Tag Archives: Aston Villa

Triangles and stripes – Umbro’s goalkeeper offerings 1991-93

10 Sunday Jun 2018

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The intention was to write a follow-up to this piece sooner than now, but plans never seem to work out perfectly.

As we saw, Andy Goram wore a red Hampden shirt – at Hampden Park – when Scotland played Romania in October 1991. It was a fitting send-off, as it had been superseded as the primary Umbro goalkeeper design by then.

Sartorially, the 1991 FA Cup final is remembered for Tottenham Hotspur’s new kit and the return to baggy shorts. That meant that, even allowing for his penalty save from Gary Lineker, Mark Crossley’s shirt was somewhat overlooked.

In a more turquoisey shade of green, it featured a series of black triangles arranged into a v-shape, trimmed in a shade of dark red. Incidentally, Crossley wore padded white shorts which were different to those of his team-mates.

Nottingham-Forest-1991-1992-Umbro-goalkeeper-shirt-Crossley-padded-shorts-01

Come the autumn, it would be rolled out across most of Umbro’s contracts – Celtic, Everton and Tottenham were given bespoke styles.

 

 

In addition to the green, yellow and purple variations were commonly seen.

Pavel Srnicek tended to favour it at Newcastle (note how low the Newcastle Breweries star had to be) while it gained primacy at Nottingham Forest in the spring of 1992 – Crossley wore it in the Rumbelows Cup semi-final win over Tottenham Hotspur and, after he got injured, deputy Andy Marriott had it for that final loss to Manchester United and the ZDF Cup final win over Southampton.

When Crossley returned to the team, he was in yellow as they won 2-1 at Old Trafford to dent Manchester United’s title hopes (a game where Ryan Giggs wore 10 for United, incidentally).

There was also a purple variant. Kevin Hitchcock of Chelsea used it quite a bit – referees seemingly having no problem with its closeness to blue, and Erik Thorstvedt of Tottenham also had to call upon that option away to Sheffield Wednesday.

Spurs’ two goalkeeper shirts were yellow, which clashed with their own away kit, and blue, which obviously couldn’t be used against Wednesday.

 

We said three colours were seen on-pitch above, but there is a tantalising possibility that there was a fourth, blue, option.

The easiest explanation is that that’s a picture of a green shirt and it looks blue – but the doubt comes from the fact that the green had a white number. Unfortunately, we have no evidence of John Lukic wearing it.

STOP PRESS: Proof has come that the blue was worn, by Andy Rhodes of Dunfermline Athletic:

Dunfermline-Athletic-1991-1992-Umbro-goalkeeper-shirt-Andy-Rhodes-01

In contrast to the Hampden, which had a durable lifespan of three years or so, this successor (dubbed ‘Premier’ in an American Umbro catalogue, but we’re not sure if that was the ‘real’ name) was supplanted after just a season.

The same three base colours were used, albeit with slight shade differences, with chalkstripes instead of the triangles. However, a big change was that, with match officials in the new Premier League wearing green instead of black, yellow was the most popular goalkeeper shirt.

 

 

 

 

You’ll notice that the crests were now housed in shields. Umbro had employed a retro design feel to their new outfield shirts, and each goalkeeper’s shirt was the exact same as the shield his team-mates had on their new shirts.

With clubs who had new homes – Villa, Ipswich, Forest and Sheffield United – the club colours matched quite well, while the new aways of Chelsea and Oldham used the same palette and so they matched too.

However, Man City’s new change kit was purple, while Sheffield Wednesday’s was yellow and black.

That looked fine when Chris Woods wore his own yellow shirt, but when Wednesday had to change he generally donned purple, while green was used in an early-season Coca-Cola Cup game (officials in the cups still wore black), before Wednesday secured Sanderson as sponsors.

 

Wednesday made it to the league cup final, where they played Arsenal. Both sides wore the same special inscription on their shirts, and, instead of the shield crest, Woods had exactly the same Umbro logo and crest as the rest of the team – who also had the Sanderson wordmark in black, as on the away kit, rather than usual red.

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Again, Hitchcock was quite often seen in purple as well.

