As with Karl, I can only apologise for how quiet things have been lately – various reasons have meant that we just haven’t been able to give the site the proper pre-season focus that we would have liked. BUT! Never fear, because in the coming weeks the site will really kick into gear as the season gets underway, and we’ll be talking about our hopes and dreams for the season, and our thoughts on its opening salvos.

But in the meantime… well, I never got round to talking about the European away kit, did I? And I probably should, since – with Standard Liege sporting a red home kit – our boys will probably be wearing it tonight. And, well… I quite like it. But then, anyone who reads F1 Colours will know that I like green – and the much-maligned ‘91-’92 away shirt is probably my favourite LFC kit of all time (not the horrible shiny centenary one that followed it, though. Ugh.). So anything that harkens back to that is, in my books, a Good Thing. Not hugely keen on the navy collar, but apart from that, it’s a solid kit. Better than last year’s, anyway – which, while dramatic and stuff, never quite looked right as an onfield kit (except when El Nino was dancing through the Marseilles defence, of course).

The other thing I’d wanted to pass comment on was squad numbers. It was apparent from pre-season friendlies that Benayoun was going to sacrifice a first-eleven number for his preferred 15 now that Crouch has left (I’d actually predicted last summer that he’d take that, and Crouchy would get #11), and that Emiliano Insua, Damien Plessis and Nabil el Zhar would enhance their first-team credentials by taking numbers 22, 28 and 31 respectively, and so it proved. If I’d not been in Ireland (and, er, been on the ball at any point) I could have posted that and looked all cool and prescient. The other main “promotions” are Jay Spearing (26), Kristzian Nemeth (29) and Stephen Darby (32), all given numbers that suggest they’ll feature regularly on benches and in Carling Cup games. Somewhat surprisingly, Daniel Pacheco doesn’t make the cut just yet, despite impressing in pre-season – clearly Nemeth remains ahead of him in the queue at the moment. I’m not hugely impressed, either (although I’ve liked him on the pitch so far), by new left-back Andrea Dossena taking #2 – that means we now have a left-back wearing 2 and a right-back wearing 3. It’s WRONG, I tell you.

Of the first thirty numbers, then, only #6 and #11 remain available (demonstrating how fucking huge our squad now is compared to, say, Arsenal). The former, of course, is clearly being kept warm for someone who already wears it at his current club (and if he doesn’t sign, then it should be Skrtel’s next year – none of this #37 rubbish, unless he’s a Clerks fan, in which case I love him even more), while #11 is nicely primed for that winger that EVERYONE BUT RAFA KNOWS WE STILL NEED ONE MORE OF. Although that said, it’s clearly Babel’s future number for years to come. You heard it here first.

And now that I’ve bored you all (well, I would have done if we had any readers yet) with that, I’ll bugger off. See you for Standard Liege post-mortem, and/or Exciting Sunderland New Premier League Joy Joy Build Up!

(Seb Patrick)

Okay four reasons for this post.

Number One – Apology.  Who the shitting hell stole the last three weeks? Oh well it’s not like we missed anything important is it.  Oh wait, pre-season.  Oh hold on two new strikers.  NEW £20 million signing.  NEW NUMBER SEVEN!  Oh, and the Barry-saga which was on, off… and as of about half an hour ago back on again.  Thanks MON we knew you always loved us really.  Of course by this time tomorrow he’ll have probably signed for Arsenal, but at the moment it’s looking promising again.  Anyhow, yes – we’ve missed far too much so apologies.

Number Two – We stuffed FOUR past Rangers and I really wanted to use that headline.  Okay it’s only a friendly, but after the mostly reserves outings against lower league teams and middling european sides we’ve now hit pre-season proper.  Today’s performances was impressive. Great to see Torres back in the old routine, positive to see our other new striker, David Ngog, show great confidence for the 2nd goal and also a personal highlight getting to see us in a silver away kit again.

Number Three – To push my last post and it’s stupid amount of tags from the top of our hymn sheet.

Number Four – Barry. Keane. Ngog. Pacheco.  Four potential new names for the first XI.  With the new season now in sight we’ll run through our expectations for each of them for the coming 12 months.  Apart from the one that will probably be staying at Villa/poached by Arsenal/Announcing he’s Shergar’s lovechild (delete as applicable) by the time I’ve finished this sentence.

Karl Eisenhauer

Football Shirt Culture (pretty much the best site out there for collating leaked kit pictures that float around fan forums, bookmark fans) have posted scans of a leaflet that would seem to confirm our new away kit for 08/09 as being a fetching grey and red number…

EDIT 19.06.08 – The kit is now available to pre-order, with some proper pictures now up, in the online shop.

Pictures of the kit were first leaked onto the net a few months back, around the same time as pictures of the home kit started to show up. The number and quality of pictures already out there suggested that the kit was indeed genuine – particularly when the veracity of the home kit pics was confirmed – but this is the first time any official club documentation (in this case, a card sent out to season ticket holders) has featured it.

At the time of those initial leaks, I was quite pleased by the idea of a grey kit – it immediately harkens back to the classic late ’80s Candy strips, which of course were the away colours the last time we won the title. One concern I had about the shirt was that the white Carlsberg logo looked wrong, and I hoped that before the official launch it would be changed to red or green. Sadly, this hasn’t proved to be the case, and it looks rather out of place on an otherwise smart shirt :

The checkerboard detail takes some getting used to, but also goes some way towards making the kit look distinctive. Note also the collar detail – I like how the adidas stripes run into it and it then goes around the back of the neck. All in all, it’s a decent kit – a vast improvement on last year’s – and despite that poor sponsor logo colour choice, it feels very “Liverpool”, and I’m certainly still interested in buying it. Even better, though, is the away goalie kit :

It’s green! Proper, goalkeeper green! A simple green shirt with white adidas stripes and big thick cuffs! I’ve wanted us to have a GK shirt like this for years! It’s a total Bruce Grobbelaar-era effort! My only problem with it is that it should clearly be the home shirt, and the black AC Milan-style effort used as the away version. Nevertheless, this has leapt to the top of my “want” list immediately. All in all, I think the four kits so far (with a European away shirt still to be officially announced or unveiled, but supposedly it’s dark green with a navy/black collar) are the strongest set of strips we’ve had in years, even better than adidas’ first season back. Long may this sort of thing continue!

Seb Patrick