The Football League was the first league to be formed in the world. From small beginnings of 12 clubs in 1888 (all based around the North of England and the Midlands), expansion saw the league cater for 92 clubs by 1950. The breakaway of the top clubs to form the F.A. Premier League in 1992 degraded the quality of the first division, but "League status" is still the ultimate aim of a large number of semi-professional clubs across the country.
Preston North End were the inaugural champions, not losing a game in 1888-89. Over the first decade, clubs came and went with the epicentre still very much in the North of England. Woolwich Arsenal became the first club from South of Birmingham to join in 1893, a season after the league expanded to two divisions. After the turn of the century, the league became more and more representative of England as a whole. Aston Villa had become the second club to compete the League/F.A. Cup double in 1897, but Tottenham Hotspur, of the Southern League became the only club from below the Football League to take the F.A. Cup in 1901.
The league ceased operations for the duration of the Great War, but upon resumption in 1919, expansion again was on the agenda. A Third Division (South) was formed by the inclusion of the entire Southern League First Division, with, a year later a Northern Section also formed.
Until the 1920s, no club had won three successive Championships, but that changed with Huddersfield Town doing so, followed a decade later by Arsenal, as the league celebrated its golden jubilee.
After another break for the Second World War, the pre-eminent position among English football was resumed. Huge crowds flocked to see entertaining matches, with many of the founder members enjoying a resurgence.
European competition came during the 1950s, and Football League clubs were soon amongst the honours. Tottenham Hotspur, who in 1961 had become only the third club to perform the "double", won the 1963 Cup Winners Cup, a feat equalled by West Ham United two years later. But the really big one, the European Cup, eluded English clubs until 1968 when Manchester United beat Benfica of Portugal 4-1 at Wembley.
Into the 1970s, and a new force began to emerge on to the scene. Liverpool took the 1972-3 title, which was to be the first of 11 titles in 16 years. Four European Cups also found their way to Anfield. Other English clubs, Nottingham Forest and Aston Villa also claimed Europe's biggest prize during this time.
Since then, the big have got bigger and the small have got smaller. TV revenues, which used to be split fairly evenly across all clubs, were re-directed towards the biggest. The concentration of finance and talent in a minority of clubs saw those clubs demand more and more influence over the way things were run, and in 1992 the First Division clubs broke away to form the F.A. Premier League, leaving the remainder to re-form Divisions One, Two and Three. The league has carried on it that form since, automatic promotion to the Premier League being available for the top two sides of the First Division plus a play-off winner.
The play-offs were a child of the 1980s, originally formed to ease the reduction in size of Division One from 22 to 20 clubs. Then, they consisted of one club which had just avoided automatic relegation, plus three who had just missed out on automatic promotion. Now, still hugely popular in some quarters and anathema in others, four clubs fighting for promotion compete in semi-finals and a Wembley Stadium final.
Currently the league consists of 3 divisions of 24 clubs each, confusingly renamed in 2004 to be "Championship", "League One" and "League Two"
F A Premier League
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Football League Championship
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Football League One
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Football League Two
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Football Conference