Chelsea-1992-1993-Umbro-goalkeeper-shirt-purple-Hitchcock-01

Obviously, the purple wasn’t suitable for Aston Villa’s Nigel Spink or Mark Bosnich when the yellow wasn’t available, so green was allowed. Incidentally, Manchester United had changed to Umbro in the summer of 1992 and Peter Schmeichel had a green shirt too but the extra colours on it meant that it was allowed in the league, except at home to Liverpool.

In the new Division 1 of the Football League, Derby County and Newcastle United also had green as the officials there were still in black too. Peter Shilton had left Derby by this time – whereas he had no problem wearing Umbro for England, with the Rams he generally wore an Uhlsport 544 shirt.

 

The previous design still retained some use, though. When Spurs went to Sheffield Wednesday early in the season, Ian Walker wore green this time rather than purple. Incidentally, it featured the updated Umbro logo with capped wordmark.

Tottenham-Hotspur-Spurs-1992-1993-Umbro-green-goalkeeper-shirt-Sheffield-Wednesday-01

That was in September, but prior to that, there must have been a delay in the arrival of the new shirts at Wednesday’s neighbours Sheffield United.

On the opening day of the season, they hosted Manchester United and goalkeeper Simon Tracey wore a yellow 1991-92 shirt, with Football League sleeve patches and, oddest of all, some triangles missing.

Sheffield-United-1992-1993-Umbro-goalkeeper-shirt-yellow-Simon-Tracey-01

Sheffield Wednesday also reached the FA Cup final, with Arsenal again the opponents.

As with Crossley two years previously, Umbro gave Woods a new design, but after the replay defeat he wouldn’t wear it again as the Owls signed a deal with Puma, and while it would see some use – Packie Bonner of Celtic wearing it in yellow while Chelsea’s Dimitri Kharine wore a red version in 1994-95, a different Umbro style was favoured in 1993-94.

We may look at that in a future article, if we can learn how to draw it.

Great one-offs – Aston Villa, 1994

24 Tuesday Apr 2018

Posted by in Kit history, One-offs

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Having denied Manchester United a domestic treble in winning the 1993-94 Coca-Cola Cup, Aston Villa qualified for the following season’s UEFA Cup and were drawn with Inter Milan.

This was still a time when home sides generally changed when a colour-clash occurred and Inter wore white in the first leg in the San Siro.

With Villa’s away kit at the time being green and black stripes, they had to put a contingency plan in place for the game at Villa Park, as this page from the programme shows (thanks to Dave Hitchman, owner of a huge collection of Villa shirts).

However, as the article mentioned, there was a chance that the new shirt wouldn’t be needed and so it proved, with the white shorts and socks on Villa’s home kit deemed to be providing enough differentiation.

A 1-0 home win for Villa meant the tie finished 1-1 on aggregate and they progressed on penalties – with their opponents in the next round being Trabzonspor.

The Turkish club had chosen claret and blue as their colours as a tribute to Villa and in the first leg they changed to white with Villa in their home strip as the hosts won 1-0.

Back in Birmingham, Trabzonspor were in claret and blue stripes and either the UEFA delegate or the referee effectively decided Villa’s away strip clashed with their home colours – or else the black officials’ kit – and so the white shirt was called into action.

Aston-Villa-1994-1995-asics-third-shirt-Trabzonspor-01.png

Villa won 2-1 on the night, but it wasn’t enough as they exited on away goals and the white shirts saw no more action.

Fantasy Kit Friday, 26-1-18 – Aston Villa/Birmingham 1987 crossover

26 Friday Jan 2018

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Birmingham City fan Terry Griffin came up with an idea…

…and we were only too happy to respond.

For Villa, the stripe on the midriff raised the question of whether the sleeves should be claret or blue, given how it affects the colour-proportions, but we went with the traditional.

Aston-Villa-Matchwinner-Birmingham-1987-01

The ‘Danish Dynamite’ style generally had a third accent colour, but in 1986 Birmingham had reverted to simple blue and white. We tried it with the previous red tertiary colour restored, but it didn’t look right.

