Let me outline a kit design fanatic's descent into insanity - assuming, of course, that insanity is not a prerequisite.  First he'll tell you that football fans should have greater input into their teams' kits, via kit design competitions and votes.  Then he'll backtrack, saying kit manufacturers have listened and learnt and we should leave them to it.  Next he'll qualify that assertion, suggesting some fantasy and amateur kit designers are the peers of the professionals.  Finally, as the straight jacket is fastened, he'll scream that amateur kit design leads the way in ingenuity, sartorial restraint and respect for tradition and is now superior to the efforts emanating from Nike, adidas, Puma et al.

The recent evidence gives this opinion some credence.  The Middlesbrough Futsal Club competition (mark II) shows that, when it counts - such an occasion can be defined by a trip to Italy being on offer - DesignFootball.com's members pull out all the stops to produce kits with originality and inspiration the like of which is often lacking from major releases.  The trite exclamation that a five minute Football Manager mockup posted on a club's fan forum is "better than this season's top!" has long been surpassed by far more genuine reactions to far more elaborately and thoughtfully constructed works of genius.  Five years ago no one really would have followed through on their risk-free empty promise that they'd "buy it if they released it!" but now it's accompanied with a yearning for it to come to pass - and is more likely than ever to do just that.

About a year ago I wrote an article congratulating the football kit design industry.  They had, in my mind, reached a point where we no longer needed to scream at them what we wanted in a kit, no longer needed to plead with them that they treat our club or country's colours with respect.  They had listened and learnt.

That was, as history will clearly show, a sweeping generalisation.  I stand by the sentiment - I believe the last 18 months or so's higher profile kits to be, on average, the best ever - but the professionals still occasionally fall short.  Most importantly, I never wanted to give the impression that DesignFootball.com's members were p*ssing in the wind by having a go themselves.  I might claim to be abandoning "the desire to see football fans involved in the design process, either by way of consultation, kit votes or simply allowing the fans to design the kits themselves in competitions" but in this I refer to everyday schlubs which have an opinion on everything and an answer to nothing.  They have had their say and it's been duly noted.  DF's members are a class apart.

So that's that.  An eclectic year in the world of football design packed full of ample good, bad and ugly.  A year when football design intertwined with some of the biggest news stories to ensure 2012 would leave thousands of brightly-attired images indelibly printed on our memories.  Let's take a look back...

The London 2012 Olympics

As cliché'd as it is to bring it up, London 2012 nailed it in oh so many ways, not least with Stella McCartney's football kit (well, the shirt - the shorts and socks were stripelessly lame).  Both the men's and women's Team GBs went out of their competitions with a whimper after encouraging starts but their shirts, in keeping with the stylish adidas outfits of the other athletes, were a breath of fresh air that will be looked back on with fondness.  If only McCartney had been tasked with designing the England kit.

And so it's that foreboding time again, when we knock years off our life expectancy traipsing around shops and jumping from website to website desperately attempting to locate gifts for our nearest and dearest that will satisfy them, avoid us losing face whilst also maintaining whatever degree of solvency we hold in this current financial gloom.

I realise not everyone celebrates Christmas, and not everyone will be buying gifts during this period, but I will, and this is my blog, so please indulge me.  Besides, for those who are in a similar position to me, it's tricky, and I'm here to help...

Now, an ideal Christmas present, you'd think, from a football design point of view, would be a football shirt.  Sadly, this isn't necessarily the case.  The marketing geniuses that run football clubs' merchandising wings have an unhelpful knack of allowing several sizes of most popular new shirts to go out of stock by mid-September.  So whilst I'm sure I'll compile my kits of the 2012-13 season at some point, that won't really help us as you can't get hold of them.

Goalkeepers - a different breed.  This goes for custodians and their wont of individuality in the attire they take to the field.  We all will reference Jorge Campos' day-glo oversized kits of the mid-nineties and Fabien Barthez, the wannabe outfielder, bringing short-sleeved goalkeeper shirts to the Premier League - despite Peter Schmeichel having already eschewed forearm coverage for the same club previously - but the evolution has taken several twists and turns over the last few years.

If we travel back half a century, goalkeeper shirts were generally functional and seldom evoked the personality of the footballer inside.  The colour distinguished the player from his outfield teammates, like the blue blood rather than the subjects' red running through the veins of the British royal family, in order to indicate that this person lived by a different set of rules.  Shorts and socks could match the rest of the team, as below the waist a goalkeeper was akin to anyone else, but when the sleeves came into play these needed to be easily noticeable as legally handling in the box.

