The Football League, also known as the
Coca-Cola Football League for
sponsorship reasons, is a
league competition featuring professional
football clubs from England and Wales.
Founded in 1888, it is the oldest such competition in
world football. It was
the top level football league in England from its foundation in the
19th century until 1992, when the top 22 clubs split away to form
the
Premier League.
Since 1995 it has had 72 clubs evenly divided into three divisions,
which are currently known as
The Championship,
League One, and
League Two. Promotion and relegation
between these divisions is a central feature of the League and is
further extended to allow the top Championship clubs to exchange
places with the lowest placed clubs in the Premier League, and the
bottom clubs of League Two to switch with the top clubs of the
Football Conference, thus
integrating the League into the
English football league
system. Although primarily a competition for English clubs, two
clubs from Wales also take part, while in the past
Wrexham,
Newport
County,
Merthyr Town and
Aberdare Athletic have been members.
The Football League is also the name of the governing body of the
league competition, and this body also organises two knock-out cup
competitions, the
Football League
Cup and the
Football League
Trophy.
Overview
The Football League consists of 72 professional
football clubs in England and Wales,
and runs the oldest professional football league competition in the
world. It also organises two knockout cup competitions. The
Football League was founded in 1888 by
Aston Villa director
William McGregor, originally with 12 member
clubs. Steady growth and the addition of more divisions meant that
by 1950 the League had 92 clubs. Financial considerations led to a
major shake-up in 1992 when, in a step to maximise their revenue,
the leading members of the Football League broke away to form their
own competition, the FA Premier League, which was renamed in 2007
as the
Premier League. The Football
League therefore no longer includes the top 20 clubs who belong to
this group, although
promotion
and relegation between the Football League and the Premier
League continues. In total, 130 teams have played in the Football
League up to 2007 (including those in the Premier League, since
clubs must pass through the Football League before reaching the
former).
Competition
League
The Football League's 72 member clubs are grouped into three
divisions: the
Football
League Championship,
Football
League One, and
Football League
Two (previously the
Football League First
Division,
Football
League Second Division and
Football League Third
Division respectively; they were renamed for sponsorship
reasons). Each division has 24 clubs, and in any given season a
club plays each of the others in the same division twice, once at
their home stadium and once at that of their opponents. This makes
for a total of 46 games played each season.
Clubs gain three points for a win, one for a draw, and none for a
defeat. At the end of the season, clubs at the top of their
division may win promotion to the next higher division, while those
at the bottom may be relegated to the next lower one. At the top
end of the competition, three Championship clubs win promotion from
The Football League to the Premier League, with the bottom three
Premier League clubs taking their places. At the lower end, two
League Two clubs lose their Football League status with relegation
to the
National division of the
Football Conference, while two
teams from Conference National join League one of The Football
League in their stead.
| Division |
Promoted directly |
Promoted via playoffs |
Relegated |
| The Championship |
Top 2 clubs |
One from 3rd to 6th place finishers |
Bottom 3 clubs |
| League One |
Top 2 clubs |
One from 3rd to 6th place finishers |
Bottom 4 clubs |
| League Two |
Top 3 clubs |
One from 4th to 7th place finishers |
Bottom 2 clubs |
Promotion and relegation are determined by final league positions,
but to sustain interest for more clubs over the length of the
season one promotion place from each division is decided according
to a playoff between four clubs, which takes place at the end of
the season. It is therefore possible for a team finishing sixth in
the Championship or League One, or seventh in League Two, to be
promoted rather than the clubs finishing immediately above them in
the standings.
Two professional football clubs from Wales,
Cardiff City and
Swansea City, play in The Football
League. This disqualifies them from participation in the
Welsh Premier League and the
Welsh Cup, and so also deprives them of the chance
to qualify for
UEFA competitions by this route.
One English club,
Berwick
Rangers, plays in the
Scottish football league
system.
Reserve teams of Football League clubs usually play in the
Central League (for the Midlands
and North) or the
Football
Combination (for the South).
Cup
The Football League organises two knock-out cup competitions: the
Football League Cup (currently
called the
Carling Cup) and the
Football League Trophy (or for
sponsorship reasons, the Johnstone's Paint Trophy). The League Cup
was established in 1960 and is open to all Football League and
Premier League clubs, with the winner eligible to participate in
the
UEFA Cup. The Football League Trophy is
for clubs belonging to League One and League Two of the
Football League. The Football League
celebrated its 100th birthday in 1988 with a
Centenary Tournament at
Wembley between 16 of its member clubs.
