Aston Villa players complain Castore shirts negatively impact performance

[pablo_picasso]

Carla Ward's comments about the shirts from her presser

""My focus is making sure the players are focused on the weekend and the one thing I will say is the club have been absolutely superb in these last few days with constant communication with 'how can we help the players, what's going to help them, what will make them feel better?'.

"There's a genuine care from the football club. The players feel that, we feel that, but our focus solely now is on Manchester United."

I hope they play in the training shirt.

Sends a message out not only to Castore to stop being shit, or we quit, along with to the pervs who are hoping to see a little more from the womens game on Sunday than just the football.

It will be interesting to see the viewing figures for that game...

That's my thinking though, we're probably the same. The cynic in me thinks maybe Heck has seen the issue of the sweaty shirts as a way out of the deal.

Good.

Hopefully his "I don't care what others think" attitude can finally be of some use to us fans & have us all pulling in the same direction for a change.

Even if its only for this particular issue...

[Smithy]

A mate of mine works for West Indies cricket, and he said they've had all sorts of problems with their Castore kits - so it's not just us.  He thinks that behind the scenes, the company is on the brink of collapse.

I looked at their Accounts and they are not pretty.

Some of the stuff he told me is commercially sensitive, so I can't repeat it, suffice to say their Castore deal ended this year, and Castore said they didn't want to renew, then said they did, then changed their offer.  WI told them to sod off in the end. He said it was like amateur hour, like they were deciding "what can we afford to offer today?".  They also have a six-figure sum's worth of merchandise from Castore sat somewhere in the Indian ocean, which has been missing for over a year.  His opinion (not based on any insider info, just his gut feeling), is that they've grown too quickly, have outsourced too much, and don't have control in any of the newer factories they use (like Nike and Adidas do), and so the quality has just dipped across the board - and the quality of their product was their original selling point.  Without that, they don't have much.

It's a shame, as until recently it was a really good story of a British sports brand successfully taking on the big boys.

[Risso]

A mate of mine works for West Indies cricket, and he said they've had all sorts of problems with their Castore kits - so it's not just us.  He thinks that behind the scenes, the company is on the brink of collapse.

I looked at their Accounts and they are not pretty.

I would guess it's probably a big case of overtrading. It's lovely getting all these new contracts in with big names, but you have to be able to service them properly. And then if you have to pay a load back because of a fuck up, it's going to hurt. Somebody I know runs Warner gin company, and they went through the a similar. From nothing to then having massive contracts with the likes of Waitrose and Tesco, who then start demanding all sorts of crazy credit terms and exclusivity periods etc.

[AV84]

When I was reading up on them, when the kits first launched this year, it said all their stuff was made in Portugal in small batches and it was something they seemed to take great pains to mention in their PR stuff. In the past week I've seen Turkey and China mentioned in relation to our kits, last season and this season, so the most obvious conclusion would be they've over reached and outsourced to a point they can't control it all.

[Bad English]

This reminds me of the company that did the cumaru decking in our gardin. They were a small, specialist woodworking/joinery outfit that grew so rapidly (doing massive eco-wildlife park projects, giant log-cabins, walkways and all sorts of shit). Their fast growth meant that they had to take on loads off staff but couldn't get them trained and working to the standards required. So, for example, my decking, while nice has a certain number of faults and displays shoddiness in parts causing SWMBO to moan about it every.single.day.of.the.week. I had them over and it's been 'yeah, yeah we'll sort it' and then it's ostrich mode and fuck you basically. SWMBO even went into their offices and kicked off (She's only lickle but I run away when she starts), which must have great fun for the neutral fan, but they didn't follow up after that either.

I've just heard that they are going to declare bankruptcy, the useless twats. How to ruin a brilliant business. Shame.

Maybe they should have brought in some consultants. ;-)

[LeeB]

Growth for the sake of growth seems to be the pervasive mantra for business, you can't just be happy with your lot these days.

