Yes, it is midweek – Boxing Day falls on a Tuesday in 2023.
Some clubs, like Everton or Manchester United, are very assiduous in dealing with shorts-clashes.
Others, like Liverpool, avoid them at all costs – you have to go back to the 1980s for the last time they wore red shirts without red shorts. Arsenal lean more towards that end of the scale, but it’s not completely unknown for them to don alternative shorts, occasionally without good reason.
The first time the Gunners wore red shorts was in a League Cup game away to Ipswich Town in September 1970.
While one might think perhaps Ipswich had blue shirts with white sleeves and a shorts-change would be helpful in that regard, but they had switched to solid blue shirts in 1964 and wouldn’t revert to contrasting sleeves again until 1992.
The first sighting of Arsenal in red shorts in a league match came on Boxing Day in 1970 – however, it was unusual in that it occurred in a home game and was not initiated by a clash with the opposition.
Southampton were the visitors to Highbury and they were in their change kit of amber shirts and socks with black shorts. No issues with Arsenal’s usual strip there, but there had been a heavy snowfall in London.
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In Seventy-One Guns: The Year of The First Arsenal Double, author David Tossell noted that, “Arsenal took to the field in unfamiliar red shorts in order to make the players more clearly visible against the white backdrop.”
The change of shorts was considered sufficient enough that the white sleeves were not considered an issue – the only other alternative would have been to call on the navy shirts used at Blackpool that season. Perhaps television highlights were also a factor.
The new look wasn’t immediately lucky for Arsenal as a scoreless draw saw them fall three points behind league leaders Leeds United, but come the end of the season it would the Gunners celebrating winning the league and FA Cup.
When the Football League mandated that shorts-clashes be dealt with from 1975 onwards, Arsenal did wear red shorts when required for a few years, before instead opting to wear a full change kit in such instances.