Lev Yashin wore a black shirt, for the USSR, which became iconic through the wearer's exploits, and Peter Shilton added a stitched number 1 to his green shirt - inspiring Brian Clough's legendary green jumper as he was the "one number 1 around here" - at a time when any further identification had generally been deemed unnecessary.  Aside from this there was a landscape of green - and yellow internationally - with few exceptions.

Contrast this with the spectacular - often horrendous - designs of the nineties.  The no-holds-barred assaults on the eyes of opposing strikers gave us some of the most gaudy designs we've ever seen on a football pitch.  Schmeichel modelled plenty of shocking styles with great success for Manchester United and Denmark.

The other option was to kit out goalkeepers in a design derived - with extra padding - from the strip his teammates would be wearing outfield.  Both approaches continued into the last decade, evolving - perhaps denoting the increasing football ability of goalkeepers instigated by the backpass rule of 1992 - into 'keepers wearing shirts and kits bearing the hallmarks of intended outfield kits.  Padding seemed to be phased out and the goalkeeper shirt was often provided by a change shirt not that day in use.

Outfield teamwear also featured.  One of the most famous goalkeeper shirts of all time is now Iker Casillas' black and yellow number worn when lifting the Henri Delaunary trophy in 2008.  Rather than being a bespoke goalkeeper shirt - like Luis Arconada's worn by Casillas' deputy Andrés Palop when celebrating that triumph - it was a year old adidas Golpe outfield teamwear template.

Euro 2008 came at the end of a season when Olympique de Marseille's Steve Mandanda had worn the Golpe design, as well as following Gianluigi Buffon's lead by turning out in an alternative kit from the outfield wardrobe, and the favour was even returned by his teammates wearing the shorts and socks of an intended goalkeeper kit to avoid a clash against Strasbourg.

Confirming beyond all doubt that there was little, if anything, to differentiate outfield kits from goalkeeper kits in terms of functionality, in 2009-10 Hibernian announced a few weeks into the season that their all black goalkeeper kit would be doubling up as a Third kit, and was consequently marketed and sold as such.

It's an idea that should be embraced - as I have predicted and implored - by England and Umbro, with the enormously popular all red goalkeeper kit.  England already missed the opportunity to wear the recent yellow and white goalkeeper kit outfield - which would have worked as a clever nod to meetings with Czechoslovakia, Poland and Italy in 1973 - and, before Nike take over, the red England kit deserves to take up its rightful place on the pitch.  Umbro do England goalkeeper kits well - as the Away and Home change attest too - but the people have spoken (not convinced?  Apply a ctrl F search for "away" to this page).

However, goalkeeper kits now appear to be regressing to the identifiably functional and specific creations of yore.  They may still contain the moisture-wicking and temperature regulating technology of their outfield counterparts but they are now often unmistakenably made to be worn by the last line of defence.  One current fashion, from both adidas and Nike, seems to be designing goalkeeper shirts with lower arms a different colour to the upper - with the potential to confound referees already struggling to enforce rules on baselayers when short sleeves are employed.

So goalkeepers have their own style back.  Padding seems to be experiencing a resurgence, Uhlsport gloves have bright red fronts - risking the overused "he caught it red handed" pun - and, as the winner of a recent DF competition foretells, the louder patterns of the nineties may be commonplace again soon.  It will be sad to see the end of derivative styles such as the red France marinière goalkeeper shirt - based on the Away shirt of the time - but the characters which follow the lineage of individualists like warpaint-wearing Rüştü Reçber and Spider-man-masked Jérémie Janot will stand out like their personalities scream that they should.

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Over recent weeks football kit manufacturers - particularly Warrior and Under Armour - have been taking flak over their choice of their clubs' change kit colours.  If we're honest, grumbles are consistently heard whenever new kits are released, a major objection being that the three kits over a season do not offer enough protection against the dreaded "clash", but the two new-kids-on-the-block American companies have taken this oversight to a new level.

There are two games which have people up in arms, one already played and one on the distant horizon: Hearts v Liverpool in the Europa League play-off round on 23rd August and West Brom against Tottenham on 2nd February next year.

In Scotland, Heart of Midlothian were forced to wear all white in a home game - changing to Away shirt and socks - as Liverpool's choice of all black Away kit was deemed to too similar to the dark-tinted maroon of the Jambos.  Red would have equally been unacceptable and Liverpool's "nightshade" and white Third would have both given purplish-on-purplish action and dropped us in "overall clash" territory.  So the home team changed.  It's not right, it's not proper but it happened.  The world moved on.