History
William McGregor, founder of The
Football League
After four years of debate,
The
Football Association finally legalised professionalism on 20
July 1885. Before that date many clubs made illegal payments to
"professional" players to boost the competitiveness of their teams,
arousing the contempt of those clubs abiding by the laws of the
amateur Football Association code. As more and more clubs became
professional the ad-hoc fixture list of FA Cup, inter-county, and
'friendly' matches was seen by many as an unreliable stream of
revenue, and ways were considered of ensuring a consistent
income.
A Scottish draper and director of
Aston
Villa,
William McGregor, was
the first to set out to bring some order to a chaotic world where
clubs arranged their own fixtures.
On 2 March 1888, he wrote to the committee
of his own club, Aston Villa, as well as to those of Blackburn
Rovers
, Bolton Wanderers,
Preston North End and West Bromwich Albion, suggesting the
creation of a league competition that would provide a number of
guaranteed fixtures for its member clubs each season. His
idea may have been based upon a description of an early
American Football League,
publicised in the English media in 1887 which stated: "measures
would be taken to form a new football league.... [consisting of] a
schedule containing two championship games between every two
colleges composing the league"
The first meeting was held at Anderson's Hotel in London on 23
March 1888 on the eve of the FA Cup Final. The Football League was
formally created and named in Manchester at a further meeting on 17
April at the Royal Hotel. Although the hotel is long gone, the site
is marked with a commemorative red plaque on The Royal Buildings in
Market Street.
The first season of the Football League began
a few months later on 8 September with 12 member clubs (Accrington
, Aston Villa, Blackburn
Rovers, Bolton Wanderers,
Burnley
, Derby County, Everton, Notts
County, Preston North End,
Stoke City, West Bromwich Albion and Wolverhampton Wanderers
).
Each club played the other twice, once at home and once away, and
two points were awarded for a win and one for a draw. This points
system was not agreed upon until after the season had started; the
alternative proposal was one point for a win only. Preston won the
first league title without losing a game, and completed the first
league-cup
double by also taking the
FA Cup.
The early years of the League saw the addition of more clubs, and a
new Second Division was formed in 1892 with the absorption of the
rival
Football Alliance. The
bottom clubs of the lower division were required to apply for
re-election to the League at the end of each season. Automatic
promotion and relegation for two clubs was introduced after the
League expanded to two divisions of eighteen in 1898; this came
into effect when the previous system of
test match between the
bottom two clubs of the First Division and the top two clubs of the
Second Division was brought in to disrepute when Stoke and Burnley
colluded in the final match to ensure they were both in the First
Division the next season.
The original logo of The Football
League
Aston Villa and
Sunderland dominated the early years of
the game, but after a few years other northern clubs began to catch
up, with the likes of
Newcastle
United and
Manchester
United joining the League and having success.
Liverpool won the first of their joint record
(with
Manchester United) 18 League
titles in 1901. It was not until the early years of the 20th
century that southern clubs such as
Arsenal,
Fulham,
Chelsea and
Tottenham Hotspur established
themselves in the League, and there would be a further wait until
1931 before a southern club, Arsenal, would win the League for the
first time.
Post-World War I
The League was suspended for four seasons during
World War I and resumed in 1919 with the First
and Second Divisions expanded to 22 clubs. The following year,
1920, leading clubs from the
Southern League joined the League
to form a new Third Division, which in 1921 was renamed the
Third Division
South upon the further addition of more clubs in a new
Third Division North.
One club from each of these divisions would gain promotion to the
Second Division, with the two relegated clubs being assigned to the
more appropriate Third Division. To accommodate potential
difficulties in this arrangement, clubs in the Midlands such as
Mansfield Town or
Walsall would sometimes be moved from one Third
Division to the other.
Following this burst of post-war growth, the League entered into a
prolonged period of relative stability with few changes in the
membership, although there were changes on the pitch. A new
offside law in 1925
reducing the number of opponents between the player and the goal
from three to two led to a large increase in goals and numbers on
shirts were introduced in 1939.
Post-World War II
The League was suspended once more in 1939 with the outbreak of
World War II, this time for seven
seasons. The Third Divisions were expanded to 24 clubs each in
1950, bringing the total number of League clubs to 92, and in 1958
the decision was made to end the regionalisation of the Third
Divisions and reorganise the clubs into a new nationwide
Third Division and
Fourth Division. To accomplish this
the clubs in the top half of both the Third Division North and
South joined together to form the new Third Division, and those in
the bottom half made up the Fourth Division. Four clubs were
promoted and relegated between these two lower divisions, while two
clubs exchanged places in the upper divisions until 1974, when the
number increased to three.
