Strip-tease

The close season is a dull time for a football fan. Saturdays drift by aimlessly, and it's only around now, with the minor consolation of pre-season friendlies getting underway, that there's any relief from an otherwise dreadful summer of drizzle, golf and the Women's World Cup.

The only thing that's kept me going is the steady stream of new kits being revealed, something I've kept on top of thanks to Football-Shirts.co.uk. Now, the issue of new home, away, 3rd, and sometimes even 4th (not to mention European home and away) kits being replaced every season is a rant in itself, and one I won't get into for now.

Because I wanted to focus on the kits themselves. If you sift through the standard, bland and oft-recycled Nike and Adidas templates, and try to kid yourself that Umbro's featureless 'Tailored' range isn't just them running out of ideas rather than the PR excuse of wanting to celebrate [insert team name here]'s proud heritage, there's actually some cracking designs knocking around.



Wycombe's offering, in particular, is a belter, as Kappa show that you can actually do something interesting with a fairly restricting template of two-tone blue quarters, with their wobbly (and, let's be honest, comedy breasts lookalike) chest panels giving the shirt an nice little feature. That said, it does suffer from the age-old Kappa issues of a sponsor that's far too high, and those damn shoulder logos.

But where's the fun in looking at nice shirts? Like a club just before closing time, there's some absolute munters hanging around trying desperately to grab somebody's attention. And what better place to start than at the top of club football?



Grim. I've seen someone wearing this shirt around town (Preston must have a fledgling Catalan population) and it looks just as bad in real life. I can appreciate that Nike want to do something interesting and different with one of its biggest clients, but this? Really? When have asymmetrical stripes EVER looked good? In fact, I'm reminded of this:



Still, it could be worse. You could be a Gillingham fan, stuck with wearing this. At least it's only a third shirt, so hopefully for Gills' sake they won't have to look at it too often. And just in case you were wondering, the shorts are pink, too.

But before I go, spare a thought for goalkeepers. You'd think they'd be fairly safe from the atrocities afflicting their outfield team-mates, after all, shouldn't they just be stuck in a plain green shirt and left to it? Not if you're the England goalkeeper!



This is, quite possibly, the worst kit of any sort I've seen since, well, England's away goalkeeper kit from Euro 96. What, you don't remember? Well let me refresh your memory...



It looks like a parrot was sick on a rainbow. I remember laughing about this kit when I was 8 in the playground. It was even worse when it was what Seaman was wearing in that heart-wrenching shooting against the Germans. And now that memory has made me cry, I think it's an appropriate time to go.

But hang on. How can I possibly write a blog about bad football shirts, and even go so far as to mention goalkeepers, without this fella getting in on the action. Jorge Campos, we at Half Time Oranges salute you!

Remember when Arsenal...

...were solid at the back? Usually I like to use that question as a joke regarding a team or player out of form (eg. remember when Wolves could keep a clean sheet, remember when Torres was good), but Arsenal being shakier than a jelly on a washing machine has been an issue for much too long to be a mere blip.

They've had the odd decent defender in recent years, but the real focus of their instability has been between the sticks. Arsene Wenger has been their manager since September 1996, and in those 14 and a half years I honestly can't name a single genuinely dependable goalkeeper they've signed.

Seaman was already part of the furniture when Arsene rolled in with his comedy specs, as were the indisputably sound back four of Dixon, Adams, Keown and Winterburn. It should have been a simple job for the foul-blind Frenchman to build on that and create a long-term dependable brick wall of a defence.

Fair enough for Wenger to have tried out a few understudies to see if one could be built up while Seaman held down the first team duties, but repeated failures such as Alex Manninger, John Lukic, Stuart Taylor, Richard Wright and Rami Shaaban meant that when Seaman left the club in 2003, Wenger needed to buy an expensive world class replacement immediately.

Mart Poom. Played for Arsenal once. Wasn't great.

Instead, Arsene decided that Seaman should be replaced with Jens Lehmann, who had proven himself to be not good enough to keep the geriatric Oliver Kahn out of the German team, and hilariously error-prone at such mediocre-to-decent outfits as Borussia Dortmund and Schalke (respectively after and before they became Champions League forces)

After Jens went all Harald Schumacher on Samuel Eto'o in the Champions League final, he was eventually shuffled aside for the circus sideshow known to most as Manuel Almunia. When even Arsene's untrained eyes saw he was simply a bleached blonde mullet and four randomly flailing limbs, Arsene panicked again, and has tried and failed to bring Lukas Fabianski and Wociejhjshs Kenny Chesney into the team.

Meanwhile the defence has slipped as well. As I alluded to earlier, there have been some quality defenders such as Kolo Toure, Ashley Cole or Sol Campbell, but they're the few idyllic islands in a sea of Pascal Cygans and Oleg Luzhnys. One has to wonder if Wenger's lost his touch, and simply wanders aimlessly around the transfer market nowadays with a few million in his pocket looking for cheap young Franco-Africans. After all, if it worked once...

Arsene undeniably has an incredible eye for a bargain (£500,000 for Anelka and Fabregas are up there with the best ever buys), but it would appear the man has no idea how to find a good goalkeeper. It must be incredibly frustrating for Gooners to see the club linked with people like Sebastian Frey, Igor Akinfeev and Maarten Stekelenburg every single transfer window, and be stuck with the same inept clowns. And until they can find themselves a dependable shot-stopper, I struggle to see how they can mount a sustained title challenge.