I was reading an article on the BBC website this morning about how laughably crap Manchester United are when something made me think.
The article, which can be found here if anyone is interested, refers to United as “the Reds”.
I recall researching this before and discovering that United have only worn a red shirt continually since 1934. Liverpool started wearing red in 1896, so we definitely deserve to be called “the Reds” more than them.
The only problem is that two clubs wore red kits before us. One, Accrington, no longer exists (Accrington Stanley is a completely separate club and doesn’t wear red anyway), but Nottingham Forest first donned a red shirt way back in 1862. Come to think of it, I was there. As an aside, their very first kit looked like something a modern Internet billionaire would wear, and can be found here.
So if anyone deserves the epithet “the Reds”, it is actually Nottingham Forest. However, as they prefer “the Tricky Trees”, I have come to the conclusion that we are the original (and, obviously, best) Reds.
Not sure The Reds could always apply to Utd. For example, when they won the European Cup in 1968, they were wearing a Blue kit. They wore a Blue kit when I saw them at Anfield in 1970.
I know we have worn White and Yellow kits at differing junctures, so maybe it is worth considering who actually changed the colour of their (away) kits first
What’s most annoying is how they seem to think they own the name ‘United’.
There are loads of other Uniteds (admittedly, all shit), so why is it, when some Cockney says “I support United”, we’re all supposed to know they mean the Salford cloggers?
