Blackpool

Blackpool go into this season back in League One, still chasing a return to the level they last held a decade ago, when a run of relegations turned Bloomfield Road into a ground more used to lower-division football than the top flight it once knew.

The club took shape on 26 July 1887, when members of Blackpool St John's and former pupils of St John's School met at the Stanley Arms and agreed to fold their separate sides into one team carrying the town's name. A brief spell outside the Football League around 1899 saw them merge with local rivals South Shore and move to Bloomfield Road, the ground they have called home ever since, now an all-seater arena holding around 16,500. The tangerine kit adopted in 1923 has never been replaced, and it gave the club its second nickname, the Tangerines, alongside the older Seasiders.

Nothing in the club's history carries more weight than 2 May 1953, when Blackpool beat Bolton Wanderers 4-3 at Wembley in a match still known as the Matthews Final. Stanley Matthews, then in his late thirties, tore the game open in the closing minutes; Stan Mortensen scored a hat-trick that afternoon, part of a goalscoring record that stood as the best in the club's post-war history. Jimmy Armfield captained that generation, and a young Alan Ball came through the same Blackpool side before going on to win the World Cup with England in 1966. All four names later entered the Football League's list of 100 Legends.

The FA Cup remains the club's one major trophy. A Second Division title from 1929-30 and an Anglo-Italian Cup win over Bologna in 1971 sit further down the list, along with two Football League Trophy wins either side of the 2003 season. None of it has yet stretched to a second FA Cup, or to the top division Blackpool once occupied without needing to fight their way back.