We’ve looked at Southampton wearing red shorts before and the Saints even swapped their traditional black togs for red last season, when they played Inter Milan in the Europa League.
They did it for last Saturday’s trip to Newcastle too, but that game presented even more of a poser for kitman Mark Forbes.
Southampton’s home kit this season is a tribute to the Patrick strip worn between 1980 and ’85, a kind of reverse-Ajax style.
Back in the 80s, when clashes arose with the home and the two-tone equivalent away strip, Southampton actually had an all-red third shirt on hand, effectively the normal jersey but with the white stripe removed, and they half-followed that philosophy for the trip to St James’ Park.
The usual home shirt couldn’t be used because of the large amounts of white, especially on Newcastle’s backs – one would hope that the Premier League have got tighter since the Tottenham-Stoke game at Wembley – while the Southampton away kit features a lot of black.
For the past two seasons, special white third shirts have been used away to Bournemouth, but obviously this season’s version would clash too, so Southampton came up with a creative solution.
Red change shorts and socks were used (the latter not essential but helping to differentiate)…
…but in addition they altered the back of the shirts, taking out the white stripe for a solid red look.
Unfortunately for Southampton, their sartorial efforts weren’t rewarded on the field, with a 3-0 defeat signalling the end of Mauricio Pellegrino’s time in charge.
Delighted to have acquired the Europa League red backed shirt (Romeu v Sparta Prague home) and red shorts (probably as pictured above), Gabbiadini’s red backed shirt from the Newcastle match and Carrillo’s red shorts from one of the handful of times they wore them in 2017/18. Thankfully they’re selling the third kit this season, though black (keeper) socks at Palace and all red hooped socks with white trim for another away are still annoyingly unavailable…