Aston Villa know it well: changing a club crest is a delicate exercise that has to be managed carefully to minimise backlash from fans who invariably won’t like it.
The Midlands outfit just cannot keep their new badge under wraps, though. The shield-shaped effort – which we would honestly struggle to distinguish from previous versions without a side-by-side comparison – emerged last year after being submitted to the Intellectual Property Office for trademarking, and has now been featured on promotional materials for their new main shirt sponsor.
The image on betting company Betano’s website has now been hastily changed to the current version, which has been in use since 2016. See, this is why our Dropbox folder has a carefully-maintained taxonomy, and it wasn’t a ‘waste of time’ after all, boss.
New Aston Villa badge features little differences
The leaked new badge returns the lion to facing to the left and is back in yellow, like a more vibrant version of AC/DC.
Basically it looks like the current badge and continue to use other than on the kit (of course), but instead of having ‘AVFC’ printed above the lion’s head, it says ‘1874’ and then ‘Aston Villa’ beneath its feet.
Finally, a single star to mark the club’s 1982 European Cup triumph is in the top left corner, unless that’s meant to be the lion fighting off a firefly to symbolise how even the strongest among us must occasionally battle against strange new foes, or whatever kind of marketing guff they’re inevitably going to spout when they officially unveil it.
Villa removed the word ‘PREPARED’ from their badge in 2016, no doubt a veiled criticism of the side that was relegated from the Premier League that year.
The slogan has still not returned in what we can only read as a vicious slam on Unai Emery.
More Aston Villa stories
Former Villa captain Dennis Mortimer spoke to FourFourTwo about his time at the club and his sadly-missed European Cup final shirt. Plus: Villa representation in the team of the week, and how the Villans could still earn the Premier League a fifth Champions League play.
