Gary James
Well-Known Member
I assume people are getting the kit stats from the Historical Kits website but I'd like to stress that the website, though excellent, is not entirely accurate and where gaps exist it relies on fans to get in touch and contribute. For example I have colour photos from the 1962-63 season which clearly show City wearing white socks, but the website claims they wore blue with a maroon line. Until the day comes when someone, preferably a MCFC researcher, documents every season and produces images to show what kits were worn, then I'd say it's impossible to say what City's most worn socks were. Even within seasons the socks were not consistent (neither were the shirts at times!) and so we actually need game by game analysis. That's easy for the PL era because almost every game has been filmed, but for earlier games we have to rely on description, photos (majority of which will be in black and white), film and memory. I'd love to do a kit book, but in my research to date I've found so many inconsistencies that even a City enthusiast writing about City's kits will not get it right.
Incidentally, I believe we wore black socks for many years before 1951 and some people have assumed they are always navy (black & white photos again!).
In terms of general colours... sky blue (previously City have also worn Cornflower Blue, Cambridge Blue, Laser Blue and almost every shade of pale/sky blue) shirts, white shorts are our traditional colours. As for socks - anyone's guess really, but I'd suggest our best were sky blue with maroon and white turnovers. We could even wear maroon numbers like we have done on occasion.
Away traditional colours - maroon shirts & white shorts. People automatically assume red & black stripes but maroon is the shirt colour we've worn second most after blue. Personally if we have to have 3 kits (modern football hey?) then I'd always suggest sky blue shirts/white shorts; maroon shirts/white shorts and red/black stripes/black shorts but I will say that Stripes always get messed around with now that shirts have sponsors & players names on. I always liked the diagonal kits though and would love a unique new style of diagonal kit preferably red/black diagonal on royal blue; or maybe even a maroon with blue & white diagonal, but I guess we all have our own crazy ideas. It's up to the experts at Nike & City to get this right.
(NOTE: On the Historical Kits site it references my MCFC Hall of Fame book as being where the evidence of some kits is from - in that book I never mention the type of kit worn. There are some images of players but from that era they are either black & white photos or coloured cig cards/Topical Times cards where a certain amount of artistic licence appears. I have seen cards where a player is clearly wearing another team's kit but the shirt's been coloured to match their current club, so I'd hate anyone to think that because my books are referenced on that site that I explain about the colours in my book because I don't, certainly not in that book anyway).
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