Walsall

Walsall had waited nearly seven decades before winning anything worth keeping, and when it came, in 1959–60, the prize was the Fourth Division title. Nearly half a century later the club found the feat again, taking League Two in 2006–07 under Dean Smith, still counted among the more successful managers to have worked at the club since.

The name traces back to a merger, not a founding date read off a plaque: Walsall Town and Walsall Swifts combined in 1888 as Walsall Town Swifts, and only in 1896 did the club settle on the name it carries now. The nickname, The Saddlers, points to a trade the town was known for long before anyone kicked a ball there, and it still shows on the shirt — black and red stripes, the colours of the Black Country flag.

Cup football never quite went Walsall's way, but one afternoon in 1933 did: a fourth-round tie against Arsenal, won 2-0, with Gilbert Alsop opening the scoring on his way to 169 goals for the club across four seasons. A League Cup semi-final followed in 1983–84 under Alan Buckley, who also took the side up to the top flight in 1980 and scored 174 goals of his own along the way. Home now is Bescot Stadium, holding 11,300, the club's base since 1990.

The fiercest fixtures are local rather than historic — Wolverhampton Wanderers and West Bromwich Albion across the Black Country, with Shrewsbury Town and Port Vale also on the list of games that matter more than the table suggests. What has stayed out of reach is anything beyond the lower divisions: no major cup has ever gone to Walsall, and the closest recent brush with a final, the 2015 EFL Trophy, ended in defeat to Bristol City.