A Coq and Ball storyUpdated: February 12th, 2007
Le Coq Sportif will be City’s shirt manufacturers from next season, I’ve been reliably informed. I’m told the deal is worth around £1m a year, though I haven’t yet established how long it is for or how it compares to the current deal.
Reebok City, which the club sold to unnamed buyers and leased back a few months ago, looks likely to be renamed as part of the deal while the official store has now cut the price of this season’s home shirt from £39.99 to £25.00.
Judging from this season’s Sheffield United kit the new shirt will hardly stand up to this all-time classic, but hopefully we can avoid an entry into the football shirt Hall of Shame
~ News that PSV left back Michael Ball is on a week’s trial at City has got the creative juices flowing on the talkboards. The MEN story is here, but I prefer Throb’s take on it at Citymancs.
Patrick Barclay wrote this fascinating profile of Ball in the Daily Telegraph last April, but for some reason the story of Martin “Buster” Phillips springs to mind.
Phillips was signed from Exeter in November 1995 for £500,000, but was sold to Portsmouth three years later for just £100,000. According to this story in the McVittee archives, he was given his nickname by Exeter teammates because of his similarity to a certain Viz cartoon character.
He was, of course, signed by Alan Ball.