Time was when a club shop contained nothing more than a few folded replica kits and a cornucopia of programmes thumb-tacked to the walls.
Nowadays of course it’s all so very different and you can buy anything from dog bowls to document holders, all emblazoned with your club crest.
The Cutter went in search of the best, worst and just plain weirdest from around the grounds.
BEST
Simple, classy, and can be worn down the pub without looking like a Stella-guzzling knob. Plus if you ‘score’ later you can fall onto the bed and recreate the Charlie George celebration.
Admittedly not particularly practical – it could hardly be taken to your weekly 5-a-side game for example – but a beautiful object nonetheless. Offers any Fulham fan the opportunity to pretend to be Johnny Hayes in his back garden or would look the business simply adorned upon a shelf.
WORST
Pong like an air-freshener in a cheap Singapore brothel by splashing on this tacky rubbish. The smell of victory? Or napalm in the morning? Probably the latter.
Guaranteed to get you pregnant before you’re sixteen by some spotty oik in shit tracky bottoms down the alley by the chippy. A cap so chav the two available sizes are called ‘pram-face’ and ‘fatty’.
You can see the logic. ‘Our fans are known as bluenoses. So let’s produce some blue noses’. ABC marketing. Unfortunately we cannot imagine any circumstance where an Everton supporter would actually don such a thing. At the match? No. In the pub? Certainly not. On your own at home? Well, whatever floats your boat.
Additionally there is the unfavourable connotation with clowns to be factored in to its all-round uselessness.
Nothing says ‘My favourite film is Nil By Mouth, I facking lavved that geezer’ more than this classy item. Considerately made from sterling silver to limit chipping as it scrapes along the pavement as its owner goes for a stroll.
ODDEST
Just cruel. You chose to become a Baggie. You chose to suffer a lifetime of mediocrity and woe. Your dog didn’t.
Quite why Wanderers sell a gnome called ‘The Gaffer’ is anyone’s guess. Why it seems to be flying through the sky is another mystery. Strange folk up in Bolton.
AND FINALLY
This t-shirt should be in the best category. The distinctive Saul Bass design is unusual, eye-catching and pretty darn funky.
Instead the good marketing folk at Wolves have, for some unfathomable reason, decided to showcase this garment with a dopey-looking, gap-toothed pikey awkwardly brandishing a guitar and ‘playing’ a chord that does not exist.
Bravo to the Wolves retail department for grabbing defeat from the jaws of victory with this one. Mick McCarthy and the boys would surely approve.
