06 Friday Jan 2017
Posted in Fantasy Kit Friday
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Going by the first edition of Fantasy Kit Friday for 2017, you might think that there’s some alphabetical theme, but such levels of thought didn’t go into it, trust us.
Given that Arsenal and Aston Villa both share a similar basic style, it made sense to do a switcheroo, going with the Gunners’ 1990-92 home kit. Let us know what you think.
19 Monday Dec 2016
Posted in Officials, Rarities and Oddities
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When the Premier League began in 1992, one of the notable new initiatives was the change to referees’ kits.
Whereas black had been used by officials for as long as anybody could remember, now green shirts with black pinstripes were favoured, with the shorts reversing the design. It was used from 1992-93 until the end of 1995-96:
One side-effect was that goalkeepers, who had used green for so long, were now forced into a variety of different hues:
While referees did take precedence over goalkeepers, they remained below outfielders in the shirt-preference priority list. As a result, a traditional black shirt (the opposite of the new green) was kept in reserve for games when Liverpool wore their green away.
In the summer of 1993, Aston Villa switched from Umbro to Asics, and their new away featured green and black stripes, outlined in red.
Away to Arsenal on November 6, that kit was worn with the referee, Martin Bodenham, was in the normal kit. Distinguishable, but not ideal (one might also argue that Mark Bosnich’s kit could provide more differentiation to, but it was the 90s).
Three weeks later, Villa travelled to Anfield to face Liverpool. They went into the game unbeaten away from home, but found themselves on the back foot early on. As The Times put it:
Liverpool had started brightly, but by the half-hour mark there were mutters of discontent from the main stand and Graeme Souness, the Liverpool manager, was moved to diversionary tactics, complaining that the referee’s shirt clashed with Villa’s change strip.
We’re not sure if referee Alan Wilkie had a black shirt with him, but even if he did, it’s arguable that the was as much of a clash with the Villa strip as the green one. A temporary compromise was that he was given a white jumper, bearing the USA 94 logo, and wore it inside-out for the rest of the first half. The game was shown live on Sky Sports – which is why it’s so frustrating that there is just one clip – of less than 90 seconds – on YouTube, so you’ll have to trust us on the finer details.
Both of Wilkie’s linesmen (as we could still call them back then) remained in green, but for the second half all three were in white short-sleeved t-shirts.
If, for some reason, you have the full recording at home, please don’t hesitate to get in touch to help us provide some clearer images. As far as we can ascertain, Villa’s away kit wasn’t considered problematic at any stage over the rest of its lifespan – at Anfield in 94-95, for instance, it was worn along with the normal referee’s kit, though by that stage Roy Evans had replaced Souness as the Liverpool manager.
20 Sunday Nov 2016
Posted in Change kits, Clashes
It should be easy, solving kit-clashes, but as our post on the League of Ireland showed, it isn’t always the case.
In that regard, it’s surely a success of sorts that there have only been four occasions since the Premier League began in 1992 that a home team have been forced to wear a change kit? We say ‘forced’ as the PL rules allow teams, in their final home or away game of a given campaign to wear the following season’s kit. Previously, this was only allowed in the last home game and sometimes they decided to showcase the away strip.
The instances of necessary change have involved a lack of foresight on behalf of the away side and/or the officials, in each case.
Early in the 1993-94 season, Newcastle United met Sheffield Wednesday at St James’ Park and the Owls made a mind-boggling decision. Having joined forces with Puma that summer, their home obviously clashed while the largely black away would also have caused problems. So somebody thought that a white shirt with black pinstripes would be suitable. Referee Roger Dilkes did not, and so Newcastle had to wear their blue kit. It didn’t affect them as they won 4-2.
The white shirt would be worn by Wednesday away to Wimbledon in the league on January 15, 1994. Four days before that though, they were away to the Dons in the Coca-Cola Cup, and because the officials still wore black in the domestic cups, teams weren’t allowed to clash with them. As a result, Wimbledon wore white and Wednesday had to wear a yellow fourth kit.
In the 2000 FA Cup, Newcastle were drawn away to Tranmere Rovers, whose home kit was very similar to that Wednesday third shirt, and only had to change their shorts.
Later in 93-94, Blackburn Rovers had to switch when hosting Manchester City (cheers to Michael Dilworth and Ian Herbert for bringing this to our attention):
The previous season, City had worn their purple away kit kit with yellow socks (perhaps the inspiration for the current monstrosity?), but it was far from an acceptable solution:
City did have a third kit for 1993-94, but it was white, and so this perfect storm caused Blackburn to accommodate them in December ’93.
In 2003, Newcastle were again involved in an instance of a home team changing but this time the Toon were the offenders when they travelled to play Fulham. While they had a perfectly good black away shirt, they decided to travel with their third, which was an inverse of that, black with grey. Referee Barry Knight wasn’t happy with the contrast between that and Fulham’s white, however, so the hosts had to dig out their away as they went 2-0 up only to lose 3-2.
Aston Villa unwittingly gifted their claret and blue colours to West Ham United, so there was a certain irony to the 2008-09 episode that saw the Villans have to deviate from their home strip when the London side visited them.