[AV84]

I hope they play in the training shirt.

Sends a message out not only to Castore to stop being shit, or we quit, along with to the pervs who are hoping to see a little more from the womens game on Sunday than just the football.

It will be interesting to see the viewing figures for that game...

The training shirt is made by Castore too, and seems to be perfectly fine. Obviously made to different specifications, different materials, etc. but still a bit weird that they can clearly do a lot right.

[chrisw1]

I hope they play in the training shirt.

Sends a message out not only to Castore to stop being shit, or we quit, along with to the pervs who are hoping to see a little more from the womens game on Sunday than just the football.

It will be interesting to see the viewing figures for that game...

The training shirt is made by Castore too, and seems to be perfectly fine. Obviously made to different specifications, different materials, etc. but still a bit weird that they can clearly do a lot right.

Not necessarily.  There's been comments it's just as bad.  The match shirt seems perfectly fine until players start working in it.

[AV84]

I hope they play in the training shirt.

Sends a message out not only to Castore to stop being shit, or we quit, along with to the pervs who are hoping to see a little more from the womens game on Sunday than just the football.

It will be interesting to see the viewing figures for that game...

The training shirt is made by Castore too, and seems to be perfectly fine. Obviously made to different specifications, different materials, etc. but still a bit weird that they can clearly do a lot right.

Not necessarily.  There's been comments it's just as bad.  The match shirt seems perfectly fine until players start working in it.

I'm just going off the women wearing the match day tops in a preseason game in Spain. It looked alright in the pictures of it, compared to the mens proper kits anyway.

[Lastfootstamper]

Yeah, the women weren't wearing training tops, they were the match day tops. Whatever they are. Or for. But they looked alright.

[Villafirst]

Hopefully we'll change to a bigger named brand. Kappa and Castore have been poor overall. Surely giants like Adidas & Nike can outbid these smaller companies for the kit deals?

[AV84]

Hopefully we'll change to a bigger named brand. Kappa and Castore have been poor overall. Surely giants like Adidas & Nike can outbid these smaller companies for the kit deals?

They probably could if they wanted to. The reality of where we are and how we're viewed from a marketing perspective might not be where some fans think we are.

Nike and Adidas both have 4 Premier League teams on their books already, with Newcastle to be added to Adidas next season. Do either of those brands need a side like Villa?

[villadelph]

Hopefully we'll change to a bigger named brand. Kappa and Castore have been poor overall. Surely giants like Adidas & Nike can outbid these smaller companies for the kit deals?

They probably could if they wanted to. The reality of where we are and how we're viewed from a marketing perspective might not be where some fans think we are.

Nike and Adidas both have 4 Premier League teams on their books already, with Newcastle to be added to Adidas next season. Do either of those brands need a side like Villa?

Does adidas need Fulham and Forest..?

[AV84]

Hopefully we'll change to a bigger named brand. Kappa and Castore have been poor overall. Surely giants like Adidas & Nike can outbid these smaller companies for the kit deals?

They probably could if they wanted to. The reality of where we are and how we're viewed from a marketing perspective might not be where some fans think we are.

Nike and Adidas both have 4 Premier League teams on their books already, with Newcastle to be added to Adidas next season. Do either of those brands need a side like Villa?

Does adidas need Fulham and Forest..?

They're teams at different levels though. They've got Arsenal and Man U at the top, big clubs, big support base. Then they have Fulham, mid table and London. And Forest, at the bottom. Now they have Newcastle too. Only club in a big city.

Maybe we will end up with Adidas. I'm just saying it seems more likely that a brand like that isn't, or at least wasn't, interested in outbidding someone like Castore, than the idea that they couldn't afford to.

(Adidas have 302 clubs/countries on their books this season, according to footballkitarchive)

[chrisw1]

I'd guess we've missed the boat with Adidas.  I can't see them taking on two clubs the size of Newcastle and us in one season