Preston

Preston North End's first season in the Football League doubled as English football's first ever league season: 1888/89, and they went through it unbeaten, taking the inaugural title and then the FA Cup too, without a single defeat in either competition. No one had managed a double before, because no one had had the chance to try.

The run gave the club a second nickname, The Invincibles, next to the one that stuck: the Lilywhites, after the white shirts the players started wearing around 1888. A second league title came the following year, 1889/90.

The club existed before it was a football club at all — a cricket side had used the same ground since 1863, and Preston North End itself was formally set up in May 1880. That ground, Deepdale, now holds 23,404.

Burnley have faced Preston more often than any other club has faced anyone in league history, over 140 times, though the fixture that matters most locally is the West Lancashire derby against Blackpool. Blackburn Rovers, the closest club geographically, round out the rivalries.

The FA Cup has not returned to Deepdale since 1938, when Preston beat Huddersfield Town 1-0 in the final; a Football League War Cup followed in 1941, during the years when the regular competition stopped. Relegation from the First Division in 1961 proved permanent — Preston have not played top-flight football since — and by 1985/86 the club had fallen to 23rd in the Fourth Division, close enough to the bottom to threaten its existence. David Moyes brought them out of the Second Division in 2000; Trevor Hemmings, owner from 2010, carried the club into the Championship, where it has stayed since 2015.

No one who has worn the white shirt is remembered the way Tom Finney is. He played for Preston, and only Preston, from 1946 to 1960.