West Ham had an all-sky blue away strip that season and brought that with them, having been given the go-ahead by the league. Officials tend not to like sleeve-clashes, however, and referee Rob Styles wasn’t pleased with the set-up. The solution was for Villa to wear their 2007-08 white away shirts, with a blank set numbered by merchandising manager John Greenfield and his staff at a half-hour’s notice. Emile Heskey put Villa ahead in this shirt…
…but while the first half was ongoing another set was being prepared, with the logo of club partners Acorns being affixed.
West Ham equalised in the second half and the game finished 1-1. Villa manager Martin O’Neill was unhappy with the result and the sartorial shenanigans, something he expanded on in his notes in the programme for Villa’s next home game, against Hull City:
You will be pleased to know we will be playing in our traditional claret and blue shirts tonight.
I’m sure you were surprised to see our players coming out in an all-white kit for our last home match against West Ham a couple of weeks ago, so perhaps I should explain why it happened.
Essentially, the referee was unhappy because the sleeves of West Ham’s all-blue away kit clashed with the sleeves of our shirts, and I had some sympathy with him in that respect. But the Hammers didn’t seem to have any other kit with them – and the ref was adamant the game wouldn’t go ahead unless the clash was resolved.
Reluctantly, we agreed to change, which meant we had to get our third choice white shirts from the Villa Store warehouse. The ironic thing is that the Barclays Premier League had approved West Ham’s change kit but the referee was unhappy on the day. Quite simply, something had to give, or there would have been no game.
For the sake of all the people who were at Villa Park eagerly looking forward to the action, we decided to change, even though the onus is on the away team to provide alternative colours. I have to say, though, that it was an incredible situation, and one I had never previously experienced, either as a player or a manager. It’s certainly something which should have been sorted out days in advance.
Should such a situation ever transpire again, we’d like to see sanctions in the form of the guilty team having to change the next time the two teams meet. This happened in American football in 2003 after an episode involving the San Diego Chargers and Denver Broncos.
NFL rules allow the home side to choose whether they wear their dark or light uniforms, with the opposition going for the opposite. With a few exceptions, most clubs are dark at home but teams in warmer climes do often plump for white in early-season games to counteract the heat.
That’s what the Chargers decided to do for the game at home to the Broncos but the visitors only showed up with their white uniforms and pleaded ignorance or forgetfulness. The league weren’t buying that though and fined them $25,000 as well as giving the Chargers the choice of what to wear for their trip to Colorado later in the season. They availed of the option to wear their usual blue.
13 Thursday Oct 2016
Posted in Change kits, Clashes, Football kits, Kit history
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Anyone familiar with us knows that we like when a team’s home and away kits form a ‘set’, giving mix-and-match options.
AS Roma in 2000-01 are a great example of this, and another club with similar colours are our focus here. Superficially, Aston Villa’s strips in 2011-12 were well-matched – the shirts both had a checkerboard pattern and the same neck (though the home had raglan sleeves), while the shorts and socks on each kit used the same template:
As we shall see, while the home shirt was worn with the away shorts and socks, the white shorts and black socks (unusual for Villa, but with a historical precedent) didn’t appear with the white shirt. The addition of sky-blue shorts and socks, and claret socks, provided plenty of options though – 24 in all, of which nine would be worn, including the two ‘defaults’.
The vagaries of the fixture-list meant that the away shirt wouldn’t actually be seen until New Year’s Eve, and early on in the season it appeared that Villa had a specialised ‘away home kit’ – like Portsmouth in 2003-04, when they had a navy kit used in all away games against non-blue teams. In the first four away games, Villa played Fulham (all-white that season), Everton, Queen’s Park Rangers and Manchester City, shorts changes were required, but – in the same way that Rangers don’t go blue-blue-black – Villa wore the claret socks too.
That look was also seen at Swansea, while the normal home kit was able to be used at Sunderland, Tottenham Hotspur and Bolton Wanderers. On Boxing Day, Villa were away to Stoke City – another side with white shorts and socks – but this time, presumably to lessen the chance of confusion, this time Villa used blue shorts and socks.
Five days later, Villa won 3-1 away to Chelsea. Despite having worn the home shirt against other teams in blue, this time the away was worn, with the claret socks.
The away kit was worn as intended at Wolves and then the FA Cup fourth round took them to Arsenal. While Historical Football Kits rather grandly declares them to have worn a ‘cup away’, the more prosaic explanation is that white-claret-claret would have raised overall-clash concerns, so they donned blue shorts and socks. They would again do so at the Emirates in the league in March.
Villa were back in the proper away of white-claret-white at Wigan, before a socks-clash at Newcastle saw them switch to blue and retain the white shorts – the look most commonly associated with Villa.
White shorts and blue socks were part of Blackburn’s first-choice kit that season, but this time, instead of all-claret, Villa wore the home shirt with the away shorts and socks.
That was the last new configuration of the home kit, and in April they had a fourth different layout of the away. There was a shorts clash to deal with away to Liverpool, and while all-white had been worn in the past, instead they opted for blue.
Nine combinations from a possible 24, or 37.5 percent – by comparison, Roma’s six from 27 in 2000-01 was only 22.22 percent. Obviously, a team with just two sets of shirts, shorts and socks can achieve 100 percent, but we’d be interested to know if any team has higher the number of possibilities is 12 or higher (i.e. when there are three of one item).
