Premier League new kits 2024-25: every home and away shirt ranked

Thom Gibbs cuts through the flummery and marketing-speak to deliver his definitive verdict

We are approaching the start of the Premier League season, a time of year beloved by football fans, football clubs and their treasured extended family of official partners. 
Mere days now until the best 20 teams in England can finally end all the talking and focus on what this is all about: unleashing their chosen Asian sportsbook and casino platform and having them battle their rivals, like gambling Pokemon.
Such is the excitement, the overwhelming majority of teams take this opportunity to launch a new home and away kit every year. But there are some early signs of a turning tide in this area. For the third year in a row Brentford stick with one of their kits in its second year (home, it was away last season) and Luton are doing the same with their home kit this season two, albeit in the Championship.
Tough to imagine the rest of the teams will opt to leave any money on the table given PSR, there will always be a healthy proportion of fans who buy a new shirt every season. But imagine the PR win if a Champions League regular said we’re sticking with this kit for two years. It can go the other way, of course. We should all be grateful we’ve seen the last of the upsettingly bright 2023/24 Arsenal away kit.
Here’s who is making what this season in the top flight:
And here is our official and binding ranking, beginning with the worst. Only Aston Villa on the naughty step this year with their away kit yet to be released, which will be slotted in when available:
For a long time the kneejerk reaction to a bad shirt was to say it looked like a training top. Then training tops took offence and became largely amazing, so we need a new insult. Wolves and their new friends Sudu (backed by Chinese owner Fosun) have generously provided it: This looks like a fan-made concept kit. Dreadful. Sure it’s just a trick of the angle but the socks also look to have the dimensions of a disappointingly small Christmas stocking.
Yikes. It’s certainly… bold? Do you really want to do that shade of yellow, that patterning, that sponsor all at once? You do? Well, you’re the boss, Puma. Or rather, we’re too frightened to argue in case you come up with something even worse. Quite, quite unpleasant.
You know when you’re redecorating the bathroom, strip back the wallpaper and find the previous decor, from a time that taste forgot? Like any normal person you post the picture on social media and have a jolly good laugh before destroying it and replacing it with something nicer. You do not launch it as a kit and charge £65 for it. “BJ88” certainly feels like someone from China is laughing at us too.
Amusing that the slightly risque spraypainted pattern maintains an exclusion zone around the ghastly sponsor. Colour a bit vomit-y, after a big night out on a lethal combination of Advocaat and salmon, which I suppose is one way to enliven an all-black kit.
Come on. The despairing sort, not the exultant “halved lead with 10 minutes left” sort. Maybe the pink and navy works, maybe the line patterns too, but not together and certainly not if you’re also inviting a self-described “leading digital sports platform”. Take a wild guess what that is a euphemism for.
My, what a large eagle you have. Good cleaned-up crest, tasty cuffs but this trend for enormous animals (cf. Wolves away. Two counts as a trend) dominating the conversation must be resisted. You wouldn’t tolerate it from a big dog in the pub and we should not allow it on our away kits either.
Taking heavy inspiration from the 85-87 away shirt but fouling it up with distracting stripes, oddly mismatched shorts and one too many colours on the sleeve and short cuffs. Collar looks like an operator error.
A city-wide day of mourning was declared* when Southampton switched kit suppliers from Hummel to Puma. But there is little wrong with the basic template here. Red side panels are perhaps a bit too obtrusive but from a straight-on angle the curved-in bottom looks neat. Sponsor logo is a hospital pass though, and just too jarring to go from three years of Danish class to German route-one.
*NB: untrue.
Like when Don Henley invited Joe Walsh and Glenn Frey for dinner but there was only space for one: too many Eagles! Only Chelsea can rival Palace for most liberties taken with home kits in recent years and this is another brave attempt to break new ground but not a successful experiment. Looks like a weird thought you have just before you fall asleep.
Kaiyun you kick it? No you can’t, despite the presence of football.jpeg from the Clipart directory. Kaiyun you bet using it? Yes, but not in the UK. Perfect. The slanted stars forming in the pattern are pleasing as is the use of Adidas’ rear short swirl, a la Spain and several others at the last Euros. Just difficult to get past that sponsor which is aesthetically upsetting on about six different levels.
New shirt trend klaxon! Minimalist take on emblem klaxon! Tenuous klaxon klaxon! Unfortunately the luminous colour used for the Everton lock-up here makes it look like an inverted logo of early 90s kitwear manufacturers Influence, which will rouse complicated memories for fans of Portsmouth, Cardiff and Birmingham. Good 3D Tetris sublimated pattern, but too muted beyond that to stir strong feelings.
“Cockney kit” allegedly so perhaps only worn in London derbies or when the team bus passes within audible distance of the Bow Bells. Not a fan of all-black in anything other than rugby but enough contrast here with the claret and white for a David Moyes-style narrow pass. Sorry to bring him up, West Ham fans, but you do realise he’ll be back at some point in the next few years? You can sack him any time you like, but he will never leave.
