10 Of The Worst Football Club Crest ‘Upgrades’ In Recent Memory

Chris Wright

24th, January 2018

10 Comments

Image: @LUFC/Twitter

To celebrate Leeds United’s inexplicably awful decision to render their club crest a laughing stock, Pies thought we’d examine some of the other football clubs to do likewise over the years.

Let’s crack on, shall we?

Juventus

Last year, Juve ditched one of the most instantly recognisable crests in world football for modernised, corporate-friendly nothingness with which they hoped to “break into new global markets”.

We still haven’t forgiven them.

Cardiff 

From blue birds to red dragons back to blue birds (with little red dragon) all in the wink of Vincent Tan’s eye.

Queens Park Rangers

They’ve since reverted back to script, but the Hoops’ decision to bin their loops in favour of a shiny bit of tacky clip-art still rankles.

Arsenal

Personally, we preferred it when Arsenal’s whacking great cannon looked more like a House sigil from Game of Thrones…

West Ham

All that time, all that effort and all that money and you’ve just made it worse…

Hartlepool United

Cool, instantly-recognisable ship’s wheel to miscellaneous gilded stag silhouette.

Looks like the menu header at a posh country pub/hotel…

Bayern Munich

Quite possibly the most unnecessary rehash ever undertaken. Basically, the Bavarians paid a vast sum of money to have their badge darkened slightly and their lozenges rotated by five extra degrees.

Chelsea 

Frankly, any decision to deviate from Chelsea’s original pre-1900 badge must be deemed a complete and utter failure of judgement.

Just look at it for crying out loud. It’s magnificent…

Barnsley

Again, once you’ve reached the very apex of perfection, why go fiddling?

Aston Villa

Back in 2016, Villa paid a London-based design company £2million to re-design the club’s “entire visual identity”.

They duly Tippex-ed the word “Prepared” from their badge and (presumably) skipped town…

Of course, there are many, many more examples of badge butchery out there to get all het-up about.

Care to offer and suggestions, Pies fans?