The halves and the halve-nots – Blackburn’s varying numbering styles, 1992-94

With any shirt design which features equal amounts of a light colour and a dark one, the makers have to be careful when considering how to present the sponsor’s logo.

For Asics and Blackburn Rovers, it meant including a white background for McEwan’s Lager for the 1993-94 season, having had the wording flush in 1992-93 (though Coors Extra Gold, the sponsor for one game, was also on a white panel)

Asics also had to deal with the presentation of the Rovers numbers. In 1992-93, a block style was used, but with a transparent stripe inside the red border while the company’s wordmark was also transparent, meaning that it was half-white and half-blue.

From a distance, legibility was an issue and so, for 1993-94, they included a white panel as with the sponsor, though they changed the numbering style to the rounder font seen on the Blackburn away (but not the one-off third) as well as the kits used by Aston Villa, Leeds United and Newcastle United.

With squad numbers having been introduced in the Premier League, it was decided to go with black-outlined red names for Rovers.

However, after the 1-0 win away to Liverpool on September 12, another change occurred as Blackburn went back to previous season’s style of numbering, but this time with the transparent areas coloured white.

In addition, the names were now in white and trimmed in red.

Presumably this was satisfactory to those who sought an improvement from the 1992-93 style as they retained this font for their title-winning 1994-96 kit, though with the colours on the names reversed.

The less said about their 1996-97 font, the better.