Sheffield Wednesday FC

Sheffield derby day still runs on old fault lines: Sheffield United across the city, Leeds United a county away in the Yorkshire derby, and Chesterfield closer to home than either. None of it explains what Sheffield Wednesday actually is, though — that answer sits further back, in a cricket club.

The football side split off from The Wednesday Cricket Club in 1867, taking its name from the club's early match day, and only became Sheffield Wednesday FC on paper in 1929. Hillsborough has housed it since 1899, a ground built for crowds far larger than the 39,732 it now holds, and smaller still while redevelopment work trims capacity to 34,845.

Arthur Dickinson ran the club from 1891 to 1920 and left with four league titles and three FA Cups to show for it — a managerial reign that set the terms for everything measured against it since. The trophies themselves cluster in two eras: four First Division championships either side of 1900 and 1930, and a run of Second Division titles that reads as a club forever climbing back rather than staying up. The FA Cup came home three times, the last in 1935, and lost finals followed in 1966 and 1993. Between those defeats, John Sheridan scored the winner that brought the League Cup to Hillsborough in 1991, the only time it has been won.

David Hirst's 149 goals stand as the modern scoring mark, but it is Barry Bannan, 477 appearances into a Wednesday career, who has come to define the current era simply by staying. Further back, James Lang is remembered as English football's first professional, and Charles Clegg, who played in the country's first international in 1872, went on to run the Football Association itself.

None of that settles what the club is chasing now, only where it has been.