Nottingham Forest and Liverpool meet on Tuesday night in a Premier League top-of-the-table clash at the City Ground.
The kit matchup is reminiscent of when the clubs were battling for English and European supremacy four decades ago, with Forest in adidas and Liverpool in their white, black and red third strip.
The fixture is of course famous for being the first Premier League game to be televised live on Sky, with Teddy Sheringham scoring the only goal as Forest won 1-0 on the inaugural ‘Super Sunday’, August 16, 1992.
That game is also notable from a kit point of view in that it was the only match on that opening weekend to have the match officials wearing the traditional black.
One of the new competition’s initiatives was to kit out referees and linesmen in green shirts, trimmed with black pinstripes. That move could be said to be the tip of the iceberg for goalkeeper kits, in that number 1s (they were all still wearing 1 – squad numbers wouldn’t come until 1993-94) were precluded from wearing their traditional colour and so the hues became more varied.
Up to 1992, the fact that black was reserved for officials meant that clubs could not use that colour, or navy, for their outfield kits. However, while officials remained above goalkeepers in the kit priority – nowadays, they are last – there was a yielding for teams that had green change kits.
While there were some changes, Liverpool’s change kit was essentially a carry-over from the previous season and that meant that Mike Reed and his assistants had to find an alternative for the Sunday game.
A reversal of the green, it was unusual in that it depicted the new Premier League lion logo entirely in red and white. The use of long sleeves on a hot day may point to limited availability.
Unfortunately for Brian Clough’s side, the was not a portent of what was to come as they ended up relegated. Such a fate definitely won’t befall them in 2024-25 but surely a proper title tilt is beyond them, given a Liverpool triumph would open up a nine-point gap? We shall have to see.
The above can be disregarded as the fate-tempting efforts of an Arsenal fan. The green shirts were kept until the end of 1995-96, with officials given three new options for 1996-97, all primarily black but with stripes of white, red and blue, theoretically to avoid clashes but some issues remained. For 1997-98, that suite was expanded to include a light-blue shirt with black stripes.
