Our friends over at football-shirts.co.uk have been running a great competition this season to find the most popular kits in the Premier League, and they’re asking for your input as we reach the semi-final stage. Here’s what they had to say…

“The football shirt devotees over at at football-shirts.co.uk/fans have been narrowing down the best kits of the 2009/10 season, with fans voting since August in a knock-out cup for the best kits this season.

The shock of the early round saw Blackburn narrowly knock out Liverpool’s kits, whilst Manchester United’s shirts survived a scare to come back from behind against Stoke to eliminate the Potters.

In the first round proper Burnley won the battle of the claret and blues taking out Aston Villa, whilst Tottenham won the battle of the London clubs taking out Fulham.

Two of the quarter-finals saw the Lancashire sides do the double over London clubs, with Blackburn beating Spurs and Burnley defeating Arsenal.

Umbro make 30% of the shirts worn in the Premier League this season, but interestingly have managed to take three of the four spots in the semi-finals, with the other spot taken by Burnley.

Hundreds of votes have already been cast in the two semi-finals, but there is still time for you to make a difference as to who reaches the finals of competition, voting will be open until Monday 22nd March,  and you can vote here: http://www.football-shirts.co.uk/football-kit-comp”

So, if you fancy showing your support for Man City, Blackburn or West Ham in the semi-finals? Get your votes in then!

Earlier this week, we launched our competition to win a pair of our new Stealth boots, and we’ve been overwhelmed with the response so far – we’ve had a ton of entries, so plenty of you are obviously counting your chickens. We’ve also had some interesting responses to the video and images that we’ve made to celebrate Stealth, ranging from cool to bizarre to complete what on earth is going on? We’re glad it’s got you talking anyway!

We’ve got a little more Stealth stuff for you here today. First of all, we’re sure you’ll have noticed the pictures here that feature Gael Clichy looking tremendous as he models the new boots. The Stealth boots will be worn by leading Premier League stars such as Gael Clichy, Phil Jagielka and Michael Mancienne until the end of the season, so be sure to keep a look out for them on the pitch.

In the meantime, we also thought that you’d like to check out this video, which offers a sneak peak behind the scenes of that crazy Stealth video and the photo shoot with Gael Clichy. If you fancy winning a pair of our new boots, then you’ve still got time to enter our competition – head here for details on how to enter.

On Friday, we revealed our new Stealth boots for the first time, and now here’s your chance to win a pair! We’re giving away 5 pairs of Umbro Stealth boots, which have been designed for the smarter, craftier player on the pitch. With that in mind, you need to be at your smartest if you want to be in with a chance of winning them. To enter the competition, you need to watch the video above, and then answer this question:

How many chickens can you see in the video?

Both real chickens and chicken heads need to be counted. To make it a little easier for you, we’re giving you a number of answers that you can choose from. Simply pick which of the following answers you think is right, and email us your choice on blog@umbro.co.uk.

Is the answer…

a) 43

b) 45

c) 47

d) 49

We’ll then pick five winners at random from the correct entries, and they’ll be the lucky winners of a pair of Stealth boots. If you’re lucky enough to win, you’ll be able to pick from the white and red or red and blue colourways. The competition is open from today until 5pm on Friday, March 19th, and the only way of entering is by emailing blog@umbro.co.uk.

If you want to increase your chances of winning, then head over to Club Website, where there’s another competition underway to win some Stealth boots.

Good luck, and get counting!

Here’s the new boot from Umbro: Stealth. It’s designed for the smarter player, one who knows what to do on the pitch: how to hunt down the opposition, evade tackles and leave other players cowering in their wake. It presents a simple question to a footballer – are you a fox or a chicken?

If you think you’re a fox, here’s what Stealth can offer you. Created with speed, power and comfort in mind, the new Stealth boot is designed for players who take the lead on the pitch. A streamlined last and two lateral studs in the middle of the boot offer increased speed, while the carbon fibre shank and heel counter provide the power you need. Combined with cushioned insoles offering comfort, Stealth has all the assets that a player will need to outfox the opposition.

So you’ve heard all about the Stealth, but what does it look like? Take a closer look…

Stealth will be available to buy in the above colours from April 1st – if you want to find out more, take a look at umbro.com. To accompany the launch of the new boots, we’ve created some pretty cool ads and this pretty bonkers film, all inspired by the question Are You A Fox Or A Chicken? We hope you like it…

Following the success of the Tailored kits for England, Ireland, Manchester City and a number of teams in South America, we’re very excited to reveal the new Umbro kits that we’ve designed for the Swedish national team. Of course, you might have already seen the kit – the Sweden team wore it for the first time during their friendly against Wales on Wednesday, and ran out 1-0 winners. Obviously the kit played a key part in inspiring the players on the night!

