Sound Of Football Episode 37 - Fulham reach the Europa League Finaarl

Sadly no Terry this week due to ill health, but Chris and Graham are back to review Crystal Palace's miraculous escape from relegation, plus there's a look at the final Premier League relegation situation, the Championship play-offs and a hearty pat on the back for Roy Hodgson's Fulham side.

There's also the answer to last week's competition where you could have won a gold car. What do you mean, you didn't enter?

You can listen to the podcast here or if you right-click on that link, you can download the MP3. Alternatively, you can subscribe via the your reader of choice or via our iTunes feed.

Premier League Kit Parade (Part 2)

And so we arrive at Part 2 of our saunter through the exciting landscape that is the Premier League shirts for 2008/09. Today we have five more teams to concentrate on, and this being an alphabetical list of sorts, we continue with...

Everton
Say what you like about The Toffees - when it comes to their home shirts, they don't like to change things around too much. Consistency is everything. There again (as Oscar Wilde once said), consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative, and we happen to agree with him there.

So what will David Moyes' men be wearing this season? Well, apart from their new blue shirt which looks staggeringly reminiscent of the last one, there's also a more enlightening away shirt that's white with a navy blue and grey band across the top of the chest.

Even this, however, can't really be treated as being anything bordering on unique or a one-off as this 'double stripe' motif of Umbro's can be seen everywhere from the England away shirt to the West Ham away shirt - more of which in Part 4 of our Premier League Kit Parade.

But let's not be too harsh. Both shirts look smart, neat and in the case of that away shirt, quite stylish. Not bad, but come on Everton... why not go for something more interesting next season, eh?

Fulham
The club from Craven Cottage scored big points with us (and indeed most of you) for their new Nike kits last season, and here we are again with another couple that should meet with your approval.

In the home shirt, Nike have reintroduced a little more black around the collar and cuffs which, given that last years equivalent was completely white, may or may not be a good thing depending on your opinion. Other than that, it's as you were.

On the away shirt, however, Fulham have (much like Barcelona this year) gone from stripes to halves in red and black, and we think this is excellent - so much so that Fulham should stick with it in the future. We really do like it that much.

Once again, Nike have produced a couple of designs that are very simple but retain a very stylish and attractive look. Well done them, we say.

Hull City
Ah, welcome aboard the good ship Prosperity, Hull. We're pleased to see you and we'll have difficulty missing you in your new home shirt which sees a return to those amber and black stripes you've worn so much throughout your history.

Yes, Hull are back in the big time and Umbro have given them a strip to be proud of. The thing you have to know about Hull City is that they regularly alternate between striped shirts and plain amber ones, and having had plain last year, Umbro have returned to the stripes for 2008/09. They've made a good job of it too, with a sleek, no-nonsense garment that should catch the eye without any trouble.

Away from home, The Tigers have got a more sombre dark grey shirt to wear. Hmmm... grey shirts... problematic, no? Perhaps. They can be somewhat less than inspiring (as we'll be seeing shortly), but this one's saved by its dark, brooding tone which should make it easy for the players to pick each other out on the pitch.

All in all then, a pretty good effort from Umbro, if our opinion's anything to go by. And at least they've avoided the obvious pitfall of basing a new shirt design on the team's nickname which, frankly, is unforgivable.

Liverpool
When Adidas replaced Reebok as The Reds' kit supplier in 2006, we all breathed a collective sigh of relief. Most of those Reebok strips from the previous ten years were, it has to be said, decidedly poor, so it was no surprise to find us rubbing our hands with glee when that run came to an end.

Sadly Adidas' first offering was, well, inadequate to say the least. That floppy collar and the wavy white piping did nothing for us, and so it's our great pleasure to welcome a much smarter replacement that proves that sometimes less is more. Very nice.

Unfortunately, the new away shirt undoes all that building anticipation by being light grey, and as if that's not bad enough, they've even incorporated a shadow checkerboard pattern that subscribes to the 1984 school of football shirt design.

There's no nice way to put this - it looks cheap, boring and unoriginal. At least Hull's grey away shirt has a slight air of panache about it, but this, this... needs to be replaced as soon as possible. Liverpool have brought out a third shirt for this season - a pretty good green one - but it'll only be seen in their European away games. Shame, that. It would have been a far better away shirt full stop.

Manchester City
And finally to Man City who've had the dubious honour of having Le Coq Sportif as their kit manufacturers since 1999. For this season, they've produced a home shirt that improves on the rather bland pinstriped affair of 2007/08, and though it lacks a little excitement, we think it's a step back in the right direction.

Out go those pinstripes which proved such a talking point last season, and in comes a plain light blue shirt with a white stripe running across one shoulder and a thin navy blue stripe running across the other. With a nice navy blue v-neck collar, it doesn't look at all bad in our book.

A little more troubling, however, is City's away shirt. It sees a return to the old red-and-black-stripe arrangement, and we think it looks OK... but we're not sure.

What's causing the confusion are those white pinstripes that flank the red and black bands. If it weren't for those, we think this'd be an almost perfect design. Sadly those thin white lines take the edge off it and that means the best we can call it is 'good' and/or 'interesting'.

So there it is, another five sets of shirts for you to judge and assess. We'd love to hear whether you agree or disagree with our rather presumptuous views, so why not drop us a comment and give us your thoughts on any or all of the shirts above.

Our thanks go to Football Shirt Culture and Historical Kits for their help with our research, and don't forget to join us again soon for Part 3 of our report on the new shirts for the 2008/09 Premier League season.