Post-
World War II changes in league
included the use of white balls in 1951 and the first floodlit game
(played between
Portsmouth and
Newcastle United) in 1956,
opening up the possibility of midweek evening matches.
But by far the biggest change for league clubs was a new cup
competition open to all the members of the League, the
Football League Cup, which was held for
the first time in 1960-61 to provide clubs a new source of income.
Aston Villa won the inaugural
League Cup and, despite an initial lack of enthusiasm on the part
of some other big clubs, the competition became firmly established
in the footballing calendar.Substitutes were first allowed for
injured players in 1965, and for any reason the next year.
1970s
Beginning with the 1976–77 season, clubs finishing level on points
began to be separated according to goal difference (the difference
between goals scored and goals conceded) rather than goal average
(goals scored divided by goals conceded). This was an effort to
prevent overly defensive play encouraged by the greater advantage
in limiting goals allowed. In the event that clubs had equal points
and equal goal differences, priority was given to the club that had
scored the most goals.
There has been only one season, 1988–89, when
this level of differentiation was necessary to determine the League
champion, and this was the occasion of one of the most dramatic
nights in League history, when Arsenal
beat Liverpool 2–0 at Anfield
in the last
game of the season to win the League on this tiebreaker – by a
single Michael Thomas goal in the
final minute, of the final game of the season.
The logo of The Football League from
1988 until 2004
1980s
Another important change was made in 1981, when it was decided to
award three points for a win instead of two, a further effort to
increase attacking football.
(This scoring rule was not added by FIFA
to the
World Cup until the 1994 cup after the perceived dominance
of defensive play at Italia 90) In a similar vein, playoffs to
determine promotion places were introduced in 1987 so that more
clubs remained eligible for promotion closer to the end of the
season, and at the same time to aid in the reduction over two years
of the number of clubs in the First Division from 22 to 20.
At the same time, automatic promotion and relegation between the
Fourth Division and the
Football
Conference was introduced for one club, replacing the annual
application for re-election to the League of the bottom four clubs
and linking the League to the developing
National League System pyramid.
Emblematic of the confusion that was beginning to envelop the game,
the number of clubs at the top of the league would return to 22 for
the 1991–92 season, before once more dropping to 20 for 1995–96.
The issues creating the uncertainty in the game all centered on
money.
The increasing influence of money in English football was evident
with such events as the first £1m transfer in the game, that of
Trevor Francis from
Birmingham City to
Nottingham Forest in February 1979.
The first £2million player was Tony Cottee (West Ham United to
Everton, July 1988). Prior to the formation of the FA Premier
League, the highest transfer fee paid was £2.9million for the
transfer of
Dean Saunders from
Derby County to
Liverpool during the 1991 close season.
The first
£3million player was Alan Shearer, who moved from Southampton to Blackburn
Rovers
in July 1992, the summer prior to the first Premier
League season. At the close of the 1991 season, a proposal
for the establishment of a new league was tabled that would bring
more money into the game overall. The Founder Members Agreement,
signed on 17 July 1991 by the game's top-flight clubs, established
the basic principles for setting up the FA Premier League. The
newly formed top division would have commercial independence from
the Football Association and the Football League, giving the FA
Premier League license to negotiate its own
broadcast and
sponsor agreements. The argument given
at the time was that the extra income would allow English clubs to
compete with teams across Europe.
1992: the foundation of the Premier League
In 1992
the First Division clubs resigned from the Football League
en masse and on 27 May 1992 the
Premier League was formed as a
limited company
working out of an office at the Football Association's then
headquarters in Lancaster
Gate
. This meant a break-up of the 104-year-old
Football League that had operated until then with four divisions;
the Premier League would operate with a single division and the
Football League with three. There was no change in competition
format; the same number of teams competed in the top flight, and
promotion and relegation between the Premier League and the new
First Division remained on the same terms as between the old First
and Second Divisions.
2004 Football League rebranding
2004–05 was the first
season to feature the rebranded
Football League. The
First Division,
Second Division and
Third Division were renamed
the
Football League
Championship,
Football League
One and
Football League Two
respectively.
Coca-Cola replaced the
Nationwide Building
Society as title
sponsor.
The
Football League's collection is held by the National
Football Museum
.
