It was with ironic contrast that news - however reliable - reached us around this time last year, that Umbro had entered a bidding war to snare the prized Manchester United contract, then held by Umbro's former owners, Nike.  It didn't happen in the end - adidas will take over in the summer - but reports seemed to give Iconix's British-based brand a fighting chance, which flew in the face of generally accepted progress.

Because Umbro were no longer the benchmark.  This isn't simply about their loss of major contracts to Nike - Manchester City, England - though that played a part, more that their stylings, or eschewing of stylings, were no longer as revered by the rest of the kit design industry.

Arsenal Football Club. For some, "The Pride of (North) London", for others a band of vagabonds mutated into a corporate behemoth with business savvy the likes of Manchester United and Real Madrid can but dream of.

And this is Arsenal.  The anachronism.  I won't bore you with an analysis of their idiosyncratic juxtaposition of tradition with forward-thinking marketing nous; I will instead bore you with an attempt to tear apart one of their most treasured kit traditions: The Sleeve Rule™.

So is it acceptable to wear a football shirt/kit?  A form of this question has been asked this week, and answered, in a manner of speaking, by Guardian fashion journalist Hadley Freeman (me neither).  The World Cup's on - it's silly season, where mainstream journalists talk rubbish about something they know nothing about.

Ms Freeman actually starts out ok, identifying that the wearing of football shirts is often (nay, generally) to denote affiliation or leaning.  Yes, it can be used to create a sense of community, Hadley, but also to differentiate oneself from others.

There is an idea which occasionally surfaces in the music world that whilst the possibilities in songwriting are supposedly endless, limitless and infinite, the great melodies and chord progressions have been used at some point already, and any hit - particularly of guitar-driven genres - will borrow from a predecessor.

This isn't necessarily to suggest plagiarism, certainly not always intentional borrowing from previous songs, but perhaps the melody which comes to a composer in a dream is not constructed in the unconscious mind, rather the emergence of a distant memory unfamiliar to the owner.

Ah, it's horrid.  We all know it's horrid, from the board, to the designers, to the manufacturers, to the fans, to the innocent bystanders.  As much as the club will claim a "Marmite factor", with as many people loving it as hating it, all good sense tells us it's a catastrophe.  But, y'know, we've seen it.

For anyone who has no idea what I'm talking about, earlier this year, the amateur football club Windsor FC launched a new kit, to replace their earlier-released kit this season, and it features Union Flag (Union Jack) stylings, in the colours of the Italian Tricolore flag.

So it's about time this website had a comment on it, for posterity, and what better place than my blog to lay my own cards on the table.  I am, of course, talking about the controversy that is the new trend for one-colour kits, just in time to be worn by several, and it may even turn out to be all, participants in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

Before I go any further, I should point out that the opinions expressed herein are those of the author - me - and do not necessarily reflect the views of DesignFootball.com as a website and a collective.