Alex Steine
So my little consumers, how does the 'New Home Shirt' unveiling production grab you? By the throat is a sensible answer, I expect. The Online Gooners may insist that they shall never buy, displaying a defiant mentality in the mode of, 'Fill up the walls with our English dead!', yet no doubt this season many others will. The more balanced, longer in the tooth, and more cynical will shake their heads at the very suggestion, but others will undermine any imagined protest. We all know this. Whether it will continue is another matter. Changing a shirt style every year is a scamming, sales ploy, despite business insistencies to the contrary; it is to milk that poor little rich boy/girl - 'the fan', but a tail - off is easily predicted. Perhaps the strategy is, 'hit them in the first year of change, check out the figures, probably hit them again, recheck and if it becomes a case of not clawing back enough have a respite for a season then lay it on them in a new assault - or will they just go for the 'burn'? The hard money is on the latter; I am quite certain every sales and marketing base has been covered though, so just more of the same every season, I suppose. Changing the design annually would be a calculated gamble at any time; then all business projects are, still the current climate makes for a higher level of uncertainty, but we shan't spare any sympathetic considerations for Puma, shall we? Then perhaps Arsenal PLC deserve the same dismissal too?
How complicit are we as individuals? We are all caught up in the same spider's web, but grabbing for the sweets in the jar and running from the sweet shop, intent on not paying, isn't an option. There is no such thing as a free lunch - you always pay in the end - for females that has often been their fate, but enough of sexual repayment terms. You 'dance with the devil', and all that. If the club take the huge payment from a kit supplier, a global giant, they give up sovereignty. You cannot chop down the giant's beanstalk if the villagers are committed to protecting it! One interesting aspect is that the Arsenal poster on a website, who may align himself with another in critical terms, are at loggerheads and oppose each other in a subtle and tacit fashion, one they probably don't even recognise, and would baulk at that very idea. Yet if pointed out it would make an undeniable challenge to their conceived positions. As an example both might criticise current players as not good enough to 'win'. This fragile personal desire - to be a winner - is a considered opinion with much validity on many occasions. Yet here the twain. One distances himself from the club and it's current personnel with mock magnanimity and a pretence of higher standards, not accepting the globalisation of a football club once regarded as their own, citing a possible pursuance of other interests, whilst the other criticises those same players and/or manager demanding superior talent in it's place. This may not be done openly but it is by suggestion. i.e Many other players are better, (usually very pricey - as with potential managers), players of yesterday were better, then the systematic assassination of individual players of today, highlighting their frailties, personality flaws and then perhaps even the toothpaste brand they buy. All leading to an unstated inference that we should buy to replace, yet quite happily ignoring the money it requires, or it's acquirement. Two critics, one of the nemesis of commercialisation, and that the club has sold out, the other amigo skips lightly along in step, but then proclaims his tacit support of the status quo by demanding improvement, paid for by that filthy lucre, the blood money that comes in part in the guise of Sponsorship fees.
Returning to the subject of the shirt, I share with most traditionalists, a desire for a red home shirt, with it's customary white sleeves - those white sleeves are vital. Now given that, which is a very narrow remit, how many variations are there? This concerns me. The changes are likely to become ever more ridiculous. Red and white alternate blocks of colour on those very sleeves? Red sleeves with white stripes, both broad or narrow. Red top of the body, and white lower half of the shirt? The idea that the land of Disney oversees the design is a real threat in my opinion. The cockneys had it about right when they called them Dicky Dirts, 'dirt' being the operative word in this instance. My final gripe on the shirt front, (sorry about that), is that last season's home shirt really worked with me, and all too soon it's gone. As stated earlier in this article, I am a traditionalist, but one with one eye glancing over my shoulder at the past, and one peering ahead into the future. It's why I get strange looks from the fairer sex when I implement my imagined Harrison Ford cross-eyed look. So we happen upon a perceived good design and it's whisked away. The new one isn't bad either, but this I think is mainly due to its similarity with the last one. Next season's concerns me.
Widening the scope of this theme, if it is accepted that we are complicit in the money - spinning changes we see all around us by taking the 'King's shilling' - those money spinners which we denigrate openly - what else are we consciously, or even subconsciously responsible for? We bemoan the pundits and sly agendas of the satellite companies, whilst buying the product, and watching matches. We grumble about the idiocy of 'Talk' radio, and tune in. Wider still? We moan about too much traffic as we struggle to park our car. The cost of living and price of commodities is a sore point, yet we celebrate a wage or salary increase, so that we can push those prices even higher. Decry the violence in our society and suggest our laws are not draconian enough, and we should fight might with a stronger dose of the same. All things are inextricably linked - and in a way govern our lives.
There is a name given for the balance of the earth, Gaia. Referred to in human/godlike terms, it effectively pursues the sound reasoning that we are all involved in the environment of the planet - all linked - in its protection, and sadly its destruction. All of life's threads are connected, and have an impact, even a nominal one. Without taking a measured look at what, where, and why we allow and accept changes, or reject them, it reduces our claim to what is right. So who is responsible for this shirt-changing nonsense? I put it to you, perhaps we all are in a small way. However, in time-honoured keeping with the zeitgeist of the day, if some of the money gleaned from the design contract is spent on that new, specific player we crave, and he joins us, we might just turn a blind eye. You can put your shirt on that one!
Hot off the press the second strip is unveiled, and guess what? Oh, no! The new yellow strip is cloned from last season's kit too. Well, if this becomes the template for each successive 'new design', then it proffers the following, the alterations will not be too dramatic season upon season, however each will be just a slightly nuanced version of the previous. Roughly translated it suggests not a dramatic distancing from the generally accepted shirt style, but on the down side, you get basically the same kit for your money - approaching one hundred notes for a slight variance. The other day in Sports Direct the two home shirts were displayed together. Fifty pounds for the newer, twenty eight pounds for the older. To the untrained eye they were almost alike, marginal differences only, yet a price differential of almost one hundred per cent. That old beat group of Arsenal fans The Kinks, who sang so long ago without realising that their lyrics might have resonance with so many modern football fans, we have perhaps become, '...dedicated followers of fashion!'
