Wolves

Wolverhampton Wanderers share the Black Country with West Bromwich Albion. Stoke City, the Staffordshire Derby, a reminder that Wolverhampton once belonged to that county before boundaries shifted. Walsall complete the local set.

The gold and black on the shirts and the wolf's head on the crest trace back to a school. Pupils at St Luke's, prompted by John Baynton and John Brodie, put the club together in 1877 under the name St Luke's F.C. Two years on, in August 1879, a merger with the football side of Blakenhall Wanderers, a cricket club, gave the team the name it has carried ever since.

Molineux has been home throughout, now holding 31,750. The nickname Wolves grew out of both the town's name and that badge.

Wolves won the League Championship three times, in 1953–54, 1957–58 and 1958–59, and lifted the FA Cup on four occasions, the earliest in 1892–93 and the last in 1959–60. Two League Cups followed, in 1973–74 and 1979–80, along with a share of the FA Charity Shield in both 1954 and 1959. None of it changes where the story starts: a church school team from St Luke's, still playing under the name it took in 1879.