Top Ten

'You're shirt, and you know you are!'

First, a word on Newcastle United's shocking away strip, and the thinking I believe is behind it. It seems to me the designers and manufacturers have sat down together with one end game: how to humiliate the already shattered souls of Newcastle United's faithful even further than the piss-poor form of their relegated club did last season. And they have succeeded.

The custard-and-cream kit is an assault both on macho Geordie values, and a departure from what we have heretofore known as The Football Kit. The colours are more suited to a spring flower -  pansy, say - than a sporting franchise. The last place I saw these shades actually chosen outside nature was on a roll of perfumed lavatory paper called Caress. And let's not forget that a Geordie loves a football shirt, and is seldom seen out of one.

Newcastle's away fixture at West Brom next season will see the stands of The Hawthorns looking like the banks of a Cotswold's meadow during first flower. Shameful and, I think, quite vindictive.

Other hideous away strips:

Coventry 1978

Ah, brown. Brown on a football shirt. A brave move - perhaps Jimmy Hill, always an innovator, thought he could save money on Surf and hot water by not washing the Coventry away kit after particularly muddy fixtures. Terry Yorath faced the further indignity of having to turn out in the Wales kit of the era, which was of similar design, but red. A shitty kit.

Chelsea 2008

This is horrid: it brings to mind the garish fluoros of tennis balls and Lidl sale posters. Cheap, aggressive, hard on the eye. The two opposing shoulder stripes remind me of two pecking pterodactyls frantically trying to escape from an electric yolk.

Aston Villa 1994

It's Christmas isn't it? The green of the tree, the holly and the ivy. The red of the cranberry sauce and the candy canes, and the black of the souls, tormented after another year spending money on things they never needed. What on Earth these colours are doing on a football kit is anybody's guess.

Oldham 2009

A clumsy attempt by our northern friends to emulate the great Italian side Palermo, but with none of that team's panache or eye for detail. Where Palermo use Tea Rose Pink, Oldham opt for the violent assault of a Hot Magenta - bordering on the crime of Fuchsia. I'd follow the games when this is rolled out on radio.

Arsenal 1991

How extraordinary: it's Op Art set against a canvas of grass. This is schizophrenic, shouting in one voice: "I want to explore the dynamism of sight and produce a disorienting effect on the eye." While the other mouth yells: "Nice one Cyril, nice one son, nice one Cyril, let's have another one!" I enjoy it.

Scotland 1999

Ah, at last: a shirt which takes into account the heritage of a club, and works those ideas into a coherent whole. So: the burnt orange of Irn Bru coupled with the purple of the blooming heather. All held together on what looks to be a plastic non-breathable material. Will I go, lassie go? I will.

Chelsea 1995

This is what happens when you don't control your anal instincts. If you look carefully you can see the initial idea: a grey flannel effect, solid, dull and dependable as an 'Ad Marketing Exec.' This seemed too staid, so the flat efect was panelled. Still yawn-inducing. That's when the Fanta orange was introduced. The pudding, alas, now over-egged.

Man Utd 1996

The first attempt at an 'invisible' movement in football shirts, and one which worked, but only for a few brief seconds. One minute, Giggsy is there, the next he is gone: blended into the advertising hoardings like a pointless mobile phone logo. Alas, once the shirts re-appeared the game was lost, the moment gone, a movement forgotten.

Derby County 2000

Are you familiar with Jay Stevens' seminal Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream? No? You should check it out. It documents the endless quest, in many, to find a spiritual utopia through the use of mind-altering drugs. This quest, alas, will not end on a rainy day at Pride Park with a side looking like they have found a job lot of Global Hyper heat-sensitive shirts from the early heyday of Acid House.

Sheffield Wednesday 2000

Goalkeepers used to wear solid green. It worked. Nobody should have trifled with it. This attempt at the new school to make the old school look old school is really very old school and the new school should try a lot harder to be more old school in the quest to be new school.