The Final Curtain

Well that just about wraps it up for another Premier League season. Amazing to think how quickly time passes, isn't it? It seems like only yesterday the season was just beginning...

Anyway, congratulations to Manchester United, the new champions and to my mind the right ones given the standard of the opposition. Had Chelsea claimed the title today, I doubt it would have sat right with many fans of the Premier League. I say that only because Chelsea have barely been at the front of the title race all season and have limped along in third or fourth place for much of the time. Man United, for all their poor phases this season, have always been there or thereabouts like Arsenal were until they capitulated so dramatically when it mattered most.

That said, Chelsea did an amazing job pushing United all the way to the bitter end. Today's result has little or no significance to me today given the fact Alex Ferguson's men were such strong favourites to see off Wigan. Bolton earned a creditable draw, but it was all a fait accompli anyway. The FA in their wisdom elected to take the real Premier League trophy to the Man United match today (rather than the copy which went to Chelsea) and with some justification too. United proved again they have the pedigree to make a sustained challenge for the trophy over 38 games, so the title must be theirs.

At the other end of the table, an eventful afternoon saw Fulham and Bolton Wanderers keep their place in the Premier League at the expense of Birmingham City and Reading who are relegated to The Championship.

As I may have said before, I tend to feel that Fulham are perpetually one of those sides that seem to achieve little, perhaps flirt with relegation but ultimately retain their place every season and for that reason I wouldn't have batted an eyelid if they'd been relegated today. The thing is Roy Hodgson looks like a genuinely nice bloke who deserves great credit for all he's done thus far in his career. I want to see if he can turn Fulham around and make them more of a force to be reckoned with, and thanks to today's 1-0 win over Portsmouth, it looks like he'll get the chance to do so.

As for Reading, I have some sympathy with them. I think they've done pretty well since arriving in the Premier League and have played some exciting football at times, but they've gone steadily stale over the course of this season and as we all know, when the rot sets in the result can be fatal.

Birmingham have been brave in their approach this season, looking capable of putting up a decent fight with most of the teams in the bottom half of the table, but they too have seen their challenge run out of gas when they needed it most. Alex McLeish's arrival in November may have given the club a belief that better things were around the corner, but sadly it didn't quite turn out that way. Whether McLeish is still their manager by the time they return to the Premier League remains to be seen.

So that's it - the final curtain has fallen on the 2007/08 season, but fear not - we still have some things to discuss on this campaign before we can draw a line under this whole sorry affair, and we'll be tying up all those loose conversational ends over the coming week or so.

The Axeman Cometh...

It's come to this, then... While Manchester United and Chelsea fight over who should have the Premier League trophy for the coming year, four teams will fight just to survive in the top flight.

Derby County have already succumbed to the executioner's axe, which means two relegation places need to be filled, and by 5pm BST today either Bolton Wanderers, Birmingham City, Fulham or Reading will fill them.

The way things stand at the moment, Reading and Birmingham occupy those remaining places, but such is the closeness of all the teams involved that the axe could come down on almost anyone.

That said, there are a couple of things to note. Firstly Bolton are definitely in the best place at the moment, being that they're three places ahead of their nearest rivals, Fulham, and two places clear of the drop zone.

That means if Bolton get a draw away to Chelsea today, they'll be safe, no matter what the others do.

Then there's Birmingham. They're only one point behind Reading and Fulham and have a far better goal difference than the two of them. That gives us the situation that if Birmingham avoid defeat at home to Blackburn today and Reading and Fulham lose, Birmingham will stay up.

The fact of the matter, though, is that Birmingham look likely to go down today. Many of the possible permutations from today's results will see Alex McLeish's men demoted to the Championship, and if that's the case, it should be interesting seeing who takes the last place between Reading and Fulham.

All of which brings us to the handy Relegation Calculator that SPAOTP have designed for you. When all the important matches get underway today, you might want to know who's set to go down and who'll stay up, so why not use the chart below? It'll give you many of the outcome permutations just by cross-referencing who's doing what in each game involving Bolton, Fulham, Reading and Birmingham.

And before you check it out, we've left out all the permutations involving Bolton winning for the reasons mentioned above and yes, we know the writing's a bit small, but that's easily alleviated. Just click on the image to see a bigger, clearer version.



The best of British luck, then, to all the teams involved. Oh and by the way - who do you think will go down today? Leave us a comment and let us know!

Shirts for 2007/08: Fulham (home)

Today we bring news of a new four-year kit deal for Fulham who have switched contracts from French company Airness to Nike (and no bad thing as far as we're concerned).

It means we can now banish to a dark corner of our souls the the image of Fulham's shirts from last season which featured more black than a Marilyn Manson convention, and replace it with this sparkly-clean white offering instead:


(Please note: In the interests of public safety and to ensure impartial participation in the online vote that follows, Jimmy Bullard's face has been deliberately obscured.)

We rather like this one as it's the kind of unfussy, crisp sort of look that is now becoming the vogue amongst many clubs. It's apparently a modern version of the all-white shirt first worn by Fulham back in 1903 and will be available to buy next month.

Meantime, we need to know what you think of it. Will it be the runaway success so far enjoyed by Tottenham's new home shirt, or will it split you down the middle like Man City's new home shirt?

Cast your votes now please...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

VOTING HAS NOW CLOSED FOR THIS SHIRT
The final results were as follows:

Excellent: 56 (41%)
Good: 37 (27%)
OK: 18 (13%)
Poor: 10 (7%)
Terrible: 14 (10%)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------