Come February, Tottenham Hotspur will visit The Hawthorns and, as things stand, we don't know what kits the sides will turn out in.  The argument holds that no Spurs kit will be acceptable, with the all white Home clashing with the navy-and-white-stripes/white/white West Brom kit, navy Away clashing with the navy stripes - and, crucially, West Brom's navy sleeves - and the black and grey halved Third being a bit too "dark, light, dark, light" when employed against a similar equivalent - somewhat proven against Reading.  The solution, overall clash fans, may be for West Brom to wear navy shorts and socks and Spurs to wear their Home kit.  We know the Baggies don't need much of a push to break out the change items and they're arguably just as recognisible in the shirt's darker accessories as they are in predominantly white.  It won't be right, of course, not proper, but it might happen.  The world will move on.

It is not acceptable for home teams to be forced to change.  Visitors should be respecting their hosts and making sure their own wardrobe holds enough variations - perhaps interchangeable - to avoid clashes.  If referees are not satisfied with the alloted kits the away side has at its disposal then they should be forced to wear a goalkeeper kit outfield - if enough units can be sourced in time - printed up training wear or, heaven forbid, wear the home side's change kit.  The home side changing any item should be a last resort and result in the visitors being fined, and that deterrent should perhaps be applied to the other undesireable scenarios too.

It shouldn't be so difficult to create three kits which are, one way or another, certain to avoid clashes.  Especially when distinguishing players on the pitch is the primary function of change kits, right?  Right?

This is where I have a problem with the argument and the anger at Under Armour and Warrior.  I dispute that the primary function of kits - certainly change versions - relates to their appearance on the field of play.  The purpose of change kits is to make money, and whilst they should also fulfill requirements as playing wear, I understand and agree with saleability as a starting point.  Of anything up to a million Liverpool shirts produced this year, only around 0.1% will be worn by the playing staff of the club's sides and the rest need to be sold.  It may be exactly the right time to rethink priorites.

I love football kits, you may have noticed, but I also like my football club(s) to compete.  Replica kit sales are a major source of revenue, whether this be directly, via the club shop, or through the potential leading to a manufacturer paying an obscene amount of money to produce the kit (or, indeed, a combination of both).  If kits are produced, or can potentially be produced, which will sell well, ideally globally, then this will fund player purchases, stadium redevelopment and help ensure, in these dark times, the continuity of a football club.

So when a club, and its manufacturer, release three kits which seem too similar, or for whatever reason provoke anger, it's worth considering that a significant amount of research has been put into finding out what will sell.  And what will sell, it can equally be argued, is a fair gauge of what the fans really want.  For all the calls for Liverpool to wear red at home, white/black/white as an away change and yellow as a third option - complete with interchangeable shorts and socks - will this truly set the tills ringing?  The red Home kit has been well received on blogs, as has the black Away but which was the first replica shirt I saw being worn in the street?  The much-maligned (and I agree it's awful) Third, in short-sleeved version on a father and long-sleeved on his son.

There is method in the madness, and Warrior even suggest themselves that the "popular" colour of yellow doesn't necessarily sell in Liverpool kit form.  Their research perhaps should have made allowances for an horrendous 2004 Reebok number and an unsightly green Carlsberg logo on the 2006 version, but you can't blame them for their conclusions.

Even if we did have the colour of kits dictated by the loadmouthed minority (my membership is still valid) then should we have those same colours every season?  Will a goth ever buy a white kit?  Will those in warmer climes ever wear a yellow shirt in the summer, complete with covering of insects after a short walk to the shops?  You can't please all of the people all of the time so it's surely best to please everyone at some point over two or three seasons.  How many people will buy a white shirt twice, compared with how many will buy a black shirt and then a white shirt?  To that we can add all those who will buy one or the other.

The two ends do not need to be mutually exclusive.  For me, all Under Armour and Warrior have done wrong is not working back from their trio of bestsellers and tweaked the designs to make them more suitable to the multicoloured rigours of Premier and Europa League seasons.  Liverpool's Third kit already has white sleeves and white socks; could they not have made the body white with a nightshade (and orange) sash?  Some white change shorts might come in handy too.  Would that have impacted greatly on sales?  They're the experts I s'pose, but they weren't all that far from having a full set which would have covered all bases.

The most amusing argument I've read, for kits being made with primarily their use on the pitch in mind, suggested a parallel with hi-viz vests, created purely to ensure a worker is seen.  The difference is that football provokes a desire amongst millions of fans to look like their favourite players, which means it is a kit manufacturer and club's marketing arm's duty to ensure this can be followed through to maximum gain.  Whereas, with all due respect, who'd want to dress like YOU?

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