England’s top clubs founded the Premier League in 1992
England’s top flight fields twenty clubs with promotion and relegation against the EFL, typically from August to May for thirty-eight matches apiece. Breakaway First Division sides created the competition on 20 February 1992, leaving the old Football League structure. It is now the planet’s most-watched sports league.
The mid-1980s were a low point: grounds were crumbling, hooliganism was rife, and after the 1985 Heysel disaster English clubs were banned from Europe for five years, Liverpool for six. Recovery began when England reached the 1990 World Cup semi-finals and UEFA lifted the ban, with Manchester United winning the Cup Winners’ Cup in 1991, but the Taylor Report’s call for all-seater stadiums brought heavy costs. Executives such as Martin Edwards, Irving Scholar and David Dein were already running clubs as businesses, and ten clubs threatened a super league in 1988.
In 1990 Greg Dyke of London Weekend Television dined with the Big Five, United, Liverpool, Tottenham, Everton and Arsenal, to plan a breakaway. The Founder Members Agreement of 17 July 1991 set out the principles, and the whole top division quit en masse on 27 May 1992, ending the 104-year-old Football League structure. Dyke’s ITV then lost the rights to BSkyB’s £304 million five-year bid, with the BBC taking highlights.
Brian Deane of Sheffield United scored the first goal, in a 2–1 win over Manchester United, who nonetheless won the first title, ending a 26-year wait, and took seven of the first nine. The league shrank from 22 to 20 clubs for 1995–96. Blackburn, powered by Alan Shearer, won in 1994–95, and Newcastle bought Shearer in 1996 for a then-record £15 million; he remains the all-time top scorer. United completed a treble in 1998–99, and Arsenal’s unbeaten 2003–04 side earned the name The Invincibles.
Between 2005 and 2012 English clubs reached seven of eight Champions League finals. Money from billionaire owners, Abramovich at Chelsea and, from 2008, Sheikh Mansour at City, reshaped the finances, and only six clubs have played every season: Arsenal, Chelsea, Everton, Liverpool, Manchester United and Tottenham.
Source: Premier League
