Kit start

The next season's new strip was revealed this week, with both home and away uniforms are being changed due to a switch in manufacturers from lower league staples TFG, a veritable Spall Sports of the modern era, to Carlotti. Thankfully Conference rules have forced a change of away kit; so we no longer have the good-with-jeans but terribly dull black kit that is ubiquitous amongst League clubs nowadays.

Your kit says a lot about your club's inner psyche and its prospects for the coming year. A kit with ostentatious design burps and twonks hides a deep nervousness about the coming campaign. Many clubs have introduced shockers during a period in the doldrums. Its desperate attempt to placate the fans and convince them that the season will be a good one, albeit one festooned with defeat. The whole of the eighties was besieged by shadow stripe and pin stripe shirts demonstrating the nervousness over the threat to the national game hooliganism presented. England's own 1982 World Cup shirt with its coloured lapels marked a period of general ineptitude. It's no coincidence that you can't get it from TOFFS, but you can get the allies shirt from Escape to Victory; preferring to preserve in history a team with Sylvester Stallone in goal over one frequented by world class central defender Steve Foster.

The great clubs; Barcelona, Real Madrid, AC Milan, Manchester United, have all pretty much stuck to solid, classic colours. Not compromising what their club is, or what it stands for. For U's centenary season of 1993/4 a special shirt was introduced, rather having a design that was a nod back to a bygone era a la Arsenal's cherry red shirts of last season, the club introduced a design which incorporated blue sleeves covered in white and yellow ladders, this attempted to hide a wealth of woefulness that promptly lead to our relegation at the end of that season. And then there was the 2000/01 'Domino' kit, which tried to introduce a new smart-arse fabric, which under floodlights, or in fact any slightly dimmed light, went green. The net result was that the U's finished bottom by 10 points and 24 from safety, conceding 100 goals.

Oxblogger would have preferred to see something more old school, like the Dutch world cup shirt which puts all its emphasis on a single colour and the badge, sending out two clear messages about who the Dutch are but the new kit, thankfully, has big strong panels of colour with just a bit of dark blue detail. The away kit, apparently is white with yellow detail. It'll be a good season.