With fans given a preview of the new QPR home shirt today LofftforWords let our kit expert Ash loose on the new design, and it's fair to say he wasn't overly impressed.
As many of you already know from my posts on the message board and previous articles, I’m a bit of a kit geek. So I could hardly contain my excitement yesterday, as news broke late in the afternoon of the unveiling of QPR’s home shirt for the 2010/11 season. Having already seen an array of kit designs for next season steadily start to appear for teams in the last month, I eagerly awaited the full reveal of what Lotto had done for their third attempt at a Rangers home shirt.
Much like last year, when the current strip was first revealed with a snippet shot in the season ticket brochure, I spent most of last night staring at the image of Buzz (slightly unhealthy way to spend time) on the official website that showed a sneak peak of the design. Much had already been said on the pic, just minutes after it appeared on the site, as I and many others wondered what delicious treats laid below Akos’ very white shoulders. How many hoops would it have? Two? One? Unthinkably none? Was Gulf Air still the sponsor? And was the rumour of the return of red piping really true?
Well at around, eleven o’clock this morning we got our answers as Buzsaky showed the kit off in all its glory alongside an interview with new chairman Ishan Saksena on the Evening Standard website. And my reaction? Well, the good people at Lotto may want to stop reading now.
Let’s be honest it’s a mess. I have never quite taken to Lotto as our kit supplier since their arrival under Briatore, from the rushed all too blue shirt in the first season to the current shirt that’s far too white and has annoying badge positions - but this new creation for 2010/11 really does takes the biscuit.
However I’ll start with what I do like, as that won’t take up too much of your time if you haven’t already stopped reading and mouthing “Ok mate, it’s only a kit”. It is good to see the return of the red piping to the shirt. It’s a general consensus that Rangers best ever kit was the ‘Guinness kit’ of the mid-eighties that also featured the same red in addition to the traditional blue and white colour scheme, so it brings a much needed retro feel to the shirt. It also distinguishes it from the past designs for those not so obsessed with every detail of the kit. I’m also really pleased to see the badge (if not the actual badge) return to its rightful place over to the right. I have never been a fan of putting the crest centrally on the shirt, as to me it looks unbalanced and means there is far too much space around it and the suppliers logo. Equally I like the look of the new collar, I for one wouldn’t mind seeing a polo neck style design as we haven’t had one since the 2001 JD Sports kit but nevertheless I like the comfortable look and cut on the new design along with the two colours. And I suppose the blue flashes across the arms are ok, but short of those few things the negatives that are set to follow far outweigh the positives of this new design.
Firstly, and most obviously where are the hoops? Has no one at Lotto noticed that we start every home game by chanting ‘C’mon you Super HOOPS!’ or that for the whole of this campaign the match day programme has been highlighting the fact that it’s been fifty years since QPR have been playing in hooped shirts! So what do they do? Give us a sparkly new shirt that looks like it only features ONE hoop and a stripe across the middle that doesn’t even go around the shirt. Not only does that neglect one of the things that makes our strip so distinctive, but by having just the one (or possibly two once the shirt is un-tucked) hoops it makes the shirt look like it doesn’t quite fit together . It’s like they’ve put bits of all the designs that they came up with and randomly put them together in three different parts. And the only thing that actually seems to match-up is the colours, thus making the shirt an utter mess. And why is the whole first half the shirt pretty much white? Ok the sleeves have a small line of blue on them but again like this year’s design it’s too white.
I long for the days where the hoops continued across the sleeves or became a separate hooped pattern. What I do fear too, and could be a reason why the middle hoop doesn’t go all the way around, is the back of this shirt may well be blank to accommodate the players name and numbers to appease the FA. Who prefer to not have any stripes/hoops interfering with this post Premier League marketing ploy. That’s despite the fact that we have always had readable names on hooped shirts since the squad numbers were introduced in the mid-nineties.
Then there’s those bloody Lotto logo’s on the arms that I hate from this seasons shirt. I get it, Lotto make the kit and want to get their pennyworths, but we already have the logo where it’s supposed to be, so what need is there to have one on each arm as well. How much nicer and cleaner would the shirt look without them on it? Especially when you add the Championship badges on the arms, you get too big blocks of red to add to the mess that this new shirt already is. The socks too also look odd, either make them all white/all blue with some small trimming or my preference hooped. Not a mixture of the three which the boffins at Lotto seemed to have come-up with. I could go on, why does the badge look like it’s been sewn on like a boy scouts badge instead of just putting straight on the shirt and what’s happened to Gulf Air’s logo? In three kits it’s got progressively worse and now looks like it’s in a font from Microsoft Word 95.
It’s ironic that only days before this reveal there was a thread on the message board discussing fans first ever shirts, that bought up thoughts on what we hope to see for this new shirt. Some even citing examples from the excellent True Colours website to demonstrate which kits they’d like to see repeated. Not one of them came close to what we are wearing this season, and surely shows that it’s time to give fans more an input into what we’d like to see. After all ,we are ones that will be forking out forty old quid on the things. Some have suggested we go back to the days when fans got to vote on what kit they’d like to see, something Crystal Palace and AFC Wimbledon have done for their new kits and at least then it would give Lotto and the club more of an understanding of what we want. Lotto needs to realise we long for more tradition, and while I applaud the inclusion of red piping I’d ask them to look at the Man City kit for this season or the new Man Utd shirt that was leaked this week. They are simple but stylish and with a sense of nostalgia, not an over thought messy design that looks like a mesh-up of our current kit and the 2006 Car Giant kit.
I now await with bated breath, the away shirt for next year. I’ve heard rumours that it could be black and red quarters which would be an interesting twist, while there’s also some reports of a new version of the Dennis the Menace kit. While I love that kit, it be nice to have a break from it and I’d like to see what a quartered design would come out like. I agreed with many on the board that it would be amazing to see a updated version of the ‘Feyenoord kit’ from the 1976 season but I fear the white would be too close to the home shirt. While I’m also always open to something random like the 1996 navy piping shirt or even the florescent Ericsson kit of 1999. For now though the guessing game will continue and I think the most we can hope for is something better then the disappointment of today’s new shirt.
To check out the full extent of QPR’s recent kit history click here.