By April 13, 1996, Manchester United appeared on an unstoppable charge to the Premier League title.
Alex Ferguson’s side had won ten of their last 11 matches
and, in the process, overhauled Newcastle’s 12-point lead.
With four games left, and a six-point cushion, they travelled to Southampton
and, despite Ferguson’s pre-match protestations, turned out in glum
grey – their Umbro-produced second kit worn four times already that season without a win.
And Fergie’s paranoia had deepened by half-time,
as United trailed 3-0, after goals from Ken Monkou, Neil Shipperley and Matt Le Tissier.
In response, he forced his players to change into their blue-and-white third strip,
explaining afterwards that they “couldn’t pick each other out in grey.”
United lost the game, but did win the second half – and would of course go on to win the title.
So, was Ferguson simply a sore loser or did the
grey kit genuinely almost cost Manchester United the league?
Well, there was scientific evidence behind his distaste for the grey strip. World-renowned
vision specialist and long-time United employee Gail Stephenson had warned him about the perils
of playing in grey. The Liverpool University professor stressed as early as pre-season that the
kit could affect the success-rate of aerial passes and diminish focus. Much to Ferguson’s dismay,
commercial commitments prevailed. Then United chairman Martin Edwards saw the
kit as groundbreaking because it was designed to function as both a football strip and leisurewear.
And, actually, the stats don’t support the science.
Since the inception of the Premier League in 1992 until the end of the 2019-20 season, grey has been
worn as the majority kit colour in 171 games with the side sporting it victorious 65 times.
That’s a healthy win-percentage of 38% – a number even more impressive considering all of those
victories were earned away from home and that the average win-percentage on the road is just 26%.
In fact, Grey is the fourth most successful majority colour behind runaway-leader red,
blue and claret.
It is hardly surprising that red is the most successful colour given 17 of the Premier
League’s 28 champions have had it as their home kit. At the other extreme, Swindon Town,
Middlesbrough and Nottingham Forest are amongst those dragging down its average.
Blue, meanwhile, is on the rise in the Premier League colours table,
recently surpassing claret in second place following Manchester City’s 2018-19 title win.
Liverpool’s first top-flight triumph since 1989-90 last season broke a streak of six
straight champions in blue, starting with Manuel Pellegrini’s Manchester City in 2013-14.
But even with four Premier League titles to their name, City’s sky blue
is still not a historically dominant colour with a win-percentage of under 35% - Coventry
City’s underwhelming 76 victories in 271 Premier League partly to blame.
Gail Stephenson also argued natural colours, like sky-blue, that blend
in with the environment are less visible and thus contribute to sub-par performances. The
most ‘mediocre’ colours are black and white
which won’t please Newcastle United fans. Both lose slightly more than they win.
And the most jinxed colour is green rather than grey. Leeds United were the first English side
to complain about wearing it in December 1995 and it’s the only colour to have a
loss-percentage of over 50 percent. Teams in it have taken a miserable 359 points from 385
games and seven of the last 15 teams relegated from the Premier League have had a green kit.
Yellow and orange are also in the ‘relegation zone’, suggesting brighter isn’t necessarily
better. Naturally, there’ll be those who argue that such analysis is manipulated to fit a neat
narrative. And it is true that isolating colours discounts other obvious factors determining
performance - mostly notably the players own skills and the tactics of their coaches.
But there is data that suggests colour may indeed influence psychology, and that’s most
apparent when looking at away form. Curiously, home kits do not perform well on the road
even though they remain the preferred choice when eligible for important games and derbies.
Teams used their home strips, or a variation of it, in almost half their
away fixtures last season, averaging an underwhelming one point per game
whilst taking 25 percent more points in away strips across the season.
Only five sides had a better record in their home colours compared to their away
ones. Manchester United benefited the most from using their home strip away from Old Trafford
winning over half a point more on average. Yet for Manchester City, like 14 other clubs,
it was the opposite: they took nearly a full point less in their sky-blue kit. It’s not
just outfield players’ shirts that matter, either. Goalkeeper jerseys and influence outcomes as well.
The science suggests red might actually be the best colour for keepers – news that won’t
please former England goalie David Seaman, who moaned his majority-scarlet Euro 96’ kit
made him look like “a packet of sweets.” Red is not a popular jersey choice with
Premier League goalies and no club picked it as their main shirt colour last season.
This was a big mistake according to University of Chichester sports psychologists
Iain Greenlees and Michael Eynon. In a 2013 study, the pair proved that players are twice
as likely to miss a penalty if a goalkeeper is wearing red compared to green or blue.
Greenlees theorized that red fills penalty takers with fear and in open play has an almost
magnetic effect enticing players to shoot straight at the keeper. Perhaps that’s why former England
keeper Ben Foster pulled off a record 996 stops between 2010 and 2020 with plenty of them coming
in red for Watford. But such considerations will obviously never lead the conversation,
with every aspect of the modern football kit instructed by commercial considerations. So, as
the Premier League evolves, we are far more likely to see additional strips, styles and ultimately
colours regardless of whether homogeneity and high visibility are the purest formula for success.
If a team were ever to switch kits again at half-time, it will probably be a marketing stunt
rather than a protest.