City kits – Opinion

As I do most seasons, a…rather-longer-than-usual opinion piece on how our lads & girls will look in the coming season; whether you’re bothered about the subject matter or not.

Hey, why not?

Some fans simply can’t WAIT for the new gear to come out; some even just buy it regardless of what the kits look like and often get a shirt within minutes of the official first day of sale.

Others wait & see what they look like and make decisions accordingly…while some fans just couldn’t care less – it’s more about who wears the kit rather than what its appearance is and I think that’s fair enough.

Over the years, particularly in my younger days, I have bought loads of tops. So many, in fact, that I once donated a dozen or more old tops to one of City’s overseas charities. However, even then I only ever mostly bought one when I felt that it represented our club / traditions and/or was significantly different, design wise, from the previous one (there were periods in the 90s & 00s where the club appeared to get a bit lazy to me and produced home tops / kits with very little change from the previous season).

That’s where I most-definitely stand now – they have to ‘look City’ for me…although I buy far, FAR less than I use to regardless of their appearance, I have to say; with price being the ‘driving factor’. Crazy costs!

The home kit

Oh dear, we’ve gone back to navy blue.

As a nipper and later into my teens, I’d only ever known my Manchester City heroes play in sky blue socks whilst wearing our home kit. And when I first started to go regularly at the age of 14 and then purchased my first season ticket at the age of 15; there was no internet, as we know it today, and, therefore, no such thing as “leaked kits” before the start of any season. Unless you went to any pre-season games, I suppose – and I started to as the seasons went by - the first time you got to see your team in its new attire was when they trotted out of the tunnel just before kick off on the opening day of the season.

By the way, for those much younger fans who might be reading; in those days new kits were only released every TWO seasons and not every season, as has been the case since 2006 or there abouts.

So, there I was stood in the Kippax Stand at Maine Road on the open day of the 1987-88 season (15^th August 1987 v Plymouth Argyle) eagerly awaiting for our lads jog out and when they did, I clearly recall, as if it was just yesterday, that I stopped clapping for a few, slightly-stunned seconds; jaw slowly getting increasingly slack with my mouth eventually wide open.

Sky blue shirts? Check - 🟢

White shorts? Check - 🟢

NAVY BLUE SOCKS?! 🔴 😲

I never did get used to it – I never understood it, for a start.

Was the club just trying to be…different? Was it a way of tryin’ to increase sales by being a bit controversial? I certainly thought it was contentious at the time. Still, I was young and decided to purchase the top(s), which had navy blue aspects on them too. It lasted from 1987 all the way through to 2003; with a fair amount of the dark blue nastiness on most of the home kits in those 16 years.

Flecks of dark blue have since been seen on some of our home kits but nothing much. In fact, apart from one blip in the 2018-19 season where our players wore practically the same socks as they will do this coming season, navy socks appeared to be a distant, horrible memory to be forgotten; just like the late Margaret Thatcher following her resignation during the second release of our navy-blue-tarnished monstrosities.

Sky blue or white home socks have been largely dominant ever since - serenity had been, once again, restored to the universe. 🕊☮✌

Until now that is…

The top: A considerably pale sky blue with navy-blue trim on the collar & sleeves…with those AWFUL navy-blue mini slash-strips on the sides. Of course, as has been the club’s desire in recent seasons - quite a number of seasons now in fact - this one comes with ‘a theme’; this one being our area’s phone number code, 0161. Of course, why not hey? 😆

The shorts: Look innocent and uncontroversial from the front, don’t they? Yeah…well take a look at the back if you so wish, although almost of you will probably have seen them by now seeing as two of the kits have been out for some time (I wanted to wait until all three strips were released before releasing this piece). Two thick, curvature dark lines adorn each leg at about upper thigh level and are SO dark, in fact, that they look darker than navy blue. Utterly ridiculous.

And so to the socks. Navy blue with a thin, sky-blue band in the middle, at least.

Marks out of 5 from me (the club’s usual scoring system whenever fans are sent a survey, which hasn’t happened as yet)? 1…just because it’s a nice pale sky blue-colour shirt in contrast to the other blue I might have mentioned once or twice; plus it has a City crest on both the shirt and shorts that hasn’t been ‘messed with’ / miscoloured, as we’ve seen in some 2^nd and 3^rd kits in recent seasons.

