One of the most talked about parts of the summer besides the transfer market is the release of new shirts. Everyone loves seeing the new designs and hating/praising them. So I figured I’d go ahead and give you a little bit of an early preview of what’s been released for this season so far.
Blackburn Away:
Not too bad from the boys in Blackburn, the one thing I’ve noticed in comparing American uniforms to European uniforms is that the European ones tend to not have almost any of the colors the home one does. While in America if the Dallas cowboys came out with maroon and green away uniforms the fans would have Jerry’s head on a spike by halftime. This may have been the reason I didn’t fully grasp the outrage about Arsenal’s white shirt 2 years ago. It also may be why I like this one, its nice and simple, but still stands out quite well.
Arsenal Away:
Again, another Arsenal shirt thats been creating a little bit of a buzz online for being ugly. But I don’t really see it, and I kinda like it. Its totally different from what we’ve seen in an Arsenal away shirt in a while but its not crazy like we saw in 02/03. I do understand some of the uproar since Arsenal usually wears yellow, but yellow is not really an appealing color to wear out on the town, playing sure, but not when you’re trying to walk around in public looking like an adult.
this shirt has not been confirmed yet
West Ham Away
I don’t really have a strong opinion on this one, it looks pretty good though. Hopefully West Ham don’t wind up losing another sponsor this season because this shirt would not look good with a number plate on it.
this shirt has not been confirmed yet
Wigan Home
There are two things I don’t like when it comes to sponsor logos:
1. betting companies (and pyramid schemes like the MLS seems to love)
2. Boxes of color interfering with another color
This shirt breaks both of those rules, and I understand as a sponsor you’re paying good money and you want your logo to be visible, but it just looks intrusive and ruins the aestetic of the shirt design. As for the betting companies if I’m neutral to the team but like them or their shirt, I’m not going to buy the shirt and be a walking billboard for that company, its already bad enough that I tell everyone to go to Dubai about once a week, but I don’t need to tell people to go to an ad cluttered gambling website. Beer companies are different, I’d totally wear the shirt of a team sponsored by Stella.
Stoke City Away
This is so much better than the yellow things they were wearing this season, but you can’t get your guy modeling the shirt a new, clean pair of shoes to wear for the photo shoot? The use of the red in the shirt works real well with the sponsor logo and I don’t actually mind the box around the logo here, it looks bad on the home shirts, but works here with the red highlights.
Manchester City Home
I’m a fan of blue, and City has always used a good shade of blue on their shirts, but I’m not really sure whats going on here. Whats with the dark blue stripes in the middle? Either make them bigger or get rid of them. The sleves look strange as well. The shirt would have been better off all blue, or with some better looking highlights. I’m sure it comes as no suprise that City’s ownership seems to have a hand in getting their new sponsor, though I don’t think City really need a sponsor with the amounts of cash the ownership is going to be throwing around this summer.
this shirt has not been confirmed yet
Chelsea Home
Sorry Chelsea fans, this is just horrible. If this was a cycling shirt review, I might rate this one as the best of the bunch, but alas its not. I’m not sure if thats a zipper or what it is, or why it has large chest pads on it. I really liked the classic look to this seasons shirt, but I guess adidas has decided that this is going to be the boring template that most of their shirts are made on this season. My suggestion to Chelsea fans? buy up your favorite players shirts from this season when they go on sale and save money on this one.
So there you have it, what do you think? Have at it in the comments.
1) There’s a lot going on with that Blackburn one; I’m not sure I’m a fan.
2) Arsenal, Stoke, AND Liverpool are rocking all black away kits next year; that’s a lot of black. I can’t think of anyone doing it this year, either.
3) West Ham’s kits want to be Aston Villas kits so bad that it isn’t even funny. And I agree on the betting sponsors; kinda tacky.
4) If you think Chelsea’s version is bad, check out Bayern Munich’s; the blue in the Chelsea version hides the pauldrons way better than the red.
Well technically Arsenal’s is Navy, but yeah it’ll look totally black watching a game, but we haven’t seen the shorts yet, though I can’t imagine they won’t be navy as well.
I did post a link to that Bayern one, and yeah it’s horrible, though the advantage again will be that this season’s shirt can be had for cheap, and I really like that one. I don’t know if it’d be morally and ethically responsible to get one with Ribery on the back if he moves to United though.
I don’t see what any of this has to do with Liverpool?
But seriously folks…
-Are you suggesting that Herbalife isn’t a perfectly legitimate company?
-The only problem with the Arsenal shirt is that it is boring.
-You’ll notice that “big” clubs never have a problem with the sponsor logo interfering with the shirt design, only mid-level and lower clubs without the “clout” have this problem. A few years ago when Everton were sponsored by “One 2 One” the basically told the company, “We only have blue and white on our home kit, so if you want to sponsor us, remove the red from your logo.” The company removed the red. See how I managed to include Liverpool in this comment!?
In a completely “LFC” (see, I didn’t even use the whole WORD!) comment: I love the electric blue “Acorns” Aston Villa away kit this season; I also like the Barca Unicef kits. Both sponsors are classy and, more impressively, donated space from the team.
At least John Terry’s boobs will have support.
Agree completely with the betting sponsors – I own about 40 shirts, none w/any of them. I prefer pimping beer, Lithuanian banks, defunct travel firms and Scottish demolition companies.
It’s funny, though, that in the U.S. our panties are all in a knot over Delaware legalizing sports betting while most EPL teams have official betting partners. The NFL, in particular, goes out of their way to pretend betting doesn’t exist.
Yeah it’s pretty fraudulent over here, I can appreciate that it’s out in the open over there – just for me personally I had a friend lose everything playing online casino games years back without leaving his (ex-)home. Never let on, have no idea where he’s at now.
[...] did cover this one 3 weeks ago, however if you may remember it was a partial picture and it had a different sponsor logo on it. [...]
[...] showed what looked to be a leak of City’s new shirt a few weeks back, heck it even had the proper sponsor on it. Thankfully that horrible looking shirt [...]