One of Sweden’s longest serving players, Anders Svensson, is certainly impressed by the Tailored approach. Asked about the new kits, he said: “One might think that every match kit is the same, but the fact is that you quickly feel the enhancements here as soon as you start playing. I personally think that the new kit is quite neat. It’s a classic design.”

High praise indeed. It wasn’t just the Home kit that was unveiled this week – Sweden’s beautiful blue Away kit was also shown for the first time. As you can see here, it’s difficult to decide whether the Home or Away is better!

If you want to see more of the new Sweden kits, including the new Anthem jacket that will accompany them, check out our Flickr stream.

We were filming some footage for a new campaign recently, here’s a sneak peak behind the scenes to get you thinking. We’ll have more to reveal soon…

It started with a Tweet. Back in September, Darren Bent spotted that Umbro were running a competition for people to design their own Speciali boot outsole, and wanted to get involved.  James Else kindly designed some boots for Darren using our customisation tool on umbro.com

On Twitter, DBTheTruth then tweeted “I want this on the bottom of my boot safc fans will know why“  So our designers got down to work and designed some options. 

Darren then put these to the public vote and what you see here is the end result!  The white/black/gold boots are the latest colourway for the Speciali due to go on sale in the UK on February 1st.  You can learn more about the Speciali boots over on umbro.com.   

It’s the Eve of Christmas Eve, and that can only mean one thing…the last day of the Umbro Christmas Giveaway! Thanks once again to everyone who has entered on the two previous days, and congratulations to our winners so far. Today, we want to hear your football stories based around the number 2, seeing as it’s only 2 days until Christmas – bet you didn’t see that coming, did ya? So it could be anything from your favourite ever pair of boots, a duo of players you remember fondly, or the time that you treated yourself to two pies at half time. We’ll pick the ones that we enjoy reading the most, and they’ll get to pick something from our chimney of goodies. A few prizes have gone so far, but the ones we still have left are:

An England away shirt signed by Phil Jagielka

A pair of Umbro Speciali boots signed by Michael Owen

A Sunderland shirt signed by the whole team

A Nottingham Forest shirt signed by the whole team

A Hull City shirt signed by Geovanni

A pair of Umbro Speciali boots signed by Pepe

A pair of goalkeeper gloves signed by Joe Hart

Terms and conditions for the competition are available to read here.

Thanks to everyone who entered our Christmas giveaway yesterday, we really enjoyed reading your responses – and congratulations to Matt Salmon, who we picked out as the winner. He chose a pair of Specialis signed by Michael Owen, which we’ll get in the post asap.

Today’s question is inspired by the fact that it’s now only 3 days until Christmas (you can see where we’re going with this, can’t you?) All you have to do to be in with a chance of grabbing something from our Christmas pile is tell us a story about you and football that involves the number 3 – it’s the magic number. So it could be about the best hat-trick you’ve ever scored, the reason why you love the traditional 3 o’clock kick-off, or the finest number 3 you’ve seen in your club’s colours. Basically, we want a great story that includes that number in some way, so get typing!

Here’s a reminder of the prizes that are still up for grabs…

An England away shirt signed by John Terry

An England away shirt signed by Phil Jagielka

A pair of Umbro Speciali boots signed by Michael Owen

A Sunderland shirt signed by the whole team

A Nottingham Forest shirt signed by the whole team

A Hull City shirt signed by Geovanni

2 pairs of Umbro Speciali boots signed by Pepe

A pair of goalkeeper gloves signed by Joe Hart

Terms and conditions for the competition are available to read here.

You might be feeling a little cheesed off at having to still be in work this week, but here at Umbro we’re trying to make the effort to cheer you up a little bit. We’ve gathered together all the lovely pieces of special Umbro gear around the office, and we’re giving it all away between today and Wednesday. The items that are currently stored in Umbro’s special chimney which you can see above are:

An England away shirt signed by John Terry

An England away shirt signed by Phil Jagielka

2 pairs of Umbro Speciali boots signed by Michael Owen

A Sunderland shirt signed by the whole team

A Nottingham Forest shirt signed by the whole team

A Hull City shirt signed by Geovanni

2 pairs of Umbro Speciali boots signed by Pepe

A pair of goalkeeper gloves signed by Joe Hart

All you have to do to be in with a chance of grabbing some of this gear is send us your best answer to our daily question, and tell us which prize you’d like to receive  – we’ll be giving away two items every day.

Today, our question is inspired by the fact that it’s 4 days until Christmas – we want to know your best football related stories that involve the number 4. Want to tell us about the time you scored 4 goals in a match? Or the time that it took you 4 days to travel to an away match on the other side of the world? Who’s the best number 4 you’ve seen this season? Or what’s the best £4million that’s been spent on a player? We want you to get inventive in the way you tell us your stories, and the best ones will get to pick a prize from our selection. So get thinking, and get posting if you want to be in with a chance of winning…

Terms and conditions for the competition are available to read here.