SydneyCity

It will probably be a blue question mark… in Comic Sans.

This is neither. If you look closely you can see that it’s been cut from somewhere else and placed on top. They used the polygon lasso, so you can see the straight edges where they cut it - they didn’t even bother to select it properly. My educated guess is they enlarged it too as the black in their selection is lighter and more pixelated… that and the height of the badge is almost the width of the neck ?

I think we must have used all the neck material for the kit. This neck hole is smaller than the arm holes!

The thing that annoys me most about the terrible designs we churn out across the board, is that Bristol is one of the most creative packed cities in the world. There are so many local artists and designers who would deliver a ridiculously high quality work for whatever brief you gave them.

At least he found something worth buying.

I see your SP and raise you a Corinthians. Chosen by the fans, with “It’s the people’s team” written on the neck.

It wasn’t until about a month ago that I knew Bristol Rovers also used the coat of arms. I moved house and the cafe up the road had an old “Esso Football Club Badges Sticker Collection” on display.

The stock image with Splat overlaid.

This perfectly illustrates part of the problem. If the storekeeper had opened the drawer and fetched a squashed robin, I would have said, “That’s not the Bristol City badge”.

Is that why the neck’s so big?

Definitely a lot of thought that went into the Rangers redesign (to be fair, there was a lot that went into ours as well... we simply threw it all away this season). Designed by a lifelong fan. I'm sure it would have been a dream job: https://worldbranddesign.com/rangers-football-club-rebrand-by-see-saw-creative-and-craig-black/

O'neills have got a kit and training gear design tool on their site: https://icreate.oneills.com/soccer-menu-2-stripe.html Someone send JL the link… or not.

Seconds out, round 2… You've got the word Stoke with the O styled to look like Blockhouse park fort. Year of foundation and in the football pattern, middle top you have the silhouette of your spiritual home - Stoke Bar and Grill - represented by that funny configuration of windows that was there underneath the triangular eave. To be honest, I've never been to Plymouth, so this is all based off Google.

Here you go. The red circle "O" with two red stylised "D's" in side to spell ODD. Flipped one of the D's to make a C and added the F. Altogether, it looks like an odd wheel.

He’s a phenomenal manager with success every step of the way. Very clear in what he wants and very decisive in getting rid of those who aren’t pulling in that direction. Celtic’s football has been beautiful to watch the past couple of years. My prediction is he’ll lose the first handful of games as he beds in his style, then deliver great results.

It would be perfect if City and the Bears swapped suppliers.

They delivered this beauty of a third kit for them, replete with tartan sporran shorts…

I’d imagine things went tits up in many unimaginable ways. This likely manifested a scenario where the inability to deliver bespoke kits for the Man City game gave us the opportunity to null and void all contracts immediately, so we took it. Things going tits up was likely very clear a long time before they actually did go tits up. O’Neills was probably being considered as a new supplier early in the tits up process (along with other manufacturers). When things did go tits up, O’Neills offered the best solution at that time, based on the clubs criteria at that time. O’Neills are extremely competent kit manufacturers, but their core area of expertise is in providing kits for more utilitarian/physical sports. The material, design and (lack of) detailing on their kits - largely printing on one core fabric - reflects this. They’re not what is expected of a football kit. No one wants to wear an O’Neills logo. It’s like when your mum bought you an item of school clothing that was technically a good, rational, grown-up choice… but you just knew everyone at school would take the piss out of you for wearing. The sort of situation where you end up with an unwanted nickname for the rest of your life (briefcase w*nker!). The Hummel kits were things of beauty. The manufacturing of these kits, aligned to strong, unique, design concepts were unbelievable (the Ashton Gate 8 kit in particular - woven faces, cotton flags, embossed badges, printed text etc..) Hummel enabled us to create custom kits. I imagine they had the footballing experience and expertise to translate our amateur design babblings into strong, coherent kits. They also had enough size/other clubs to rebuff our more nonsensical suggestions. We’re probably quite a big footballing opportunity for O’Neills. They likely didn’t say no to our more nonsensical suggestions, and have more literally implemented our amateur design babblings (see slightly odd shade of yellow kit with a ten year old’s tracing of a stock image robin for a badge). I actually wonder if us having some degree of creative control is a good thing. The flying robin is not to a professional standard, so it couldn’t have come from anyone but the club. It is atrociously bad. Even worse than the comic-sans inspired typeface on the training kit a few years back. I can say this with professional confidence. Given the situation, the brief for all new kits should have been: “Don’t do anything stupid”. We did lots of stupid things. I’d like to say we’ll learn a lesson from all of this with our next kit manufacturer… but I’ve been a City fan long enough to know that we won’t. Anyway, that’s the way I see it in my currently very drunken state. I’ll likely see it the same way tomorrow when I’m sober, but I’ll be less verbose and just say: “Our kits are ******* terrible”.

Just watched a Scottish Premiership fan forum - one fan content creator representing each team with moderation by a few ex-pros / current TV analysts. The questions posed to/by the Hibs fan were Johnson related and why Hibs are so streaky. Answers… Despite Johnson scraping into the top six (it looks like fifth place will get into Europe this season) and technically meeting his first target, he still has a long way to go to prove himself The appointment of a DOF is a very good thing as recruitment under Johnson has been extensive, erratic and "a disaster" The medical team needs to be looked at because this season, a ridiculously high number of players have been out with muscle injuries (which has led to being streaky, as the team needs to be pieced together by whoever's fit, regardless of the position they play) Sounds very familiar. Slightly unrelated but still on the topic of young managers in Scottish football… ex Bournemouth / Burnley / Hibs player, Marvin Bartley - now in his first managers job at Queen of the South in League One - comes across very well in this interview, if you have time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MuqmgHVbVo I picked up some similarities with LJ on how he approaches management but is much more articulate and impressive in his presentation and I believe he'll make it work. To make an analogy, Marvin Bartley is Neil Godwin from the Swindon office, in comparison to Johnson's David Brent.

Not away, but I’ve been to one game in ten years. It was West Brom on Boxing Day.

Living in Australia, I have to stay awake till an ungodly hour to watch games. Having a young kid means I don’t get much sleep once I do get to bed after the final whistle’s blown. For a good number of years I’ve watched out of blind devotion. It’s been truly horrible. This season, I’ve really enjoyed it. Win, lose or draw - I see a squad I increasingly care about, a squad - and manager - that cares about our club, an emerging style of play (or at least, a desire to play that style) and a bright future. If you had to sit on one side of the fence, have you ENJOYED this season, yes or no? Either way, why?

Slightly related… a little over 20 years ago, in France, I met an Australian guy who was travelling through Europe watching football everywhere he went. He’d recently travelled over from England where he’d been staying with some relatives in a place well off the usual tourist trail. I want to say Scunthorpe but can exactly remember. Anyway, he was telling me how he’d been to a game there and the halftime entertainment of a “wonder dog” was being heavily hyped all day. At half-time, a man in a trench coat came out onto the pitch with a small dog by his side. They walked out to the centre spot, where the man reached into his pocket and pulled out a tennis ball. He held it high above his head, turning to present it to all four sides of the ground. He then threw the tennis ball as hard as he could. The dog ran off, fetched it and brought it back to its owner. The owner lifted the ball high above his head and presented it to the crowd once more before putting it back in his pocket and walking off the pitch. The fans went wild.