Poll: Favourite Premier League Kit 09-10 – The Winner

man-city-h-09-10Thanks again to everyone that voted in the poll to decide on the best Premier League kit for 09-10. There were loads of really great suggestions for the best (and worst) strips of the year. The winner of the best kit in the PL is the Manchester City Umbro home outfit. Throughly deserved, the retro-themed design is a great strip and bodes well for the next series of Tailored by Umbro designs we’ll see in 10-11. Simple, classic and devastatingly stylish.

The club’s home and away kits got good shouts as well (as did Hull’s home) but the second favourite was Burnley’s home kit (with special mention of their away as well). Another example of retro designs that have gone down well with the discerning football kits fans who visit the site!

It was neck and neck for the least favourite and Umbro’s unpopular home kit for West Ham was just pipped at the post by Spurs’ Puma home strip.

As with the choice of City kit as favourite, you’ll get no argument with me on this one! The Spurs strip just didn’t cut it for me this season to be honest and the Hammers shirt is in my view one of the less successful of Umbro’s recent outfits.

20 Replies to “Poll: Favourite Premier League Kit 09-10 – The Winner

  1. Can totally understand how this one won as it is a classically simple design and the same can be said of the Burnley one (I love the return of the simple v neck…and not the naff ones as seen on the Blackburn and Rangers shirts). In contrast, I seem to be one of the very few who actually like West Ham’s kit this season.

  2. Good to see the top kits in the poll are traditional and clean designs, I really hope this is the way forward for a few years until the inevitable resurgence of Jackson Pollock style kits like in the 90’s

  3. The only trouble with this kit is that it is yet another 1 year only effort from Umbro – or should that blame lie with the club? Presumably not given that they do not need the money from shirt sales at the moment.

    So, having now stripped their kits back to basics, presumably to make sure the next kits are different enough from the previous ones, they are inevitably going to have to add a bit of trim here and some contrast colours there and then we are right back in the cycle where they start producing pointless over-fussy kits again.

    Part of what made the kits of the sixties and seventies so memorable and iconic is the fact that they were worn for long periods of time by lots of players in lots of memorable matches. To get the best out of the new designs, surely they have to have some longevity, don’t they? A two or three year lifespan for kits would be a good step in my opinion.

  4. Hello Tim – totally agree with you. In fact I blogged about this a while ago: http://www.truecoloursfootballkits.com/truecolours/bring-back-a-two-year-kit-lifespan

    I’m not sure exactly who calls the shots when it comes to lifespans of kits. I believe the club more so than the manufacturers (I remember when Chelsea made a statement saying that they would be switching to a one-year cycle of kits a while ago) but I do know that one of the main Umbro designers is in favour of one year only kits.

  5. Just read that, John and I completely agree with it. The only plus-side to having a one-year cycle is that you are not stuck with any shocking design for two years! Then again, I suppose you are less likely to get one as they usually occur out of that necessity to make kits different enogh from the previous ones.

    By the way John, I wonder what your thoughts are on fans having a say in the designs of their kits. Some clubs are given a choice of a handful of templates from their kit manufacturers and others have fans actually submit their own designs, with the best ones going to a vote. Coincidentally as Manchester have one team with award-winning kits that have been hugely successful with their fans another has possibly the least successful, even though the design was voted on by the supporters. Possibly it is because the design looked better on paper than it did in reality (although the manufacturer should take a large part of the blame – how they made such a mess of a crew neck is beyond me!). I’m talking of FC United of Manchester – soon to be City’s close neighbours.

  6. Tim, re: your posting (No.4);
    Your comment over the iconography of shirts, which remained, for the most part, unchanged over a long period of time is extremely pertinent.
    During the 50s, 60s and 70s, supporters of clubs involved in historic matches, cup-final wins, league championships, et al will remember the kit worn during that event…..i’d say to a degree even those too young to have witnessed it……How many of the subsequent kits from, lets say the 90s onwards, will have such a clear recognition at a trophy winning event after a similar elapse of time?
    For example; Arsenal’s 1970-71 kits- worn in their double winning season were a classic of design and understated elegance…..(before you ask I’m not even a Gooner!)
    Who can clearly recall their kits from their next double winning season in 1998?

