Brighton & Hove Albion’s new yellow away kit leaked online

Brighton & Hove Albion have done their best to keep their new away kit under wraps. While every other club in England has revealed and started selling their shirts for 2020-21, the Albion have shrouded their new number in secrecy ahead of what was presumably meant to be a big reveal.

Well, that has been in vain. Somebody has snuck a photo of from the club’s media day onto Twitter where the players are photographed for the graphics used by Sky Sports and BT Sports and it appears to show the Albion wearing their new away kit.

Brighton will be wearing yellow shirts, blue shorts and yellow socks according to the slightly blurry images leaked from the training ground.

Although hard to tell as the photo is not the best, the kit looks pretty smart. It is a further throwback to the 1982-83 FA Cup Final season kit to go with the wonderful blue home number which Brighton revealed in the final game of the 2019-20 campaign away at Burnley.

The blue collar appears oversized as on the new home shirt and the Amex logo is black. TwoChoicesTom – the man we now refer to as Brighton’s kit king on Twitter following some pretty cool concept designs – has knocked up what he thinks it looks like here and we bloody love it.

HERE IT IS! The 2020/21 #bhafc away kit has leaked!!

I think that Amex logo is black, due to their brand guidelines and looks like the swoosh is blue, but I wasn't bloody far off!

I personally LOVE IT – You?
🟡🔵🟡🔵🟡 https://t.co/WcwCJFyLgw pic.twitter.com/59BLLDksle

— Tom (@twochoicestom) August 28, 2020

Yellow has long been considered the traditional away colours of the Albion. It will be the first time Brighton have worn a yellow away kit since 2013-14, if you discount the “university gold” used in the first season in the Premier League.

Although the kit is sure to prove popular with Albion fans, a sternly worded email from Paul Barber will no doubt be going out to club employees this morning following the leak.

Barber and the Albion love to control the narrative of everything, so this will have gone down like a lead balloon. Especially given that this is the third new away kit which has been leaked before officially being revealed in the past seven years.

In 2017-18, Brighton spent weeks promoting the launch of the “university gold” away shirt as coming on Wednesday 26th July 2017. Unfortunately for the Albion, Ben Thatcher (Royal Blood drummer rather than thuggish ex-Manchester City player) wore the new shirt on stage at a gig in Sydney.

An eagle-eyed Albion fan spotted the pictures and the big reveal was ruined. In an attempt to make this seem planned rather than a Paul and Barry Chuckle style cock up, the Brighton spin machine began working overtime by pushing the line that the kit was always due to be revealed in Australia, making it the club’s first ever overseas kit launch.

Except of course that the photos from the gig were taken a week earlier. An overseas kit launch with no publicity that nobody noticed for a week until a fan spotted a blurry photo. Yeah, okay.

Then there was Errea accidentally revealing both the 2013-14 home and away kits during a show in Italy. No announcement from the Albion, no publicity, just two Italian models stood on a stage holding a football in a blurry photo taken from the back of the room.

Both those kits revealed in releases that went wrong went onto have great success. Oscar Garcia somehow led a mediocre Brighton squad into the play offs in 2013-14 and the “university gold” will forever be associated with the Albion’s first season in the Premier League and an excellent 15th placed finish. If the 2020-21 yellow can forge similar memories, then everyone will be happy.

If we were betting men, we would expect either an official announcement today on the new yellow Brighton away kit or for the Albion to wear it tomorrow in the pre-season friendly with Chelsea.

There seems little point in keeping it secret any longer, now that we all know what it looks like anyway.