Rochdale

Rochdale go into the new season back in League Two, promoted from the National League after finishing second in 2025–26 and completing the job through the play-offs. It is the fourth time since 1969 that Rochdale have come up from the bottom tier of English football, three of those as champions and this one through the play-offs.

The club's one brush with major silverware came in 1961–62, when a side from the lower divisions reached the final of the League Cup and lost to Norwich City 0–4 over two legs, a run no club from that level of the game had managed before. The FA Cup has been kinder in patches than in trophies: Rochdale have reached the fifth round three times, most recently in 2017–18, and gone no further.

Home games are played at Spotland, known under sponsorship as the Crown Oil Arena, which holds 10,249. The nickname, the Dale, comes from the valley the town sits in, cut through by the River Roch. Blue and white have been the club's colours since 1934, though for a decade from 1958 Rochdale turned out in black-and-white stripes before reverting. Oldham Athletic and Bury are the closest rivals, and the meetings with Bury are known locally as the South Lancashire derby.

Grant Holt carries the club's scoring record now, having gone past Gary Jones's tally in 2023 by Transfermarkt's count. Neither man came up through Rochdale's own academy; both arrived from elsewhere and made their name in the shirt anyway.