It’s Friday evening, we’re on an international break and the long, long summer transfer window has finally closed; time for something a little light hearted. How about the colour of socks?

Yes, I really did this, but I cannot possibly stress this enough: I really, really don’t care about the colour of socks on our home kit. Or our away kit for that matter.

However, a lot of people apparently really do and are still venting their spleens on the interwebz about how untraditional this season’s black socks are.

So, just for fun, I thought I’d have a look at just how far Nike have deviated from our proud history. I cross referenced the information available at the excellent Historical Football Kits with my own data covering our active seasons.

Including the “Cup Years”, before the formation of the Football League, and excluding gaps for the two World Wars, I colour coded each season to represent the colour of the socks on the home kit. Here’s the result:

Oh. There’s actually a fair bit of black in there, isn’t there? In actual fact, black socks are second only to claret socks and the percentage might have been a bit higher if it weren’t for that chap with the odd moustache in Germany:

When oh when will these bloody Nike people stop messing with our heritage? It makes me so mad my brain hurts! Grrrr.