With the Premier League season now only a matter of weeks away, every club has unveiled at least its home kit for the upcoming season. With the deluge of new designs and new innovations – from West Ham’s graffiti detailing to Manchester United’s returning collar – we thought it was time to look back at the best kits each of this season’s 20 clubs has worn in the Premier League over the last three decades.

AFC Bournemouth don’t have the longest history in the Premier League – five seasons between 2015 and 2020 and the upcoming year – and throughout most of that they stuck to the same formula. The club’s signature black and red stripes were a constant, including in the two seasons the kits were produced by JD Sports. After two years in Championship exile, though, Bournemouth are back and they’ve reworked the stripes. Breaking from tradition, the stripes have been transformed into a jagged new design that references the architectural pillars of the home stadium.

Get it from Umbro for £60.00

As a Premier League mainstay, Arsenal have had some bangers. For the 2005-06 season, the club paid tribute to its iconic stadium Highbury, which it was due to leave at the end of teh season. The usual red and white was gone, with “Redcurrant” covering the shirt and socks instead. The design was a tribute to the first kit ever worn at Highbury, giving the ground the perfect send off as Henry broke the 30 barrier and the special-edition kit became an instant classic.

Get it from Vintage Football Shirts for £185.00

Claret and blue is one of the Premier League’s great colour combinations and, in recent years, the chosen colours of three clubs. Aston Villa have a good claim to be the originators of the combination, and have stayed true to it for most of their 148-year history. The 2021-22 season saw it given a subtle update, with tonal stripes running down the claret section of the shirt. The massive Cazoo logo doesn’t help, but the 2021-22 kit was still one of Villa’s best ever. 

Get it from Pro Direct Soccer for £52.00

Brentford’s 2021-22 kit qualifies because it’s their only ever Premier League kit, and is due to remain for their second season in the division as well. While that may not be the most romantic reason to feature on this list, the shirt is a smart and simple design. The front and back both feature four red stripes and three white, honouring the colours that Brentford have worn for almost 100 years, referencing the club’s home country of Middlesex.

Get it from the Brentford club shop for £49.00

Brighton’s traditional blue-and-white stripes were reinterpreted for the 2020-21 season. Gone were the equal spacings, replaced by a blue base and thin white pinstripes, running from top to bottom of the jersey. Finished with a white trim around the sleeves and a contrasting white collar, the 2020-21 shirt was something of a formal affair.

The 1997-98 season was a tumultuous year for Chelsea. The season started with club and manager Ruud Gullit fresh off the back of an FA Cup win and, by early 1998, Chelsea were second in the league. Gullit was abruptly sacked after an argument with Ken Bates, with Gianluca Vialli achieving instant success as his player-manager successor. Throughout all of the ups and downs was one of Chelsea’s best-loved kits, with a white collar, yellow trim and, for the first time ever, the classic Autoglass sponsorship of the late ‘90s and early ‘00s.

Get it from Vintage Football Shirts for £150.00

When Palace returned to the Premier League in 2013, they did so without their signature red and blue stripes. The stripes had been a fairly common occurrence since the early ‘70s – albeit with a few red and blue sash years – but were now replaced by a half and half design. The blue and red kit was finished off with yellow piping around the collar and sleeves, while the front was left pleasingly free of manufacturer Avec’s logo.

Everton’s blue shirt and white shorts is another of the Premier League’s classic combinations, appearing in every season of the league. There haven’t been too many deviations – a collar here or a chevron there – and the club’s home kit in the early 2000s was no different. It came in the club’s traditional blue, complete with a contrasting white collar and underarm sections. Even the One2One sponsor’s logo helped to enhance the design.

While it's hardly a universally-liked feature of football shirts, sometimes it can be the sponsor’s logo that brings it all together. One of the best examples is Fulham’s adidas-produced 2001-02 kit, which mixed the club’s signature black and white colours with a huge Pizza Hut logo. Fulham kept the same design for the following season, but replaced Pizza Hut with Betfair and so the kit is nowhere near as good as its predecessor.

Tony Yeboah takes it on his chest, then his knee, then there’s another touch to bring it onto his right and suddenly he’s banged it into the top corner. Yeboah’s wonder goal at Wimbledon was a highlight of Leeds United’s 1995-96 season – it only happened in the September as well – and it helped establish the kit as an all-time classic. The stand-out feature was its simplicity, all white with blue detailing, which acted as a base for the old school LUFC logo that hadn’t been seen since the early 1970s.

