Vote! Vote! Vote!

Friends, Romans, non-Romans... in fact anyone that cares to listen... Some People Are On The Pitch has been nominated for 'Best British Blog' (that is to say 'best blog about British football') in the Soccerlens Awards 2008.

Being the narcissistic types, we crave a bit of recognition for all our hard work writing for you throughout the year. It's not much to ask - we enjoy writing about football, we love interacting with all you splendid folk and we're paid not a penny for our efforts. We do it out of the sheer love for what we do, but a little adulation would be nice.

We therefore ask, nay BEG you to make your humble football-writing servants feel genuinely loved and cared about. Simply visit the 'Best British Blog' page on the Soccerlens website and vote for 'Some People Are On The Pitch'.

It costs nothing and it could stop us feeling downright miserable this Christmas. Thank you.

Shirts for 2007/08: The Final Verdict

You may remember between May and October last year, we gave you the chance to get an early look at some of the new shirts being released for the 2007/2008 season. Not only that but we also gave you the chance to tell us what you thought of them by providing an online vote in each case.

Well now the season's ended, we can tell you which shirts were the most popular amongst you, our fine and, may we say, rather smartly-dressed audience.

You'll recall we featured one new shirt per Premier League team so as to provide a fair balance throughout, and you were given the option to vote for either 'Excellent', 'Good', 'OK', 'Poor' or 'Terrible'.

All that taken into account, it gives us great pleasure to announce that on 'Excellent' votes alone, your favourite shirt was this one worn by Aston Villa away from home:



Out of all your votes for this shirt, 66% of you said it was 'Excellent' and based on 'Excellent' and 'Good' votes combined, it picked up 85%.

For your reference, here's the top 3 shirts in the 'Excellent' category:

1. Aston Villa (away) 66%
2. Portsmouth (3rd) 61%
3. Man United (away) 59%

...and in the 'Excellent' and 'Good' combined votes category, things were a little closer:

=1. Aston Villa (away) and Portsmouth (3rd) 85%
2. Tottenham (home) 74%
=3. Derby (home) and Man United (away) 72%

At the other end of the scale, Chelsea's new flourescent yellow away shirt proved to be the most unpopular. Out of all your votes cast, 56% said it was 'Terrible'. It also cleaned up when adding the 'Terrible' votes to the 'Poor' ones. Again, it was the least liked with 67% of the vote share.

Here's the three least liked shirts in terms of 'Terrible' votes:

1. Chelsea (away) 56%
2. Manchester City (home) 28%
3. Reading (away) 25%

...and when adding 'Terrible' votes to 'Poor' ones...

1. Chelsea (away) 67%
2. Reading (away) 41%
3. Manchester City (home) 40%

So congratulations to Nike who obviously tapped into the wants and needs of the Villa fan market perfectly, if not the Man United equivalent too. Points deducted for Adidas who thought a luminous yellow shirt would be highly popular outside of Stamford Bridge, and as for Puma, we have one piece of advice: 'Battleship Grey' is only a good colour for battleships.

Thanks to you all for voting and look out for some 2008/2009 shirt votes coming very soon...

Vote! Vote! Vote!

What a terrible thing vanity is. Just when you think you're not bothered by trinkets and gold, someone offers you a sparkling gem and it consumes your very existence.

That's the situation we found ourselves in when a nice man at Soccerlens.com contacted us yesterday to say that Some People Are On The Pitch had been nominated for three of its Readers Choice awards.

Apparently we've been shortlisted in the following categories:

- Best Overall Blog
- Best Design
- Best Blog Name

...which made us feel suitably self-satisfied and not a little big-headed, if we're honest. And now of course we wait and see if we actually win any of these awards, but therein we have a problem.

You see to win an award, we need to receive as many votes as possible from good, honest, kind people like yourself who selflessly head over to Soccerlens.com with no other motive than to make us feel loved and wanted.

So if you feel the need to, put a metaphorical tick in the box for Some People Are On The Pitch on any of the above voting pages and tell the world that you're part of something special - a blogsite that loves you as much as you love it.

Thank you to each and every one of you from the very heart of our bottom.