Oh god, don’t make me look up the reasoning behind that silliness on the collar and arm cuffs. Looks like Aramaic script, which would be a good way to disguise anything you did not want to show up on your balance sheet. Manchester City deny all wrongdoing. Perhaps that is what it translates as? Look closer, it’s just the numbers 0161, the Manchester area code. The official justification, presented without judgement but a soundtrack of hard laughs, is as follows: “Manchester’s 0161 is more than an area code. It’s an accent, a swagger, a sense of what being Mancunian is all about – even if you aren’t Mancunian.” Bases: covered. Barrel: scraped. Just missing the use of “iconic” to describe an area code for landlines no one uses any more. So silly, and ruins what is otherwise an acceptable kit.
Ticking many vogueish boxes. Black, asymmetric colours, simplified emblem. Sure to win plenty of friends on the mean streets of Islington (sure one of them is mean) but the graphite-y trim is one idea too many which tips it into the middling category. Ctr+Z that unnecessary final flourish and we’d have had a kit on our hands.
Another example of how to undermine simple idea with unnecessary complications. Red and black stripes are of course positive, who doesn’t enjoy the work of AC Milan? But like the synthpop record label says: Italians do it better. They know not to add too much distracting white. The sponsor or the sleeve stripes, you can have one, not both. Fundamentally sound but look at Fulham’s 2008/09 version of this for an example of how to do it correctly:
Just cannot remember that minty turquoise ever elevating a kit, especially not when it is the only interesting choice on an all-black set. Safe and sedate.
Farewell Hummel, hello Castore. What’s the worst that can happen? Oh, the badge fell off during a pre-season game? Well never mind, at least the players were tough to pick up at corners due to their slippery sweat-moistened shirts. Fourteen stripes on the socks, in tribute to the time of starting 11s plus only three subs, when Everton last won a trophy. Sensible with a subtle pattern but shame (as can be said for about 85 per cent of Premier League teams) about the sponsor.
Ozzy Osbourne launched this because he absolutely loves both betting and trading, like the chest and sleeve here tell him to. A boon that Villa have listened to concerned family members and left unsuitable partner Castore, but this first try from Adidas is caught between bland and busy. 
A few years since it captured the public’s imagination on the front of Leeds’ shirts, but still no idea how to pronounce SBOTOP or why the second O is stylised as a zero. Still, happy chap to the left looks ready to party, or to place a substantial wager with a leading online gaming brand. Cannot read sleeve sponsor but presumably there’s a “t” after “Be”. Fine.
Lord forgive me, I don’t hate it! Seemingly the consensus pick for dud of the season but pleasingly unusual to my eyes, even if it does look like a lava lamp. Clearly unwise to extend the joke onto the shorts but in this era of a home shirt being worn perhaps 20-30 times then being cast off forever we can handle some experimentation. Cult classic, not best seller. 
As with every Brighton home kit for the past 12 years you have a pleasant idea here marred by the decision to grant the sponsor a billboard space right in the middle. Plenty of other stripey teams find a way to incorporate a sponsor without creating this exclusion zone. American Express is so wedded to its precious sky blue, which would not be legible as a contrasting colour on blue stripes, so Brighton are forced to accommodate it this way. It really makes its presence felt this year, taking attention away from the neat way the white pinstripes fade in from the top down.  
Ha’way the conveniently generous sponsorship deal with a company from Saudi Arabia! Back with Adidas after three years with Castore. They’ll always have the 4-1 against PSG but yeah, seriously, pick up all of your unsold tracksuit bottoms by COP Friday or they’re going onto the pavement outside the megastore. Few distinguishing remarks but this kit always suffers in comparison to the objectively perfect blue star Brown Ale variants.
Good to have Leicester (home) back in the land of the Premier League kit ranking. You know where you are with Leicester (home), nothing drastic has been done with it since 1989 (pinstripes). Of course it could do without Bitcoin Pac-Man on his way to eat into your previously stable savings account, but otherwise does a very solid job.
Again, tasty. Again, Brighton are showing their sponsor’s logo so much respect it’s like they’re a cowed Conference South team playing a giant in the FA Cup third round and allowing them to do whatever they like before their manager tears into them at half time. Bold attempt here to pair it with smart jeans and chinos:
Nice try lads but you’re not getting into the nice bit at Goodwood wearing a football shirt.
Can count the number of pink football shirts I’ve enjoyed on one hand and they mostly belong to Palermo. It’s the unusual darker shade of purple making this work for me which somehow takes the edge off a challenging sponsor. Decent.