Evolution logo
Image:The Football League logo until 1988.png|
1888–
1988Image:The Football
League logo 1988-2004.png|
1988–
2004Image:The Football
League.png|
2004–current
Records
League sponsorship
Since 1983 the League has accepted lucrative sponsorships for its
main competition. Below is a list of sponsors and the League's name
under their sponsorship:
Post formation of the
Premier League
the newly slimmed-down football League (70 clubs until 1995 and 72
clubs since) renamed its divisions to reflect the changes. The old
Second Division became the new First Division, the Third Division
became the Second Division, and the Fourth Division became the
Third Division. The financial health of its clubs has become
perhaps the highest League priority due to the limited resources
available. However there are some promising signs for the future,
as the League planned to announce new initiatives beginning with
the 2004–05 season, coinciding with the start of a new sponsorship
agreement with
Coca-Cola. The first of
these changes was a rebranding of the League with the renaming of
the First Division to
The
Championship, the Second Division to League One and the Third
Division to League Two.
The League's cup competitions have different sponsors (see
English football sponsorship
for more information).
Competitions logo
Image:Football League Championship.png|
Coca-Cola ChampionshipImage:Football
League One.png|
Coca-Cola League OneImage:Football League
Two.png|
Coca-Cola League TwoImage:Carling Cup logo
2008-09.png|
Carling CupImage:Johnstone's paint trophy
logo.PNG|
Johnstone's Paint
Trophy
Media rights
The other major source of revenue is television. The 1980s saw
competition between terrestrial broadcasters for the rights to show
League matches, but the arrival on the scene of satellite
broadcaster
British Sky
Broadcasting (Sky TV), eagerly searching for attractive
programming to build its customer base and willing to pay huge
sums, changed the picture entirely. The League's top tier clubs had
been agitating for several years to be able to keep more of the
League's revenue for themselves, threatening to break away and form
their own league if necessary. In 1992 the threat was realised as
the First Division clubs left to establish the
FA Premier League and signed a contract for
exclusive live coverage of their games with Sky TV. The FA Premier
League agreed to maintain the promotion and relegation of three
clubs with The Football League, but The League was now in a far
weaker position — without its best clubs and without the clout to
negotiate high revenue TV deals. This problem was exacerbated with
the collapse in 2002 of
ITV Digital,
holder of TV rights for The Football League, which cost League
clubs millions of pounds in revenue.
In 2001 the league signed a £315 million deal with
ITV Digital, but in March 2002 the channel was
put into administration by its parent companies when the league
refused to accept a £130 million reduction in the deal. As of 2007,
UK television rights are held by
Sky
Sports. In November 2007 the league announced a new domestic
rights deal worth £264 million with Sky and the BBC for the three
seasons from 2009-2012. It covers Football League, Carling Cup and
Johnstone's Paint Trophy
matches and the full range of media: terrestrial and pay
television, broadband internet, video-on-demand and mobile
services. The deal represents a 135% increase on the previous deal
and works out at an average of over £1.2 million per club per
season, though some clubs will receive more than others. Sky will
provide the majority of the coverage, but the BBC will have some of
the higher profile matches, namely 10 exclusively live matches from
the Coca-Cola Championship per season and the semi-finals and
finals of the Carling Cup.
Radio
coverage in the United
Kingdom
is also a major source of live football and is a major output source for the
Football League, with every major
game broadcast nationally on BBC
Radio Five Live, TalkSPORT and
digitally on BBC Radio 5
Live Sports Extra which is available digitally online or via DAB
radio. Globally, matches are sometimes broadcast on
BBC World Service.
Every Football League match is broadcast to its
local audience via local radio stations, there is no limit to the
amount of stations who may broadcast each game, for example, in
Swansea
, Wales
, each match
is broadcast Internet Radio, Digital Radio and on Anologue Radio with BBC Radio Wales, in Welsh with BBC
Radio Cymru and locally with Swansea Sound
Radio and Radio City: Hospital
Radio. Every Football
Match broadcast on BBC Local
Radio is also broadcast live Online to a
national British
audience.
On 18 September 2008, the Football League unveiled a new
Coca-Cola Football League podcast,
hosted by
BBC Radio Five Live's
Mark Clemmit to be released every
Thursday.
Football League clubs
Below are listed the member clubs of The Football League for the
2009–10 season. In total
there has been 141 Football League members, originally before the
bottom club(s) of the bottom division(s) had to seek reapplication
each year, which was voted by all the other members. This some
times meant some clubs would club together to vote for another
regional team, at the expense at a better side non-league side.
Walsall
holds the record for the most reapplications for
the Football League. former Football League
clubs include all 20 of the current members of the Premier League
along with various relegated, removed or defunct clubs.
Although the competition is primarily for English clubs, two of the
sides competing in 2009–10 are from Wales—
Cardiff City and
Swansea City.
Past League winners
NB: League and
FA Cup Double winners are
highlighted in bold.
1888–1892
When the Football League was first established, all 12 clubs played
in just one division.