Since I prepped and wrote this piece within days of our home strip being released, I’ve seen it in person on a child who was wearing the whole kit. It’s even worse than I thought. The shorts are as hideous as I’ve just described; the shirt sleeve cuffs that have 0161 all over them look awful but the very worst aspect, for me, is the collar. It too is mostly splattered with 0161s…but it just wasn’t hanging right on the wearer’s neck and the whole top looked like a cheap t-shirt; a description I have also seen another online poster use. What a shame.

Just before I move on to our 2^nd strip / first-choice away kit…

Before I’d written all of the above, I did go further back in time with regards to our home kit history.

When we were known as St. Mark’s (from West Gorton), we played in black socks (with black shirts and white shorts). When we changed to Ardwick AFC in 1887, we changed to navy blue socks (with both navy & sky-blue tops and white shorts).

Crucially – and to be absolutely fair & balanced – when we eventually changed to Manchester City in 1894, we did actually start off wearing navy-blue socks (with sky-blue tops and white shorts). Furthermore, this lasted until…1951! Put another way, the first 57 years of being known as Manchester City FC, our home kits came with…navy blue socks!

So, I suppose if you’d been following Manchester City since, say, the 1920s as a kid and were stood in the stands at Maine Road as one of 45,849 fans on the opening day of the 1951-52 season (18^th August 1951 v Wolverhampton Wanderers); when your beloved blues appeared from the tunnel wearing sky blue & white-hooped socks with no navy blue on whatsoever and for the first EVER time, you may well have been shocked / horrified too! Or perhaps you weren’t bothered in the slightest…😊

The away kit

I get the feeling that I’m going to upset a certain section of Manchester City fans here; possible those of a certain age / generation. Therefore, I think I need to first explain that I was at Wembley on 30^th May 1999 (being on my 14^th or so season ticket) and shared all of the same emotions likely experienced by every other Manchester City fan who watched that match; either at the stadium or on television.

I also acknowledge that without the heroics of those players – not just workhorse striker Paul Dickov – our future and, indeed, present could have looked very, very different indeed.

However, forgetting more recent 2^nd & 3^rd kit abominations that our football club have sanctioned for release over the years; back then we also brought out some inexplicable football strips.

This one, which we have chosen to replicate in order to “celebrate” the 25^th anniversary of escaping from the 3^rd tier of English football (now called League One), was one of three kits that had yellow in it.

One, I seem to recall, was a last-minute panic purchase when we were having kit supplier and/or sponsor issues and decided, bizarrely, to copy a German second division side’s outfit, unless my fading memory is playing tricks on me that is…

The City-German copy top

But where we got the 1998/99 season one from or, indeed, why I am definitely open to suggestions…

So, here we go…

The top: Just as I expected it to be when the rumours first came out months ago but, instead of thick navy-blue stripes as I recall being on the top 25 years ago, these look black to me.

Nothing much else to say about it really – garish, luminous yellow and the aforementioned black stripes with sort of turquois-coloured pinstripes in between; all nothing whatsoever to do with MCFC. If you were to describe that top to a group of people with their eyes closed I bet you’d have at least one of ‘em throwing up…

The back of the shirt is largely all black to accommodate the name and number, which is another recent feature of striped kits that I both loath and think looks stupid.

Oh it gets worse. The shorts: Black, fine, but just like the home kit, it has those STUPID-LOOKING lines on…in garish yellow no less!

And the socks are yellow with a band of black and turquois.

Marks out of 5? 1 – The club’s badge hasn’t been messed with.

I’ve got a feeling that we’ll be seeing our lads in this away kit at Wembley on Saturday – a club message of…look how far we’ve come in 25 years and, okay; why not hey?

The 3^rd-choice kit and…REDEMPTION! 😃

I think when a kit is done right, I find that there’s less you need to say about it.

The top: Nice shade of maroon - or burgundy, as is the official colour and I suppose it is really - with a nice pattern on it. Yes, the badge has been ‘messed with’ but at least that, along with the sponsor logos etc., are a subtle, non-garish colour. Unlike the home shirt, this one has a decent collar too.

Shorts: Again, nothing much to comment on really. A bonus is that, once again unlike the home kit shorts, they don’t have any stupid-looking curved likes at the top of the thigh area.

The socks: Yeah, finish the kit off nicely.

Marks out of 5? 5.

Thank you for reading my analysis / rant – next up will be a preview on Saturday’s encounter as soon as Pep tells us the status of the squad.