City kits – Opinion

As I do most seasons, here’s an 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 I say?

As is often the case with this blog posting, the release date does appear quite late following the release dates of the various kits.

However, not only do I choose to wait until all-3 kits are released but other, more important and often long pieces take priority at this time of year, such as last season’s player ratings, last season’s predictions results; this season’s predictions as well as pre-match blog postings for the start of our season.

Opinion varies…

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 – for them it’s more about who wears the kit rather than what it looks like and that’s fair enough too.

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 Manchester 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 main ‘driving factor’. Absolutely crazy prices!

The home kit

Love it. Love the fade-to-white design and the shade of sky blue. Nice simple collar and the white cuffs and sides are good.

It loses a little for me in that it doesn’t have our full-colour badge on; choosing, as they have done instead, a white / metallic-looking badge which is ‘the fashion’ in a lot of our kits these days [to align the badge colour with the kit colour choice].

However, other than that it’s a really good shirt in my opinion.

Nothing wrong here and matches the top well.

I know there are City fans who say it should always be sky blue socks in our home kits. Those who know me might recall that I don’t personally like us in navy blue socks…and that navy blue generally should, for me at least, not be anywhere near our kits; despite there being a history of navy blue socks for the first 57 years of our Manchester City Football Club history from 1894.

However, and for whatever reason, I’m absolutely fine with all-white socks as part of the occasional City home kit and with this one in particular, I think it completes it perfectly.

Altogether, I think it’s a really clean and smart-looking kit.

Marks out of 5? The club’s rating system whenever they decide to send out fan surveys? 4.75/5 - loosing just 0.25 for the badge thing.

The away kit

Here’s what I said exactly 12-months ago during this same blog posting last season about our then-new black away kit:

I don’t usually like us havin’ an all-black (or all-navy) away or third kit – I often think of ‘em as a lazy, ‘Here ya go - it’s got a City badge on it what more d-ya want?’ type of kit.

I went on to say, however, that I liked last season’s away kit; particularly the metallic features on it. It looked classy.

And, for similar reasons, I really like this one too and what wins me over, aside from the fact that it’s another smart one and isn’t garish, is the Manchester bee design. I’m all for kits representing the football club itself but the ‘bee thing’ just does it for me – a great link to our great City. The mainly black top is finished nicely with pastel yellow trimming.

Shorts: Plain, simple with just a small amount of the same tone of yellow.

Socks: Same colour of yellow with a black hoop design (three of ‘em). I do like a hoopy sock design. 👍🐝

Again, they’ve messed with the badge and made it all yellow.

Marks out of 5? 4.75/5.

The 3^rd-choice kit

Smart – I like it. Similar to a City kit from a number of seasons ago with a comparable colour / style stripe; this time down the middle instead of down one side. As a bonus, they’ve not fecked around with the badge on this shirt either! 😊👍

Yep, suits the top perfectly well.

I like ‘em.

Marks out of 5? For not messing around with the badge and with nothing negative to say about this whole kit from my perspective, this gets a full 5/5.

That’s makes this season’s scoring a most excellent, 14.5/15!

Thanks as always for taking the time to read.