Bradford

West Yorkshire has never let Bradford City forget where it sits on the map. The derby with Huddersfield Town carries the local weight, though the older grievance runs against Leeds United, and neither has ever needed explaining to anyone from the city.

Valley Parade has held the club since a rugby league side called Manningham FC switched codes on 29 May 1903 to stay solvent, and the Football League took them in almost immediately. The claret and amber stripes date from that switch too, and no other professional club in England wears the combination. The ground itself carries a heavier weight than the results posted there: on 11 May 1985, during a match against Lincoln City, fire tore through the main stand and killed 56 people. It remains the deadliest stadium fire in British football history, and it sits over the club's story in a way no trophy does.

The FA Cup came in 1911, still the only major cup City have won, sealed by a goal from captain Jimmy Speirs. Peter O'Rourke, player and manager, had already taken the side up through the Second Division three years earlier and then delivered that cup run, the kind of double act a small club doesn't often get twice. Promotions and relegations filled out the decades between and since — Third Division North in 1929, the Third Division title in 1985, a League Cup final lost 5-0 to Swansea City in 2013 alongside a League Two play-off win the same year. Roy McFarland brought them back to the second tier in 1982, and Paul Jewell went further, taking City into the Premier League in 1999. David Wetherall kept them there against Liverpool in 2000 with a goal that still gets replayed locally more than the sides that followed it.

A second major trophy has never arrived. One FA Cup, won well over a century ago, is still the shelf's only serious occupant.