The Shirt Fuse: Arsenal’s 2018-2019 home kit unveiled

Today, Arsenal officially revealed their kits for the 2018-2019 season, confirming the previously leaked images that had many Arsenal fans scratching their heads. Keeping with the hyped up social media trend that football teams have begun to favor for announcing just about anything, Arsenal unveiled the new home kit with a slick and stylish video, perhaps in an effort to offset the rather tepid nature of the new kit.

Puma, in their final year as Arsenal’s kit maker, decided to go a drastically different direction than previous seasons, eschewing the handsome buttoned collar of last season’s kit for a simpler one while adding striped bands to the shirt sleeves for...reasons? In addition to the major changes, they also added a subtle triangle pattern to the middle of the kit, reminiscent of the puzzling vertical stripe on the horrendous 2016-2017 kits. Images of the home kit, for all of their production level and glitz, still fall flat.

For many, there is a distinct feeling that Puma is mailing it in. After all, it was widely rumored that Arsenal were interested in moving on to a new kit maker and buying their way out of their final contract year with Puma before the end of the season. So the notion that Puma would put minimal effort into their final Arsenal kit is unsurprising, but still a little disappointing.

Personally, I’m not a fan of the home kits. Although I think that Puma has put out some good, even great kits for Arsenal (last year’s black and pink third kit was empirically incredible), this one is not not one of those. If anything, it gives me more excitement for what the club’s next potential kit provider (Adidas?) will put out. To be fair, I think that the leaked away kit is quite handsome.

Polls are fun, right? Here’s a poll!

How does this stack up against previous kits? Would you buy it? Do you hate it? Who would you prefer for our next kit maker? Let’s hear it in the comments.