/ Dan Fitch / 01 April 2011 / 1 Comments 
City's loyal supporters have had their faith tested by some of the club's kits.
Dan Fitch takes a look at the worst Manchester City kits of all time.
When it comes to football kits, Manchester City's sky blue shirt is one of the most most recognisable in the English game. It's one of those shirts that has always looked cool, from the days when it was worn by Lee, Bell and Summerbee, to the iconic shots of the Gallaghers clad in the Brother sponsored efforts of the mid-nineties.
There's also been some nice away shirts through the years, from the white shirt with red and black slash, to the violet number that made City look like Fiorentina. However, with kits now being updated every season, it's difficult to always get it right and Manchester City have worn their fair share of stinkers. Here are the five worst Manchester City kits of all time.
Despite the connotations with their rivals down the road, City's red and black away strips have normally looked pretty sharp. Even the one that looked like a draughts board.
This striped effort did not quite hit the mark though. In order to differentiate it from previous efforts, Umbro slapped two entirely unnecessary patches onto the shirt, made of some sort of strange netting material through which you could clearly see the red and black stripes underneath.
Whoever designed the kits at Kappa during the late-nineties must have worn sunglasses while working. It was during the Italian firm's tenure as City's kit provider that the famous sky blue was replaced by a lurid electric blue number, but it had nothing on this away shirt.
Black and red stripes go together - just ask AC Milan, but this marriage of black and florescent yellow was less successful. Still, at least there would have been no need to abandon the game if the Maine Road floodlights had given out.
A decade after the bright yellow stripes, City returned to a day-glo change strip. Le Coq Sportif's kits for City always looked pretty cheap, which is no surprise considering the amount of toweling 'leisure wear' they manufacture for Mike Ashley's horrible shops.
The problem with this shirt is not just the workman orange, but also the design, which would have been offensive even if it wasn't brought to life with colours capable of burning your retinas.
The orange number was somewhat reminiscent of another third kit from the 2005/06 season, which also featured a horrible colour and a design that looked like it had been scribbled on a beer mat, five minutes before it had to be handed in.
Reebok are responsible for this shirt, which would have looked reasonable if a little garish, had the designer just kept the black to the shoulders. Perhaps his yellow felt tip ran out.
Every now and then a football club will try to pull off a silver coloured shirt, but what looks good on a car made of metal, doesn't look so great on a shirt made of polyester.
Congratulations go out to Le Coq Sportif for being the only manufacturer to have two of their shirts featured on their list. The worst City shirt of all time is another that would have been passable, had they just kept the flourishes to a minimum. Instead they stuck a lime green bar running up the middle of the shirt and then splashed a bit on the cuff. City were the unlucky recipients of this kit, but it's so random that it could have been worn by anyone.
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