The concept of no history is the most ridiculous comment I hear about City..Every single club has a history..what the twats in scouseland and ragland are saying are we have not won as many trophies..OK fair enough, but we are catching up..there are fans who turn up week in week out to support teams in the lower divisions who have won nothing,ever..do they have a history,indeed they do.History is not just about trophies. We are lucky to support a great club, a club that over the last 10 years or so has brought us much joy. Our history started in 1894. 128 years of history.
Well said, and absolutely right.
The four professional divisions of clubs are, I believe, unique in the world. Most if not all other leagues start to become semi-professional from the third tier and beyond.
Some clubs have never risen about the fourth tier. Some have been out of the league, some back in again after a brief period out. Some never make it back in. When I was a kid, and first getting into football, I remember one of the most shocking things I saw was the photos of Bradford Park Avenue's ground, with weeds growing on crumbling terraces, and rusting stanchions. It hadn't occurred to me that a club, once formed, with its own stadium, could die (as it happens, they didn't). A club, once formed, was eternal. The notion of one simply going out of existence seemed to be a breach in nature.
That's history. Trophies, honours, are only part of it. This is something that the red scousers and that lot from across the city
just don't get.
City could never win another trophy again but they would still be my club, from the age of thirteen onwards till today. As they are from generation to generation, father to son and mother to daughter.
As nowhere else that I've come across in the world, English and Scottish football clubs are part of the fabric of the surrounding community. If they're not that, then they're nothing worth bothering with.
I'm going to admit something very weird. Got a very good mate, Burnley supporter for life. Salt of the earth, much younger than me, but he knows his football history inside out. Because Burnley have been right up and down the four divisions, he's got a far better knowledge of England's football grounds, because he's followed them everywhere and he's been to all sorts of weird and wonderful places. Also has a knowledge of the best pubs in those places, because he makes it a point with his dad of visiting the pubs with the best ale wherever they go. I'm a little bit jealous of him for all that.
There is still a great book on the social history of association football from the 1860s or so onwards to be written. It would be a history of the late industrial revolution, a history of the working man (and woman), a history of England through a certain prism.
