This is the new Watford home shirt for 2019-20. It bears some similarities with the Juventus offering, though the fact that both sleeves are yellow means there are no baselayer dilemmas.
We’re hoping that the shorts numbers will be yellow, but they may in fact be red, which would be quite unbalanced, but we’ll see. They haven’t been using a sleeve sponsor in friendlies, but one may materialise.
It marks the first time that the Hornets have gone with a halved design for their home shirt and it continues the philosophy of changing things around that has pertained since they joined with adidas in 2017.
It’s the kind of thing that can irk traditionalists, but Watford only switched to yellow, or gold, in 1959, having worn blue and white before that.
Obviously, primarily yellow shirts have been favoured but, when a team’s colourway is unique to themselves, we feel that there can be more experimentation with layout.
As far as we’re aware, no other English club has yellow, black and red, meaning that the colours are always going to be recognisable as Watford. North of the border, Partick Thistle use the same colours and they haven’t been afraid to mix things:
For our money, there’s a greater cachet in saying, “Our colours are yellow, black and red,” rather than “Our colours are yellow shirts, black shorts and red trim,” but that’s just us – other opinions are always welcome, either on Twitter @museumofjerseys or in the comments below.
They go stripes last year, then half and half this year. Does this mean hoops for next year?