  7. And yet ironically Steve, that is the very reason many people are in favour of a new kit every season; so that it helps make each season unique and supposedly more memorable. I’m with you though and you make a good case.

  8. Steve, wasn’t it (the 1998 Arsenal kit) the one with the white sides (as well as the sleeves) with navy trim? That’s what I remember so would be interesting to see if that’s a genuine memory or a mistake.

  9. Hello Tim – interesting question, I am in favour of supporters helping choose the final kit design in principle. Generally though it tends to be just away kits doesn’t it? I guess for many clubs the home strip is untouchable. I do think AFC Wimbledon have gone too far giving 5 options each for next year’s home and away kits though. Seems to be a design ‘stick the tail on the donkey’ approach. Although fan opinion is very important and should be taken into consideration the kit designers should really have the final choice.

    I have to say I wasn’t impressed at all by the FC United kit – interesting to hear the other side of the story – that on paper the design was pretty good!

  10. Totally agree on Man City’s kit winning the vote, it’s a great example of how modern and retro come together. Burnley’s kits based on their 59/60 championship winning season also deserved their place.

    Even some of the non-tailored Umbro kits look good and a job well done to their designers after the busy looking strips they had made in previous years. Though I still think Hull’s kit looks more like a Wolves kit from circa 1983!

    Shame that Birmingham City are ditching their quite decent looking “yoked” kit from Umbro at the end of the season for what looks like some truly uninspiring designs from some unknown manufacturer. Maybe someone should have a word in their ear about penguins, to give them an idea for a strip that would go down well with their fans.

    It’s also interesting to see how some of the great kits from the 60’s and 70’s have been seen as the benchmark by supporters of some clubs for which new strips are measured. Seeing as Arsenal were mentioned earlier, I agree about their 70/71 strip being so fondly remembered, so much so that a lot of Gooners regard that as the definitive Arsenal strip.

    I did hear rumours that Nike are making Arsenal’s next kit to resemble that classic kit, as it will be 40 years since that double. Some of their fans are even going as far as wanting just the cannon on the shirt instead of the club badge, though in today’s intellectual property awareness era, unfortunately the sight of just the cannon on an Arsenal shirt will be a thing of the past.

    For the record I vaguely remember Arsenal’s kit from the 97/98 season. It was quite a decent strip though it’s not a patch on 70/71 for me!

  11. On the subject of this season’s kits…

    Tomorrow, Portsmouth will be playing in a special one-off kit, for their FA Cup semi-final against Tottenham.

    Surprisingly, it is produced by Kappa, who have a five-year-deal with Pompey that begins this summer, and not Canterbury – who are their official kit manufacturer for this season.

    Here’s a picture…

    http://i40.tinypic.com/2vv0uxd.jpg

    I guess they didn’t have a pair of the new Kappa socks handy! 😛

    And, here’s one of the goalkeeper kit.

    http://i39.tinypic.com/21mrn0p.jpg

    By the way, I LOVE the goalkeeper kit. 🙂

  12. David James stuck out like a sore thumb today in his cerise goalie jersey. Anyhow Pompey did wear Kappa socks today, in plain red with the Kappa logo on it.

    The gold logos on the sleeves do spoil the kit though.

  13. “I did hear rumours that Nike are making Arsenal’s next kit to resemble that classic kit, as it will be 40 years since that double.”

    Not 40 years in in Nike’s eyes though – they always commemorate an event a year late. Celtic’s 1966/67 European Cup winning season was commemorated with a kit for 2007/08 and United’s 1968 European Cup win was commemorated with a kit for the 2008/09 season for example.

  14. Having said that, Nike did get their timings right for a few other kits. Barça’s kits for the 07/08 season commemorated their 50th year at the Camp Nou, which opened in 1957, and Inter Milan’s kits that same season were for their Centenary, even though their 100th birthday didn’t occur until the March of 2008.

    There’s probably a few others I’ve missed out but on the subject of Arsenal, it was a rumour though, we won’t know anything until the close season, when Arsenal will be revealing a new kit anyway.

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