The journalist Jeff Maysh, regulars on our Facebook Page will be aware, has written a piece deriding fan-designed football kits and bigging up the skills of the "highly paid professionals" at Under Armour.  An interesting read, no doubt, but it made me wonder if a little bit of balance was required.

Firstly, to a significant extent, I agree.  This is still a golden age for football kit design, the manufacturers largely know what they're doing and the likes of the new Liverpool Away and Third kits are outliers, whilst last year's Liverpool Home, albeit popular, stank of being restrained by the fans' opinions being religiously adhered to.  So fan input = bad, generally, but the mention of those Liverpool change kits in Maysh's article is noteworthy.

A little while ago my friend/nemesis/sexual tension cohort Denis Hurley brought something to my attention that has played on my mind ever since.  It was a photograph of a club GAA final in Ireland in which the two sides were wearing their first choice "jerseys".  So far so GAA - it can traditionally take a lot for a hurling or Gaelic football team to wear anything but their usual colours - but on this occasion the sport had demonstrated something quite remarkable, and something that could someday emerge as an innovation in association football.

As Denis pointed out, one of the sides, though wearing their usual colours and clearly recognisable (to people who follow the GAA club game closely), had adapted their strip so the secondary colour of green - the primary colour of their opponents - was significantly reduced in coverage.  The hoop around the centre of the jersey was much thinner and the sleeves were now completely devoid of the colour.  The shirt had also been combined with the - we assume - change shorts and socks in red (with green), which we believe replaced the first choice green versions.

There seems to be a trend very recently for the major manufacturers to try to reimagine great moments in football kit design's history for their own greedy ends.  In some cases this can be advantageous for design fans, in others it is an insult to a great moment in the kit timeline.

Re-releases or reissues, with slight identifying features, are nothing new.  The Barça centenary shirt has just had its second re-release, Bergkamp's Netherlands shirt from the 1998 World Cup was revisited and both Liverpool and Olympique de Marseille's 1989-91 shirts were tackled relatively faithfully.  In each case I would sooner have an original to an Original, but they weren't bad.  Particularly, Nike's takes were barely distinguishable, save for details on the inside.  Some shirts are worth re-releasing, and Umbro got in on the act with England - the reissues handily bearing a closer resemblance to player issue shirts of the time - and a nice representation, in pristine form, is worth our hard-earned cash.

When I began writing this blog back in 2008 (has it really been five years?  I really should be more productive) Reebok didn't really figure.  They were losing kit contracts all over the place, mainly due to the adidas takeover, and barely appeared on my radar.  At the time of publishing it seems the only even relatively famous club they supply is Bloemfontein Celtic.

If the end is nigh, or even overdue, then please don't think I'm suggesting they've had an inauspicious twenty year foray into football design.  Let's also remember that they have supplied Ryan Giggs' boots for all of that time and even snared the Thierry Henry contract for a couple of years too.  No, Reebok are no strangers to on-field success, as unlikely as it once may have seemed.

The first time a Reebok logo appeared on a football kit it was mounted onto the shirt of Bolton Wanderers. the club sharing a town with the company's factory, and was at that stage merely a sponsor.  The Matchwinner kits provided an ample home for the branding for several years and until the point where Reebok thought they could give it a go themselves.

Everton's fans have this week led the way in a power shift which could have huge repercussions across the whole of football, certainly in England.  When presented with a new club crest, supposedly created via consultation with a fan sample focus group, the immediate backlash from Evertonians morphed into a quickly populated petition against the move.  Accordingly, the new crest will be reevaluated before the 2014-15 season, perhaps being scrapped altogether after just one year.

The complaints concerned the new crest's drastic transformation of the depiction of Prince Rupert's Tower, the removal of the laurel wreaths, the general simplification - or "dumbing down" - of the crest as a whole and, most controversial, the removal of the Latin motto "Nil Satis Nisi Optimum" (nothing but the best is good enough).  The truth is, Prince Rupert's Tower is the most accurate rendering of the famous Everton Brow-located building - if a little cartoony - simplification of the crest is widely accepted as a requirement for consistent and cohesive branding and marketing across various media and the Latin motto, well, we're not really sure why the graphic designers got rid of that.

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.