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The Kit Debate

By on January 15, 2010

I’m sure most of you saw an article on Sport.co.uk claiming Arsenal “could remove their trademark white sleeves from their home kit as they celebrate the 125th anniversary of the club in 2011 by replicating shirts worn by the club’s founding fathers.” With not much going on news-wise ahead of the Bolton match, except, of course, Cesc’s return from injury, I figured I would take this pre-match Friday to gauge my readers’ opinions on the kits…

Those who know me, know that I am a somewhat obsessive Arsenal kit collector. Having watched the club since 1997, it is my goal to acquire every kit the club has worn since I started following them-with Bergkamp 10 on the back of all the home kits. My collection currently numbers 23 kits and I am a little more than a half-dozen or so away from completing it. Needless to say, my wife isn’t too pleased that half of my closet is red and white. She also doesn’t understand how my 3-year old has become infected with Gooner-itis and has started his own kit collection.

Personally, I am a hard-core traditionalist when it comes to football and Arsenal. I like our home kits to have white sleeves and our away kits to be blue and yellow. Arsenal and Nike’s kit experiments in recent years have not sat well with me. Though, to be honest, I have eventually gotten used to the kits. The win in Milan certainly helped me get used to the white away kit from 2007-08.

But when it comes to home kits, I really wish the club would push Nike to keep it simple. Red body, white sleeves, and I like when the kit is ringed like the old ’71 kit. Since I’ve been watching the club, my favorite has been the ’98-’99 home kit,  but I wish the club would stick with something more like our 2006-08 home kit. At first, I wasn’t too sure about the gold stripes, but for the first time in a long while, the home kit was right besides that and I even began to like the gold stripes and see them as a touch of class. Like many, I wasn’t very happy with the new home kit. There’s just not enough white to it, but I have come to accept it.

But, as for the possibility of a new anniversary kit, I’d rather not see another experiment like 2005-06. Don’t get me wrong, I ended up really liking the redcurrant kit, but I would much rather see the club celebrate it’s entire history on such an anniversary by going back to the standard type of Arsenal kit. What about you guys? What kind of kit would you like to see Arsenal wear for the club’s 125th anniversary in 2011?

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