Manchester City are the new Premier League Champions. Thanks to West Brom’s win at Manchester United two weekends ago “the blue half of Manchester” can celebrate their team’s third league win in seven seasons. It also means that, for the fifth season in a row, the top team in English football wears blue kit. This has never happened before.

For the record, the last five Premier League champions are:

2018 Manchester City
2017 Chelsea
2016 Leicester City
2015 Chelsea
2014 Manchester City

The 2013 champions were Manchester United, who wear red. If you have followed English football in recent decades, with either a passing interest or as a full-blown fan, you will be aware that teams in red have dominated domestic competitions over the last 40 years. Since the Premier League began, in 1992-93, the winning teams have all worn blue or red, and red more often than blue.

The last time that the top division was won by a team wearing a different-coloured kit was in 1992, on this very date. It was the last season of the old Football League, before the top teams broke away to form the Premier League. Leeds United, the team I follow, were champions, wearing white home kits, and yellow away shirts. I wrote about it on this date two years ago, here, and was pleased to see that today’s episode of “The Chase” commemorated the event, with a question about who managed Leeds that season. The options were George Graham, Howard Wilkinson, David O’Leary. The Chaser, Paul Sinha, got it right (Howard Wilkinson), the contestant got it wrong, and she was caught going for her high offer of £51,000.

My tendency to observe memorable dates and anniversaries has prompted me to spend time working out sequences of League winning teams and the colours they play in, stretching back to 1950. I have even set up a spreadsheet for this, and make no apologies for doing so. There are extracts from it towards the end of this piece, but first a few reflections.

As I noted earlier, this sequence of teams in blue winning five titles in a row has never happened before. There have been sequences of teams who wear the same colour winning five or more consecutive titles, but only when the colour has been red. The longest of these sequences, 9 seasons, ran from 1995-96 through to 2003-04. For simplicity I will refer to seasons from now onwards based on the year that the season finished, so the sequence was 1996-2004. Manchester United won 6 of those 9 titles (1996, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003) and Arsenal won the others (1998, 2002, 2004).

The red domination of English football began in earnest in 1976, when Liverpool began a run of 7 titles in 9 years (1976, 1977, 1979, 1980, 1982, 1983, 1984). Nottingham Forest also play in red, and were champions in 1978, ensuring a run of 5 red teams in a row between 1976 and 1980, the first time that this had happened. Aston Villa (in claret and blue) broke the sequence in 1981.

Before this red domination began there were three League titles in four years for teams in white (Derby County 1972, Leeds United 1974, Derby County again in 1975), and before that run the colours of the winning teams formed a more varied sequence. Between 1967 and 1974 the colours of the champions were different from year to year, in the following order: red, blue, white, blue, red, white, red, white (Manchester United, Manchester City, Leeds United, Everton, Arsenal, Derby County, Liverpool, Leeds United). Although I have spreadsheets with all of this information, I have typed that sequence from memory.

In fact I have got rather carried away with all of this. Having spent time thinking back through League winners I started comparing the colours of teams that won the other major domestic trophies (FA Cup and League Cup) and can confirm that all three have been won by teams wearing the same coloured shirts on several occasions. The first time it happened was 1970, when all three competitions were won by teams in blue: Everton (League), Chelsea (FA Cup), Manchester City (League Cup). If Chelsea beat Manchester United to win the FA Cup on 19 May it will be the second time that teams in blue have won all three trophies. In the intervening decades the three domestic competitions have all been won by teams in red on the following 8 occasions: 1979, 1983, 1989, 1990, 1993, 2001, 2003, 2004. The details appear in the tables below, first by team and then by kit colour.

Update (June 2018): Chelsea did beat Manchester United on 19 May, so, as in 1970, the three domestic trophies were all won by teams playing in blue. There is further speculation about teams and colours in this piece (“More about teams in blue and teams in red”).

Winners by team

Winners by kit colour