List of English football champions

This article is about men's English football league champions. For women's champions, see List of English women's football champions.

The English football champions are the annual winners of the top-tier competition in the English football league system. Following the codification of professional football by the Football Association in 1885, the Football League was established in 1888, after meetings initiated by Aston Villa director William McGregor.

The new league's inaugural season was 1888–89, and the first club to be crowned champions was Preston North End, whose team completed its fixtures unbeaten. In its first four seasons, with only twelve to fourteen clubs involved, the league was a single entity in which all the teams were from the North or the Midlands. Professionalism had been embraced more readily in those areas than in the South of England. The Football League expanded its membership in 1892 when it absorbed the rival Football Alliance. With 28 members, the league was split into two divisions. Most of the former Alliance clubs joined the new Second Division, while the original league became the First Division, with promotion and relegation between the two.

Rules stipulating a maximum wage for players were abolished in 1961. This resulted in a shift of power towards bigger clubs with more financial means. Financial considerations became an even bigger influence from 1992, when the clubs then in the First Division defected to form the FA Premier League, which became the new top tier. A series of progressively larger television contracts has put unprecedented wealth into the hands of top flight clubs.

List of champions by season

  • (In bracket, title count):

List of champion clubs by titles won

Clubs that are tied in titles are sorted by the latest date that they won their last title.

Titles won by club (%)
  1. Liverpool – 20 (15.9%)
  2. Manchester United – 20 (15.9%)
  3. Arsenal – 13 (10.3%)
  4. Manchester City – 10 (7.9%)
  5. Everton – 9 (7.1%)
  6. Aston Villa – 7 (5.6%)
  7. Sunderland – 6 (4.8%)
  8. Chelsea - 6 (4.8%)
  9. Sheffield Wednesday - 4 (3.2%)
  10. Newcastle United - 4 (3.2%)
  11. Blackburn Rovers - 3 (2.4%)
  12. Huddersfield Town - 3 (2.4%)
  13. Wolverhampton Wanderers - 3 (2.4%)
  14. Leeds United - 3 (2.4%)
  15. Preston North End - 2 (1.6%)
  16. Burnley- 2 (1.6%)
  17. Portsmouth - 2 (1.6%)
  18. Tottenham Hotspur - 2 (1.6%)
  19. Derby County - 2 (1.6%)
  20. Sheffield United - 1 (0.8%)
  21. West Bromwich Albion - 1 (0.8%)
  22. Ipswich Town - 1 (0.8%)
  23. Nottingham Forest- 1 (0.8%)
  24. Leicester City - 1 (0.8%)

See also

Notes

References

Specific

Sources

General

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_English_football_champions&oldid=1288556830"
Uses material from the Wikipedia article List of English football champions, released under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.