Can this argument get any more ridiculous?

They dominated the league that season, but in 5 games wearing that kit they lost 4 and drew 1.

The grey shirts don't need to "look green" to be difficult to pick out against a green backdrop. No one has ever claimed they literally changed colour. Perception by the human eye doesn't work that way. Zerbra stripes are a form of camolflage, but they don't live on fields of black and white snow.

Players - like riders moving through a field they assumed was empty - had difficulty quickly recognising teammates at distance.

They dominated the league that season, but in 5 games wearing that kit they lost 4 and drew 1.

The grey shirts don't need to "look green" to be difficult to pick out against a green backdrop. No one has ever claimed they literally changed colour. Perception by the human eye doesn't work that way. Zerbra stripes are a form of camolflage, but they don't live on fields of black and white snow.

Players - like riders moving through a field they assumed was empty - had difficulty quickly recognising teammates at distance.

They went 15-0-4 at home that season, and 10-6-3 away. That's still a substantial road discrepancy between with and without the grey kit (road only), but without checking strength of schedule the difference may or may not be significant.

I finally found a player account (Lee Sharpe) describing the incident and the effect:

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It was a roasting hot day at The Dell. We didn't have a great record there anyway, but this game went really badly - we were a goal down pretty quickly, and three behind by half-time. Obviously something had to change.

I'm not sure if any of the players mentioned the kit. Personally I felt that we were playing really poorly, and that we couldn't really blame anything or anyone but ourselves. Having said that, it was a bit tricky to see players. It was all right if you had a bit of time to look up and see what was happening, but you didn't see much if you only had time to glance. I think the weather had something to do with it too - the fact that it was so bright made our dull grey harder to make out.

Anyway, I don't think anyone had time to complain. The manager just stormed in and said: "Get that kit off, you're getting changed." Those were the first words he said at half-time. I don't think he liked the shirt anyway - our results had been poor whenever we wore it, and we certainly never played in it again.

It seems a bit strange that we were ready with a totally different kit to change into, but maybe it's because someone thought that the grey kit might be confused with Southampton's - although given that they wear red and white stripes it doesn't seem very likely. We wore blue and white in the second half, and played a bit better. I'd probably put it down to a mixture of the new kit and the manager's hairdryer treatment at half-time. We didn't let any more in and Ryan Giggs scored towards the end.

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Note that it's the brightness, not the pitch color, that he attributes to making it difficult to see. But is the effect comparable to the Riders of Rohan "moving through a field that they assumed was empty"?

Not at all, IMO. Unlike the soccer player having trouble when he takes a quick glance, the Riders had plenty of time to react. Unlike the players, there were 105 of them to react. Unlike the players, they were warriors who had recently fought a battle and were on high alert for further orcs. Ugluk certainly had a high opinion of their skills of observation:

"But these Whiteskins have better night-eyes than most Men, from all I've heard, and don't forget their horses! They can see the night-breeze, or so it's said."

Grishnakh would probably share that opinion, given that he was detected by a faint ring and a small glint, at night, lying on the ground, in a wide open space with only one fire, and was hit by an arrow immediately and was quickly ridden down.

Here's where the companions, sitting on the ground in their cloaks and waiting for the Rohirrim to notice them encountered the line of riders:

"In pairs they galloped by. And though every now and then one rose in his stirrups and gazed ahead and to either side, they appeared not to perceive the three strangers sitting silently and watching them. The host had almost passed when suddenly Aragorn stood up, and called in a loud voice: 'What news from the North, Riders of Rohan?'

With astonishing speed and skill they checked their steeds, wheeled, and came charging round..."

And Eomer asks: "And strange too is your raiment. Have you sprung out of the grass? How did you escape our sight? Are you elvish folk?"

This clearly is not your garden variety camo. You say that grey doesn't need to "look green" to be difficult to pick out against green, and I'll grant that may be true. BUT -- the text of the Fellowship of the Ring clearly establishes that the cloaks, in fact, CAN look green. Man United's lame/legitimate/superstitious (pick one) excuse about the poor visibility of their grey kit doesn't include the slightest hint that the cause is the grey looking green, but Tolkien explicitly says that the cloaks can look green when they are introduced.

I don't get why you would criticize on thematic grounds, yet reject the text.

Can this argument get any more ridiculous?

Obviously it can!

"The green of shadowed leaves" is not a generic grass green. I'm not ignoring the text at all.

Either way there is no way that the image from the card in question is depicting the grey cloaks of the elves of Lorien. It's a generic fantasy elf/Peter Jackson movie elf with the wrong label applied.

This is probably one of the only things I dislike about this community... Spend more time arguing about the things that matter, probably, the least. Is the art beautiful? Yes!! Then let's move on please.

BTW, Ian, loved the grey elf picture. Confused me for a sec, cuz I thought the image was just not loading correctly, but then I got it.