The Le Coq Sportif logo, the collar and, most importantly, the massive Walker’s crisps logo. The 2000-01 season was Leicester City’s last season sporting the name of its most famous export, a relationship that extended back to 1987. For its last hurrah, the Walker’s logo was allowed to shine alongside an otherwise understated design. Leicester have kept it simple for their kits throughout their Premier League history, and the 2000/01 is one of the best examples.

Get it from Vintage Football Shirts for £90.00

Liverpool arguably peaked early in the Premier League era, with one of their best kits arriving in the league’s first season. The key feature was the three huge white stripes that appeared over the right shoulder – a carry over from the final year of Division 1 – which offset the signature red of the shirt. Other detailing included a central adidas logo and an overly ornate version of the club’s crest.

Get them from Vintage Football Shirts for £198.00

Manchester City have reworked their classic sky blue with a number of subtle patterns over the years. While 2020-21’s mosaic wasn’t an overall hit, the approach they took in the first Premier League season was more successful. The tonal and abstract all-over print was similar to other Umbro kits of the period – including the designs for England – and the navy, sky blue and white collar finished it off nicely.

Get it from the Manchester City club store for £35.00

Manchester United’s greatest-ever Premier League kit was, fittingly, worn for the club’s greatest-ever season. 1998-99 has gone down in history as the year of the treble, finished off by Solskjaer and Sheringham in the dying embers of the final at Camp Nou after United had already won the Premier League and FA Cup. The kit worn for most of that season – and two of the three trophies – was best known for its relatively simple design, showcasing a white, red and black collar that bears more than a little resemblance to the club’s 2022-23 design.

Get it from Vintage Football Shirts for £198.00

For Newcastle United, 1995-96 season will always be remembered for one thing nowadays. The season saw the club finish 2nd, driven on by 25 goals from Les Ferdinand and the flair of David Ginola. In April, though, manager Kevin Keegan lost his head and delivered arguably the most infamous rant in football history. As well as distracting from the team’s relative success that season, it also takes away from the home kit, which paired the magpie stripes with a grandad collar and the instantly recognisable Newcastle Brown Ale logo.

Get it from Footy Classics for £35.99

Throughout the mid-1990s, Nottingham Forest paired their traditional red and white colours with hits of black. For the 1996-97 season, the black detailing included gradient stripes down each sleeve, and a huge one that ran halfway down the middle of the shirt. Unfortunately, the quality of the kit couldn’t save Nottingham Forest, as the team finished bottom of the league for their second relegation during the Premier League’s first five years.

The red and white stripes of Southampton have received a lot of tinkering over the years, replaced by everything from solid red to sashes to this year’s PSG-inspired Hechter stripe. The early 2000s saw the perfection of the stripes, with an ideal distribution of red and white as well as a smart V neck collar to finish off the design. The 2001-02 kit was the last Southampton kit worn at The Dell, and was revived for the 2021-22 season as a tribute to the old stadium.

Tottenham Hotspur ended the ‘90s by ditching Pony and signing with adidas instead. The first kit from this new relationship was designed for the 1999-00 season, and mixed a classic white base with navy collar and Three Stripe branding. Perhaps most important, though, was the return of Holsten as a shirt sponsor. The continental lager merchants returned to Spurs to end four years of Hewlett Packard and remind everyone of the golden days.

Get it from Vintage Football Shirts for £98.00

The 2020-21 season marked 125 years of West Ham, and the East London club stripped their kit back to the basics to honour that history. The shirt featured almost no adornments, just a claret body and light blue sleeves. The simple design was finished off with a special-edition of the club crest, once again going back to basics and arriving only in the club colours.

It takes a lot to wear a gold kit, and arguably it takes even more to slap a big Doritos logo in the middle. When Wolverhampton Wanderers arrived in the Premier League for the first time in 2003, that’s exactly what they did. The kit was surely one of Admiral’s last in the top division, and was paired with a squad of aging legends – it was to be the last season in the English top flight season for Dennis Irwin, Paul Ince and Steffen Iversen. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Wolves finished 20th and went back to the Championship.

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