Birmingham-City-hummel-Aston-Villa-01

Midweek Mashup – Aston Villa, 1989

02 Wednesday Aug 2017

Posted by in Change kits, Clashes, Midweek Mashup

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For Aston Villa, sky-blue shorts are a regular go-to alternative when required.

A while back, we looked at how they were one of the options in 2011-12 season – and last season they also had mix-and-match options. In fact, in 2000-01, the home shorts were sky-blue.

Even if the away kit doesn’t complement the home colours, they’ve generally had change blue shorts, but for some reason, the start to the 1989-90 season – when Villa would go on to finish second – was an exception.

Why this should be the case was something of a surprise – they were still with Hummel and their previous sets, in the style of the 1986 Denmark kits, allowed for a lot of combinations.

The new away shirt was white with black sleeves and purple trim, but one would have thought that the previous claret shorts could have been used when required.

With the claret of the new home shirt slightly darker, it meant that Villa opted to wear it away to teams in red, with the away usually seen against sides in blue (due to referees seeking sleeve differentiation).

As the fixture-list would have it, Villa’s first league game of the season was away to Nottingham Forest. The home shirts were deemed okay, but the shorts had to be changed and so the away set were called into action:

Aston-Villa-1989-1990-hummel-home-shirt-away-black-shorts-Forest-01

Certainly unusual, but it didn’t seem to affect Villa as they drew 1-1. They would actually draw their first three games by that score before losing 2-1 at Southampton, but they bounced back thereafter and ended up finishing second to Liverpool.

By the end of the season though, Hummel had finally come up with blue shorts.

Fantasy Kit Friday, 21-7-17

20 Thursday Jul 2017

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It’s just over two months since Andrew Taylor got in touch with a request to redo Nottingham Forest’s mid-90s Umbro outfits as Aston Villa kits.

Obviously, the 90s were fairly full-on in terms of design, so it has taken a while to find the time – and the mental resolve – to have a go at them.

The home wasn’t too hard to draw, to be fair. The main quibble people might have is the absence of blue sleeves but we tried that, with the side panels in white or gold, and it was a bit of a mess. The claret socks are perhaps not ideally Villa either, but they did have them on their actual Reebok kit at the time.

Umbro-Aston-Villa-Fantasy-Kit-Friday-Nottingham-Forest-1995-home-01

The away was a different matter altogether. Full of the excesses which characterised the early-to-mid-90s, it featured an esoteric pattern which we have tried our best to replicate, obviously substituting the Forest elements with Villa markings, and using their 95-96 away colour scheme.

Umbro-Aston-Villa-Fantasy-Kit-Friday-Nottingham-Forest-1995-away-01

Liverpool v Aston Villa, 1993 – an impromptu referee kit-change

19 Monday Dec 2016

Posted by 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:

ref

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.

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In the summer of 1993, Aston Villa switched from Umbro to Asics, and their new away featured green and black stripes, outlined in red.

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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).

ref2

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.

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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.

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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.

Away kits at home in the Premier League era

20 Sunday Nov 2016

Posted by in Change kits, Clashes

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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:

blackburn-away-1992-to-93-action2.jpg

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.

Fulham-Newcastle-2003.jpg

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…

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…but while the first half was ongoing another set was being prepared, with the logo of club partners Acorns being affixed.

Soccer - Barclays Premier League - Aston Villa v West Ham United - Villa Park

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.

Aston Villa’s nine kit combinations in 2011-12

13 Thursday Oct 2016

Posted by 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.

Nike-Aston-Villa-2011-2012-alternative-home-kit-fulham.png

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.

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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.

Nike-Aston-Villa-2011-2012-alternative-away-kit-chelsea.png

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.

Nike-Aston-Villa-2011-2012-alternative-away-kit-arsenal.png

 

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.

Nike-Aston-Villa-2011-2012-alternative-home-kit-newcastle.png

 

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.

Nike-Aston-Villa-2011-2012-alternative-home-kit-blackburn.png

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.

Nike-Aston-Villa-2011-2012-alternative-away-kit-liverpool.png

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).