Everybody had a go at centralised emblems about 30 years ago. We all had a jolly good laugh but largely agreed it was a dead end. No harm in asking the question again now, enough time has passed, but you’re not seriously just going to leave the maker’s mark hanging out there on the left are you? Looks like they’ve forgotten to turn off left justification on wolves-kit.doc. A shame, it’s the only thing marring this.
Very third kit energy. Pattern which initially looks like exploding stars is in fact made up of a series of Ms, which took me a while to realise. Not often you can say a football shirt rewards repeat viewings. Somewhere between elegant and dull.
Year two for Brentford in this home shirt. A more complacent kit reviewer might just copy and paste last year’s verdict, but instead I will reflect on the cycle of renewal that a new season brings, the bittersweet feelings of time passing at speed once you enter middle age and what new terrible things Neal Maupay is going to do while wearing this.
Love the bold blue, less convinced by the hostile takeover being staged by the white on the sides which reduces the red to a B-plot in its own story. The b stands for “bib”. Pivoting to the cannon instead of the 22-year-old but still “new” crest is a positive development. Combo of massive sponsor and ever-growing Adidas presence less so.
This is more like it from the brave boys and girls of BJ88 and their official football content supply partners Bournemouth. Rarely-seen tasteful use of gold as accent colour with stripes thick and bold, like a teenager hepped up on alcopops. Available with a special edition 125th anniversary emblem which is golded-out. Of course this costs an extra £10. You can also have the fixture and date of the anniversary game added to the central stripe. Of course this costs an extra £5.
Usually in favour of sponsor consistency but we’ve had so many similar and perfectly reasonable Tottenham AIA kits now I fear for my future ability to tell one season from the next based on the shirt. A highly troubling thought. Launch promo uses classic conceit of players looking moody in a pub that has delayed its opening for a few hours to accommodate a photoshoot, thus upsetting half a dozen loyal problem drinkers. But they will cheer up when they see Sonny and JMadz creasing up about the next escalatory chapter in the darts prank war with Maupay:
Yes, that is certainly a Manchester United home kit. You fear the worst with Snapdragon, but turns out it’s a charming old-timey business which makes processors for your laptops, your phones, your Jonny Evanses. Lacking distinguishing features but no disaster either.
All of the ingredients are here for a total classic yet it falls just short. You’ve got the local(ish) boy made (very) good as a shirt sponsor, Ed Sheeran promoting his never-ending tour, some delicious pinstripes and an uncomplicated collar and cuffs. Especially fond of the shorts, which are exceedingly clean. Think it’s just those symbols on the front letting it down. As if listening to Sheeran wasn’t bad enough now he wants you to do maths.
Nothing is going to curry favour more with a fanbase than a throwback to a beloved former kit, so here we have Adidas revisiting its 1995-96 shirt worn by all your old favourites: Paul Kitson, John Beresford, Steve Watson… I forget the others. It wisely ditches the grandad collar of that shirt for a simpler option and otherwise falls the right side of affectionate tribute rather than opportunist knock-off, like when Puma cheekily tried something similar in 2018.
Stop the count, we have a winner for stupidest names for colours. Light beige (“Guava Ice”), orange (“Team Orange”) and blue (“Rush Blue”). Nevertheless this is quite nice (“Moderately gratifying”) and makes intelligent use (“Wise deployment”) of the same template spotted on the Euro 2024 kits worn by Gareth Southgate’s England (“Brave Heroes” / “Shameful Chokers”).
A new dawn has broken, has it not? And hang about, what is going on with those lines, nothing is where I left it, where did you go Jurgen, why did you go Jurgen? HELP. Fun! Obviously demented collar, but it has been years since Liverpool have worked in any yellow to their home kit, which featured for their fairly successful decade from 1975 onwards. A good omen for Arne Slot? 
Maroon is having an overdue moment in kitland. A risky move in the wrong hands but Umbro knows what it is doing, even if it has absent-mindedly coloured in the middle of its logo while bored in a meeting. Well chosen blue and gold accents and some silly patterns housed in diamonds. An appropriate outfit for a team ready to ruffle a few feathers / lose heavily at home to Liverpool on the opening weekend and never truly recover.
City have nodded in the direction of their memorable 1998-99 kit before. This of course was the outfit they wore when winning the Division Two playoff final against Gillingham, the big bang which, several football millennia of evolution later, led to Manuel Akanji passing it out of the back while operating as an inverted football back. This is an explicit re-make, Puma just fiddling with the margins of the Kappa original. I realise I shouldn’t, I realise it runs contrary to reason, but I really like it. The blue brings balance to the luminosity, the black box to accommodate the sponsor feels deliberate rather than obtrusive, and despite the colour scheme there is a classicism to the design. Obviously you would be insane to wear it out, but as a kit it is a surprise success story.
Go on, you try and find fault with this. No, you cannot say ‘big betting sponsor’ or we’d be disallowing most of the kits on this list. Refined, uncomplicated and immediately identifiable. No notes.