Arsenal Wore Red Shorts and Socks Against Watford "For Commercial Reasons"
Update: According to Twitter user and Arsenal shirt specialist @Arsenalshirt, red shorts and socks were worn against Watford last weekend for commercial reasons. He claims that Arsenal and Adidas decided on this together.
Confirmed from @Arsenal, yesterday's decision to wear red shorts was a commercial decision from the club in partnership with @adidasfootball. The players were fully supportive of the move. The shorts remain not for sale bar only a few pairs at the start of the season. pic.twitter.com/FJWNJWUNKy
— Arsenal Shirt Collection (@ArsenalShirt) March 7, 2022
It would seem that the move was intended to promote sales of the red shorts, but only a small amount of pairs were available at the beginning of the season and are all sold out. Another possibility is that they were testing the fans reaction to see if the combination would be popular enough to use more regularly in the future and therefore sell more of the red shorts.
The decision defintely worked in terms of publicity as a lot of attention was drawn to the kit, including the shirt. This could end up boosting sales of the shirt as we move towards the end of the season.
Original:Arsenal wore red shorts and socks with their home kit in this afternoon’s game against Watford, despite there being no risk of a kit clash.
Arsenal Avoid Non-existent clash
Watford wore their home strip of a yellow jersey with black shorts and yellow socks, with none of these colors being present in Arsenal’s usual home kit of a red and white shirt, white shorts, and white socks. In fact, the standard home kit combination would have provided the most contrast possible for the shorts, so it could not have been in violation of the Premier League rules, which state:
When playing in league matches the players of each participating club shall wear a strip which is of a sufficient contrast that match officials, spectators and television viewers will be able to distinguish clearly between the two teams.
It is unclear for now what the Gunners' motivation was to opt for this alternative look. The last time they wore red shorts was against Napoli in the 19-20 season at the behest of Uefa, in order to prevent both teams from wearing white on their bottom halves. The same thing had happened against West Brom in December 2017, which marked the first time in 40 years that they had sported such a look, that instance being a game against QPR.
Previous instances vs West Brom (17-18) and Napoli(19-20)
What do you think of this different look for Arsenal? Would you like to see them kitted out like this more often? Comment below.
