GarethRDR

In terms of the sheer ratio of contribution to importance, I am making a case for Jan Bednarek. No, really, hear me out. The sum total of this man's career with us (excluding that Stevenage game): Comes on at half-time against Leeds to help see out a cagey 0-0 and get us our first points away from home. This result is also the catalyst for the first serious downturn in Leeds' form, who would lose their next 4 on their eventual slide to vacating the top-flight with hilariously extreme prejudice. Comes on at half-time against Fulham and is so unmitigatedly shite that Gerrard finally gets the sack. Manages to not shit the bed in the 8 minutes he's on the pitch against Spurs to seal a crucial 3 points on our glorious march to European football. He is simultaneously an apology of a footballer and a human sliding door.

I have an answer for this; short sponsors. We'd have enough room on McGinn's alone to fund stadium redevelopment.

Adidas kits wouldn't look half as shit if the three stripes still went along the length of the sleeve. The shoulder cut-off does and always has looked gash.

Harry Hampton got caught in a mustard gas attack and moved to Small Heath when he returned from the war. The horrors he must have seen. Bet the war wasn't fun either.

Are Shed 7 just permanently camped out in HMV Birmingham, ready to leap out like the Spanish Inquisition at passing over-priced t-shirt shoppers?

Between the inevitable Adidas 5-minute catalogue job and that monstrous badge, next season's kit is going to be a **** shocker.

Jesus templatin' Christ. *sigh*

I really, truly hope it won't be Adidas, so it'll probably be Adidas.

I believe the appropriate medical terminology is Mark-Draperitis.

The absolute disrespect being shown to the following:

"Like" being relative, though, right? As in, I like the nice solid, skid-free poop I did yesterday, as opposed to the cascading, scotch-bonnet induced waterfall of diarrhea I ejected from myself this morning. It still makes yesterday's poop a poop though. I do like that notion of an "uncaged" Lion though, no container, just the club name above and year below. Possibly the only circumstance under which I'd live with an interchangeable monotone badge.

It's much the same as I "show interest" in the vegetable aisle during the weekly shop. The **** do I actually buy anything from it.

What are you talking about, the 90's was only a couple years back... ...oh. Oh God.

I totally get that from a functional perspective, but our name really should be at the top as it's possibly the most stand-out thing about us.

I can break down what makes the leaked one so fundamentally flawed: Colours - reverting back to the pale yellow lion on a light blue background makes it look ill-defined/washed out, which was the worst component of the Lerner-era badge. A retrograde step. The Lion - reverting to the less detailed/defined Lerner version, further adding to the washing out effect and another retrograde step. Drop-Shadow - flawed from a design perspective and only serves to further muddy/blur the Lion into the background. Text positioning - the club name should be the top-most element, above the lion, not below it. If we are including the year also, this element needs to be positioned away from the name so it doesn't become visually redundant. Crest shape - if we are to move away from the circular badge, then we have a clear and current remit from the fan survey that the gas-lamp shape is the next preference - discarding this wholesale a) shows yet more contempt for the fan engagement exercise and b) though I may have personally preferred the current round version, the gas-lamp shape did offer an opportunity for a more unique look to the badge and should therefore be the obvious next choice were the round version to be discarded; the leaked crest shape is generic and does nothing to stand out from other badges. The more I ruminate on it, honestly I just simply refuse to believe that anyone with any experience in graphic design whatsoever could be so stupid as to legitimately be considering the leaked badge as a viable option.

People who need beating around the head with a stick, in order: anyone who thinks that the leaked monstrosity is in any way, shape or form acceptable. anyone bemoaning the current badge for being a "Chelsea knock-off".

Say **** what now.

I mean... we don't seriously believe that leak is actually legit, right? Even with our well-storied history of blunders, I absolutely cannot believe that that sub-Wordart-cobbled-together-by-someone-flunking-GCSE-graphic-design monstrosity is in anyway legit? It's just too shit for that to possibly be the case.

In solidarity with the lion on the badge, he got turned around, thus couldn't find the stadium.

Happy new year y'all! Whelp, I already have my discovery of 2024 down; a friend put me on to MEUTE this morning, a German techno marching band. I watched one video and was swiftly booking up tickets to their London show at the Troxy in September. Das ist genau meine Marmelade. Also got a keen eye on a Michael Rother / James Holden show in Feb. It's been a very Teutonic day.

I had one CD album that if you held down the "rewind" (i.e. skip second) button at the very start of track 1, there was a couple super secret bars of intro to the album opener. To this day (and despite taking an HND in Music Production) I don't understand the voodoo required to make that happen (which might be why I failed said HND).

Ha, in my haste to jot down homework notes from the rest of your list, I didn't clock this. Really hoping they make their way over here at some point.

Discovering "new" old stuff is great, too. Couple of occasions back of visiting my folks, my Dad put me on to Isao Tomita's Snowflakes Are Dancing. I'd never heard of it, loved it and genuinely had no idea that he was into that kind of thing, such was the totality of his musical consumption that I had witnessed growing up venturing no further than Dire Straits, Fine Young Cannibals or the Top Gun soundtrack.