New Arsenal home kit and Adidas: The Perfect Meh

The new Gunners strip leaves me cold, as does a lack of creativity, IT issues and a broken laptop. But the good news is I made it to Lord's

I'm writing this sat in the Media Centre at Lord's. It’s a gloriously sunny day. There’s not a cloud in the sky here in NW8.

My beloved Middlesex CCC are hosting Kent Spitfires in the T20. The visitors won the toss and are about to bat in front of a Friday night crowd thirsty for action. And beer.

Can I just say I love Lord's. For a cricket lover, or a sports lover full stop, it is truly a magical place.

From the terrocatta hues of the evocative Edwardian pavillion opposite the media centre (nicknamed ‘Cherrie Blair's smile’ when it was first built), to the Old Father Time weather vane, to the flowing architecture of the sail shaped roof on the Mound Stand, everything about the place is utterly majestic.

I have seen many cricketing greats of the last four decades here, from Viv Richards and David Gower, to Brian Lara and Sachin Tendulkar, with plenty in between.

For all the challenges this compelling sport faces, not least the fact that from next week there will be four different formats, cricket is a wonderful game, that enriches and enhances anyone who comes into contact with it.

And while I still prefer its longer forms, Test cricket and the county game, a day (or night) at the cricket still gives me as much of a thrill as it did when I first saw Sir Viv bat for Somerset against my beloved Middlesex all those years ago, back in the long-lost summer of 1985.

We apologise for technical issues

FYI: I wrote the words below, this morning…

I should be happy. But I’m not. My laptop is currently dead.

It’s completely my fault of course. That’s what happens when you knock over a scalding mug of tea onto your link with the world, thereby breaking it in the process.

I could actually hear it drowning, gurgling and burbling as if it were the last passenger on the Titanic before it slipped below. Deep, down below. So deep in fact it will cost me £400 to fix. Which is nice.

As anyone who knows me will attest, I hate admin and I hate using technology that is not familiar to me.

I live for the enjoyment the creativity of writing, journalism and being an author brings me, not least because I spent so long not doing what I really wanted to do before I made the leap.

For me, the creative process and the enjoyment I gain from it is everything to me in my working life.

Which is one reason I can't stand unoriginal work, whether it be in writing or design, illustration or painting.

New kit? Meh…

Unfortunately, the new Arsenal home kit released on Friday morning by adidas falls into that category.

It's not that it's a bad kit.

Certainly not by the appallingly low standards Puma set, before exiting with applause ringing in their ears. Why applause? Well, as the old Oscar Wilde line goes: ‘Some people bring joy when they enter a room. Others when they leave it.’

So when adidas took over the kit contract last year they produced a crowd pleaser that somehow managed to unite a fractured fan base with their first effort.

Unfortunately, their home follow up, like that difficult second album, proved far more of a disappointment.

It's not that it's bad, more that it's, well, like a lot of things in and around Arsenal at the moment, just a bit average.

There's not much creativity in the shirt.

It's not a kit it's an identikit.

I wrote on Twitter there were shades of Ajax in it, hoping for the Rinus Michaels or Stefan Kovacic vintages rather than the shambles that allowed that lot from N17 to reach the Champions League final two years ago.

I also saw echoes of the club's 1983-84 version, albeit with Aubameyang sporting it instead of um, Charlie Nicholas.

But this is no 1980s revival. It's just bang average. Though to be fair the Gunners were too, for parts of that decade, so maybe there is a nod to the years that style forgot more than we realise.

Just to be clear, I'm not a fan of anything but red and white on an Arsenap home kit.

So, to see blue on the shoulders annoyed me.

As did the lack of a white trim on the collar area. For anyone who cares not a jot about this, I disagree. It's all in the detail.

Adherence to tradition means something. To toss off a bang average effort smacks of lazy unoriginality, like a child hurrying their homework just to get it done. Even if it lacked, care and attention, detail and well, love.

If you can't do something properly then don't do it at all.

Reasons to be cheerful

Which brings me to our wonderful Gooner Fanzine readers.

Sans laptop and unable to write much due to IT issues, I was a bit grumpy on Twitter this morning. Only a bit mind, but people do pick up on it.

Until someone kindly pointed out that I should cheer up a little.

Or in Twitter speak by a random punter telling me off. STOP BEING SO TOXIC was the phrase I was assailed with, simply by offering an opinion on Arsenal matters.

It did make me think.

So, like any good journalist, I flipped the story around and put out an appeal for Gooner readers to send me 400 words on the topic: Five Reasons To Be Cheerful.

Well, the response not only proved to me once again that, used properly Twitter can be a Good Thing, but also underlined that all genuine football fans have irony and wit running through them like a stick of Blackpool rock.

We published the best ones this afternoon. Or rather, Dan Mountney did after I proof read them, because, as I may have mentioned earlier, I killed my laptop.

I would link them here, but as I'm writing this on my phone, while trying to cover Kent's explosive batting here at Lord's, I can't quite work out how to do that. But then I suppose you had guessed that by now.

Anyway, life is good, the sun is shining and I'm watching cricket.

Which is far more exciting than Arsenal's new home kit…

Cheers

@laythy29