1892–1920
In 1892 the Football League absorbed 11 of the 12 clubs in the
rival
Football Alliance after it
folded, meaning the League now had enough clubs to form another
division. The existing division was renamed the First Division and
the new division was called the Second Division.
1920–1921
In 1920 the Football League admitted the clubs from the first
division of the
Southern
League (the Southern League continued with its remaining clubs)
and
Grimsby Town, who had failed
to be re-elected to the Second Division the season before and been
replaced by
Cardiff City (of the
Southern League). The clubs were placed in the new Third
Division:
1921–1958
After just one season under the old format, the League expanded
again. This time it admitted a number of clubs from the north of
England to balance things out, as the last expansion brought mainly
clubs from the south. The existing Third Division was renamed the
Third Division South, and the new division was named the Third
Division North. Grimsby Town transferred to the new northern
division. Both divisions ran in parallel, with clubs from both
Third Divisions being promoted to the national Second Division at
the end of each season:
1958–1992
For the beginning of the 1958–59 season, national Third and Fourth
Divisions were introduced to replace the regional Third Division
North and Third Division South:
1992–2004
Following the breakaway of the clubs in the First Division to form
the
FA Premier League, the Football
League no longer included the top clubs in England. Therefore, the
Second Division became the First Division, the Third Division
became the Second Division and the Fourth Division became Third
Division.
2004–present
In 2004, the Football League renamed its divisions: the First
Division became the Football League Championship, the Second
Division became Football League One and the Third Division became
Football League Two.
At the end of the 2005–06 season,
Reading finished with a record 106 points,
beating the previous record of 105 held by
Sunderland.
Titles by club
Due to the breakaway of the Premier League in 1992, winning the
Football League title no longer makes a team the top tier champions
of English football.
Football League titles
Play-offs
The Football League Play-Offs are used as a means of determining
the final promotion place from each of the league's three
divisions. This is a way of keeping the possibility of promotion
open for more clubs towards the end of the season.
The format was first introduced in 1987, after the decision was
made to reduce the top flight from 22 to 20 clubs over the next two
seasons; initially, the play-offs involved the team finishing
immediately above the relegation places in a given division and the
three teams who finished immediately below the promotion places in
the division below - essentially one team was fighting to keep
their place in the higher division while the other three teams were
attempting to take it from them. In 1989, this was changed—instead
of teams from different divisions playing each other, the four
teams below the automatic promotion places contested the play-offs.
The first season of this arrangement saw the final being contested
in home and away legs. The four teams play off in two semi-finals
and a final, with the team winning the final being promoted.
Originally the semi-finals and the final
were all two-legged home-and-away affairs, but from 1990 onwards
the final was a one-off match (usually at Wembley
or, during its rebuilding, the Millennium
Stadium
). It is in this format that the play-offs
continue today. A proposal to have six teams rather than four
competing for the final place was defeated at the league's AGM in
2003.
Controversy
For all the excitement the play-offs generate, the concept causes
significant controversy, because a team that has proved itself the
third best in its division over the course of a season would have
to play an additional two-legged semi-final and a one-off final in
order to win promotion. The
Football League Championship
play-off final has often been called "the richest game of football
in the world" due to the money on offer through gaining promotion
to the Premier League.
Some fans have also noticed the prevalence of a
curse over the playoffs, in which the team who loses
in the final of the promotion playoff is relegated the next season.
However, West Bromich Albion lost the Championship 2006-07 play-off
final to Derby County, and the complete opposite happened as WBA
were promoted the next season.
Play-off winners
1: Due to financial irregularities, Swindon were prevented
from taking their place in the top division, which was awarded to
the losing finalists, Sunderland.
Footballs
The
Mitre Pro 100T is the
official match football of the Football League and is used by all
72 teams from the Championship and Leagues One and Two. Mitre's
current deal started in the
2007–08 season and runs until
the end of the 2010–11 season. As of the 2007–08 season, every
Football League Championship team has their own
Mitre football for home matches.
The balls sport the home team's crest and colours.
Huddersfield Town will play
the
2008–09 season with
a customised Mitre ball to celebrate their centenary.
The Football League
rules have not allowed this before, but they have been relaxed as
Mitre were formerly based in Huddersfield
.
See also
References
- The New York Times, 27 March
1887
- The Leeds Mercury Issue 15289, 9 April 1887.
- Football League Agrees Historic Deal with Sky
Sports and BBC, www.football-league.premiumtv.co.uk, 6
November 2007.
External links
- burial place of the League's founder
Top topics
Wikis
Quiz
Map
Search
