Blackburn

Ewood Park sits by the River Darwen on the western edge of Blackburn.

The club itself came together on 5 November 1875, when John Lewis and Arthur Constantine, both former pupils of Shrewsbury School, called a meeting at the Leger Hotel and settled on a name it has never changed since.

The FA Cup came first and came fastest. Rovers won it three years running from 1884 to 1886, then twice more before the century turned. The league title took longer to arrive and then arrived twice in quick succession either side of the First World War, in 1911–12 and 1913–14, before a long wait ended in 1995 under Kenny Dalglish, who had first worn the shirt as a player nearly two decades earlier. That title side is remembered less as a collection of names than as a settled spine — Tim Flowers behind a defence marshalled by Colin Hendry, with Tim Sherwood, capped as captain, holding the middle together for seven years at the club.

Across Lancashire, the fixture that still carries weight is against Burnley, the East Lancashire Derby, a rivalry that predates most of what either club has since won. On matchdays that history still shapes the mood inside Ewood Park more than any other fixture on the calendar, the ground filling along the Darwen with a crowd that has watched the club's fortunes rise and fall from the same seats for generations.