The former Reds and England striker joined the La Liga giants for £8 million in the summer of 2004, having scored 158 goals in 297 games for the Merseyside club. His time at the Santiago Bernabeu was much less successful, however: Owen lasted only one season in which he scored 16 goals in 45 games for Madrid. The former striker has admitted that he was heartbroken to leave the club where he started his career, and recalled his emotional journey to Real Madrid. Speaking about that 2004 summer transfer window in the latest issue of FourFourTwo magazine, he said: “The last thing I thought was that I was going to leave Liverpool. Related: The 30 best Premier League kits of the 90's [FourFourTwo] Just as you would probably prefer to avoid your fashion sense from the ’90s being raked over on the internet, we’ve been kind to certain Premier League clubs by ignoring their various monstrosities and focusing on some of the more acceptable replica shirts from the first eight seasons of the rebranded top flight. In the division’s inaugural campaigns they even produced this wondrous home jersey, with the sponsor’s logo blending neatly with the blue and white stripes. We’re prepared to admit that Chelsea’s away kit in the mid-1990s is the Marmite of this particular category, but here at FourFourTwo we’re huge fans of food spreads made from yeast extract. The black chequered pattern on the shoulder adds something a bit different, as does the splash of white in the top right corner. The incongruous presence of Attilio Lombardo in their team was one silver lining, as was a fantastic home kit which got the balance between red and blue absolutely right. For a long time in 1992/93 it looked as if Villa were going to win the title, even if Ron Atkinson’s side ultimately finished 10 points adrift of champions Manchester United. The dashes of gold throughout the shirt, shorts and socks make for a fine contrast, and the fact Eric Cantona was around to model it helped Umbro's cause no end. Once they went black, United never should have gone back. This kit should bring back bad memories for Forest fans: the team being relegated, Brian Clough retiring, Robert Rosario existing. Wimbledon’s 1992/93 offering makes it in on a technicality, qualifying purely on the basis that the Dons didn’t carry a sponsor on their shirt that season. An always-winning combo of blue and yellow is the main reason for its success, while the top simply looks nice and clean too. It looks just like a collarless shirt you could imagine Lee Sharpe or Ryan Giggs putting on to go down the disco circa 1993. Green, black, thick lines – the more we think about it, the less we like it, but the fact it’s so representative of the decade means it’s impossible to leave this Villa shirt out. This one looks a little like something you’d find in the River Island spring sale, but it’s a pleasing combination of simple (straight up-and-down pinstripes) and unusual (purple kits aren’t that common outside of Florence). The only quibble we have is the positioning of the sponsor’s logo – it’s probably a bit too high, but at least Packard Bell had the decency to make their emblem relatively small and unobtrusive. Oldham didn’t make much of an impact in the Premier League, narrowly surviving in 1992/93 before falling through the trapdoor the following season. In the two-and-a-half decades since then, they haven’t even come close to sealing a return to the promised land, dropping to the third tier just in time for Tony Blair's 1997 election win and staying there ever since. Nice kits and success don’t always go hand-in-hand (Manchester United’s home shirt in 1999 was, for instance, terrible), but Blackburn supporters must have been extra delighted that their title triumph was achieved in such terrific togs. Their away shirt was better than the home, neatly blending black and red while also accentuating the Lancashire Rose in the club’s badge. Pinstripes always look smart on a football shirt, so this Chelsea number from the Premier League’s inaugural season was always going to make the cut. Talking of style, the classy Glenn Hoddle could probably make any football top look elegant, even when he was nearing his late thirties. Or maybe it’s the placement of the single stripe across the chest, not too big but not too small, linking badge and manufacturer with a colour that matched the sponsor. This looks like a last-minute job: in the last week of July 1998, someone at the Le Coq Sportif factory (wherever that is, presumably France) suddenly sat bolt upright and screamed: “THE COVENTRY AWAY KIT! But this kit somehow works, perhaps through sheer luck, perhaps because they’re Le Coq Sportif and are therefore natural geniuses who can produce beautiful sportswear even whenthey’re up against the clock. This, and an even brighter yellow one a couple of years earlier, meant Blades away ends often looked like congregations of matchday stewards. This would be a pretty sweet kit anyway, employing the underused hoops formation, paired with a tasteful dark blue and maroon colour scheme, along with that collar Miles off of This Life always seemed to have on his shirts. The Coventry away kit everyone remembers is that brown one from 1978, but this from 1996/97 is significantly better and has the benefit of not making every player look like they’ve violently soiled themselves. This effort from the Premier League’s maiden campaign did have a billowy element, and signalled the early years of Liverpool being, frankly, a bit pants. Football and advertising started to get themselves together properly in the ’90s: that may or may not be a good thing, but the campaign Umbro ran to go with their Newton Heath-inspired half-and-half yellow and green strip was certainly memorable. This was a belter, perhaps looking a little more like television interference than is ideal, but providing an iconic Adidas pattern that lives on today in hipster corners of east London. Retro kit designs can be a bit hit and miss: a pleasing nod to the past, or a lazy neglect of ideas? OK, Ian Bishop, Trevor Morley and Tim Breacker weren’t quite Geoff Hurst, Martin Peters and Bobby Moore, but a kit design can only do so much. And this kit design does a great deal, beating off significant competition to take top spot in our ranking.
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