West Brom

Black Country Derby against Wolverhampton Wanderers has run for well over a century, two clubs from towns a few miles apart competing for the same industrial ground, and it still carries more weight at The Hawthorns than any single season's table. The rivalry outlasted West Brom's own beginnings as a factory side: men from George Salter's Spring Works put together West Bromwich Strollers, and by 1885 the club had turned professional, trading a shop-floor pastime for something closer to a trade.

The Baggies have never been shy of Wembley. Five FA Cups came across nearly a century, from 1888 through to 1968, when Jeff Astle settled the final with the winning goal. A league title arrived once, in 1919–20, and the League Cup followed in 1966. None of it matches the run through the late 1970s and early 1980s, when Cyrill Regis, Laurie Cunningham and Brendon Batson — the "Three Degrees" — took the pitch together and forced a football culture that had barely let a Black player near a first team to reckon with what it was watching.

Tony "Bomber" Brown holds the numbers that outlast trophies: more appearances and more goals for West Brom than anyone else who has worn the shirt. The club has handed out a Player of the Year award since 1979, and goalkeeper Ben Foster is the only man to have taken it three times.

The Hawthorns holds 26,688, dark blue and white stripes still the shirt, and match day there still turns, sooner or later, on Wolves.