The reason I've done this is that for me the true test of a top quality football shirt design is to remove the badge and advertising logos and then see if you can say which team would wear it. Both these new shirts fail this test miserably in my opinion.
Even though one of the above players is an Arsenal man that still can't make them look like Arsenal kits to my eyes.
The purple jobbie could be anyone's. If you had to guess which team I think you might think it was a Tottenham kit, but only because they've gone down the purple route before. I'd have guessed that its more like a Liverpool shirt because they have a strong tradition of unrelated random colour away kits.
The red, white and blue kit could have been designed for one of GB's Olympic teams or it could more probably be the new US National Soccer team kit. That said I think the design would actually look better over body armour on the sort of kit worn by an NFL team. Whatever.
It can't however be an Arsenal kit because only the shorts and socks look anything like a potential Arsenal kit. Arsenal do white sleeves, they've never done huge hoops on the sleeves and certainly would never consider blue hoops. Likewise you've never in your life seen a head and shoulders shot of an Arsenal player wearing a red shirt with a blue collar, because we've never worn those colours.
I happen to think both kit designs are really good designs, but as designs for random football clubs somewhere else on the planet, anywhere else other than Arsenal. If they didn't have the badge and sponsorship branding slapped on them would you even recognise them as belonging to our Club? Obviously you would now because you're familiar with the shirts, but does either design shout Arsenal at you? For me they shout not an Arsenal shirt, because the overall kit matters not when it comes to shirt sales, no in the marketing department is banking on the socks and shorts sales.
Unlike some I don't blame Nike because someone somewhere in the Club had to sign off on these designs. Clearly it was no one who appreciated the Arsenal traditions. Someone had to propose a design brief, although quite what that was is hard to say judging from the results. And when Nike came up with the proposals someone with the aid of a white stick had to choose from a range of styles. I'm all for equal opportunities but I really don't believe Arsenal kits should be chosen by using braille.
So I won't be buying either of them, because both shirts, which I might have purchased, fail totally as Arsenal shirts for me. Quite apart from which I'm not even sure the geezer on the right even looks like an Arsenal player.
Courtesy of The Highbury Library