If you heard that Rangers were wearing blue and white shirts with black and red socks, it might sound perfectly logical, but today’s post is focused on the West London rather than the Glasgow variety.
We’re presuming it was a mix-up which led to Queens Park Rangers wearing their home, rather than away, shirts away to Tottenham Hotspur in November 1987. Perhaps a lenient referee allowed it, but the Rs wore red and black for their other trips there in the 1980s – generally, the away shorts were black, so they deserve credit for having proper alternates rather than wearing the home shorts with the away shirts, like Arsenal used to do at Southampton.
Whatever the reason, they ended up taking to the field looking like this:
The game featured in an episode of the BBC documentary series QED, where the club spent time working with a psychologist – quite the novelty 30 years ago. Unfortunately, the mashup, or the reasons for it, aren’t mentioned.
You would think that a one-off look like that wouldn’t have an opportunity to be repeated but, as the RetroQPR Twitter account pointed out, Rangers wore their away kit in beating Derby County in the Football League Championship play-off final at Wembley in 2014, with the players then changing into the home shirts for the presentation.
