The Good, The Bad, The WTF

In honor of Stoke City's return to the top flight, we will look at one of their fine shirts from yesteryear.




The first thing that strikes me about this shirt is the awesome coloration. That "gold" is more week-out-of-the-can yellow play-dough. Not really becoming on anyone. And what's that up by the collar? Why that's a flash of faded red. Or, if you prefer, rosey-pink. I suppose John Terry could wipe his missed-penalty tears with a hankie of that color. Yeah, it's real manly to cry over the fact you slipped. I swear I stopped doing that when I was 16 or so.

The reason I really like this shirt is because of the badge. Unlike the new, more traditional looking one they sport today (look up top), this one seems to have a pretzel on it. It's right there in the upper-left quadrant. That's awesome. I can't really tell what is in the lower right quadrant, but I'm guessing that it may be a jar of mustard, in order to keep with the theme. In fact, I'm revising my take on what color this shirt is in order to claim it is "Grey Poupon" yellow.

Finally, let's look at that sponsor. On the day we were proved wrong on the Seattle Sounders sponsor (but we wanted to believe so bad), I have to ask, what the hell is a Daniel Platt? Did some random Dan in Stoke decide he needed to be a little more awesome and sponsor the team himself? Because that would get all the chicks. Alas, it seems that Daniel Platt is a (now defunct?) supplier of building tiles based is Stoke. Boring. They could have at least used a supplier of kilns to match with their nickname, The Potters.

So, welcome back to the EPL, Stoke City. You will struggle mightily to make any kind of impact next season. If you are lucky, a 15th place finish is in your future. But I am more likely to believe that you all will need a cry rag or two to get through the season. I hear John Terry has a nice collection out, maybe you should ask him.