank insisting on having their logo with its corporate colour of yellow in a rectangle against a white shirt always jars somewhat – not Kappa’s fault, though).

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