The English Football League

Origins and Competitive Structure

          In England, the origins of football can be gone back to the late Middle Ages. In the first half of the nineteenth century football existed mainly within the upper-class public schools and Universities, where the modern sports of association football and rugby were first grown. Slowly, the popularity of sports, such as football and rugby expanded beyond the schools and Universities, and clubs began to create. At a meeting of representatives of London and suburban clubs in October 1863, the Football Association (FA) was established. Afterwards, English Football's two club competitions both developed. Fifteen clubs first fought for the FA Cup during the winter of 1871-2. New football clubs were found throughout England during the late 1870s and 1880s. Several of the leading names of the modern era appeared in the 1890s, including Manchester United in the 1893 season and Liverpool in the 1894 season. Woolwich Arsenal admitted in the 1894 season. Total membership of the two divisions spread to 32 teams in the 1895 season, then 36 in the 1899 season and 40 in the 1906 season.
          The League succeeded a membership, comparable to the combined power of the Premier League and Football League (92 teams) after the First World War. In the 1921 season, 22 teams from the Southern League were embodied to the existing two divisions membership to produce the new Division 3 (South). In the 1922 season, Division 3 (North) was formed, by 20 teams, and with the rised membership to 22.
          There were the following structural alterations to the league's format since the 1920:
          By the 1999 season, we had a total of 567 teams.
          Competitive football at European level was first initiated in 1955. Both Birmingham City and a London team matched in the first Fairs Cup tournament between 1955 and 1958. Manchester United was the first English team which enters the European Cup in the 1957 Season. During the 1990s, a league format was initiated for the European Cup, with the name Champions League. In the 1999s, 32 teams, having two or three from each of the leading European domestic leagues earned entry to the Champions League. In 1999, UEFA and Cup Winners' Cups were amalgamated into a single UEFA Cup tournament.

Team performance

          At the micro level, a club's capacity to produce revenue is based on its team's success on the field of play. A club's capacity to reinforce its team by buying better players and by giving remuneration at a level that will influence and maintain the best players is based on the power of its finances. At the macro level, the influence to spectators and the revenue-producing potential of any sports league is based on the preservation of an explanatory level of competitive balance. This can generate genuine uncertainty of result at three levels: first, the individual match results, second, the Championship or divisional results within each season, and third, the Championship results from season to season. It is necessary to recognize a few key historical facts for the team performance and Championship dominance.
          (Table A) Table A sums up data concerning the best-performing teams in the League Championship and the Cup (domestic and European) competitions in each decate. The first panel indicates the Championship victories per team. The second panel indicates the best-performing teams at the top of Division one, or the Premier League, measured by awarding three, two and one points for a top three finish in each season. The third and fourth panels indicates the teams that won the FA Cup and League Cup. The fifth panel indicates the number of victories in European competition.
          On both sets of Championship dominance, Arsenal in the 1930s, Liverpool in the late 1970s and 1980s, and Manchester United in the 1990s all achieved to set up a degree of dominance that has not been competed by any other team in the other decades.
          In Table A we can see also that Huddersfield Town was the most successful team of the 1920s, but this decade was an unaccustomed for the number of teams (16) that succeeded a top three place for one occasion. During the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s we can remark 10 different clubs winning the Championship during 16 seasons, and no team winning in running seasons.
          Another characteristic of Table A is, that during the decades since the 1930s, clubs from the six largest English cities(London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds) have declared the majority of the Championship victories. In the 1960s Burnley and Ipswich Town won the championships like Huddersfield Town and Portsmouth in earlier decades. During the 1980s and 1990s, Blackburn Roves has succeeded the same feat, in the 1995s.


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