Manchester City travel to Anfield today to face Liverpool in what could be an important game in the race for the Premier League title between that pair and Arsenal.
City will be in their first-choice kit – generally they are, though last season saw them change. The 2018-19 season – when the sides were involved in a heavyweight battle, City finishing with 98 points to Liverpool’s 97 – was another example.
In what would be their last season with Nike before switching to Puma, City had a navy change kit that was broadly interchangeable with the home strip, except for the presence of a greenish-yellow shade, harking back to the 1998-99 season.
The socks were in that colour (officially known as ‘volt’) too and, when the kit was first worn in the league, away to Wolverhampton Wanderers at the end of August, they were not considered a clash with the hosts’ old gold.
Between then and the beginning of October, Manchester City played four league games, three of them at home. The away one was at Cardiff City, a 5-0 win where they opted to stay in their home shirts and shorts but changed from navy socks to white.
The navy socks would be called upon the following week though, albeit without there being a huge need for them. For the game at Anfield, the navy kit was again used – Liverpool’s home strip was a darker shade of red than usual that season and, while there was no clash between the kits, they’d certainly score less on the spectrophotometer than Cardiff’s and Man City’s.
The yellow socks would have served to increase the differentiation, one would have thought, but instead were in all-navy.
City hadn’t won away to Liverpool since May 2003 but, with the game scoreless in the 84th minute, they were given a great opportunity when awarded a penalty.
Unfortunately for them, Riyad Mahrez sent his spot-kick over the crossbar and both sides picked up a point.
It did not prove to be a pivotal moment in the season, however. City won the return fixture 2-1 in January and held off the Reds down the stretch to complete a domestic treble.
Glad City wore their home colours today but generally that club just pisses me off with their absolutely ridiculous kit decisions, created so many issues in this season for being desperate to wear their white kit. Wearing white itself (even unnecessarily) wouldn’t be that much of issue but due to maroon shorts there have been plenty of places where City have created either shorts or overall clash while the navy kit hardly gets any appearances. And the most ridiculous thing is City decided to wear sky blue at Stamford Bridge 🤬. And this nonsense has been a feature since the Nike era began in 2013. Not only kit choices but the change kit colours have been absolutely ridiculous as well at the times. No kit to wear vs royal blue in 14/15 & 18/19, also 17/18 wasn’t great either as maroon away & dark grey third weren’t the best alternatives either. And what about that kit mentioned in the article, yeah I wish the yellow in that kit had been white for allowing those interchangeability options like you mentioned.
Glad to know that I’m not the only one who has been critical of City’s kit choice against Chelsea, as visitors to this site and even Denis himself can attest from my previous ramblings 😂
They used to also not change against Everton though thankfully that practice has stopped, but their kit choices are so erratic and inconsistent that it’s hard to figure it out.