In 1993 Manchester based kit manufacturers Umbro struck gold when they took over from Adidas to win the right to make United kits. The red home shirt was the most popular selling shirt in the world and with as many as 3 kits on the go at once they made a killing every August and Christmas. Umbro used the away kit to experiment with a myriad of different colours and combinations: blue, black, white, gold and green halves, blue and white stripes.

The most infamous kit was the hideous grey strip of 1996 which United never won a game in - players complained the kit's pattern made them blend into the crowd and hard to pick out. The best home shirt is probably the 1998-2000 with the fancy stripes down the arms, the worst is the 1996-98 effort that had that strange pattern on the sleeves and seemed a bit too baggy. The 2001-2002 shirts were the last from Umbro as Nike took over from season 2002-2003 in a whopping £300 million deal over 10 years.

Now "owned" by the American Glazer family Manchester United also has the connection of being quite popular in the football apathetic United States of America. British ex-patriots can often be found in bars in New York, Chicago and LA at 7am on Sunday/Saturday mornings watching United via satellite. Tours of the US have always proved highly popular and venues are always sold out. United even had a partnership with "The Manchester United of baseball", The New York Yankees but nothing much materialised.

With the USA's growing Hispanic population, David Beckham at LA Galaxy and great interest amongst the younger people, football may take off - United would surely be the leader followed by the big European teams such as Juventus and Barcelona in terms of popularity. However its still hard to imagine too many red shirts being worn in downtown LA or Manhattan........