The 2024/25 football season is over and it is 76 days since my team Newcastle Utd last won a trophy! For the first time in my life, I am able to record Newcastle United in a winners column in my spreadsheet listing all English trophy winners (Men’s) since 1889. For the first time ever, Crystal Palace appear as a trophy winner.
My spreadsheet English Club Records – Football – Men – 2025 – v1.0 is up to date as of 31st May 2025. All data in this file has been sourced from Wikipedia.
The spreadsheet has a number of worksheets which I now explain in more detail. Please note all are protected but there is no password if you want to unprotect a worksheet.
Data1889-2025England
This worksheet lists all winners of the three main domestic trophies in England i.e. Premier League (League Championship until 1992), FA Cup and League Cup. It starts in 1889 which is the year the League Championship started. The FA Cup began before that date but I have ignored that data. I have also shown the runner ups in all competitions as I think that can be useful in identifying the good teams of the past. Finally I also include the 3rd & 4th placed teams in the league and the semi finalists for the Champions League since they represent of the summit of achievement for club football.
The sheet also shows any English club that won a European trophy or was a losing finalist in one of those competitions. Finally winners of various doubles are shown. Note Treble winners are not shown but can be spotted if they appear as multiple double winners in the same year e.g. Man City in 2019.
RankingsEngland
This worksheet allows you to see which teams were the best in any time period. To do this, change the years shown in cells B1 (From year) and B2 (To year). You can then sort by any of the columns to find out which team was top.
For each team, I have counted how many times the team won the relevant trophy or was a runner up. Columns D to V should be obvious but I have added some further statistics in columns X to AE. These are explained below:
- Number of SUMMITS reached i.e. number of League Titles and European Cups/Champion Leagues won. For any club, these two competitions represent the summit of achievement a club can reach and history generally looks at these when describing great teams of the past.
- Number of TROPHIES won. Silverware is what all fans crave but I am only considering the six trophies recorded in Data1889-2025England. Other minor & one-off trophies are not counted.
- Number of POINTS won. Not all trophies are equally regarded. At the same time, when considering GOATs, I do think consideration should be given to runner up spots. After all, in an FA Cup final between two equally matched teams, anything can happen and luck does play a part. For non-Summit trophies, I give 3 points to a winner and 1 point to a runner up. For summit trophies I double these points i.e. 6 points to a winner, 2 points to a runner up and 1 point for finishing 3rd/4th in the league or semi finalists in the Champions League. However, you can change these points by editing the relevant yellow cells in row 1.
- Number of Wins & Runner ups which I denote as T-RU.
- RECORD which is a summary of a team’s record using the format “Sw – Tw | Sr – Tr“. Sw is the number of summits reached and Tw is the number of other trophies won (excluding summits). Sr is the number of runner ups to summits and Tr is the number of runner ups to other trophies (excluding summits). So my team Newcastle Utd has an overall record of 4-8 | 2-9 since they’ve won 4 league titles, 6 FA Cups, 1 League Cup (this season!!) and 1 UEFA cup, were twice runner up in the league and have lost 9 cup finals.
GOATsEngland
This is a summary of the top teams for three different eras as below. All data comes from the RankingsEngland sheet but this sheet is not updated automatically.
- 1889-today (All Time): The football league was created in 1888 with Preston NE winning the first title in 1889.
- 1956-today (European Era): This is when European club football started with the European Cup in 1956 and the Cup Winners Cup & UEFA Cup (known as Fairs Cup then) in 1960. 1960 also saw the introduction of the League Cup.
- 1993-today (Modern Era): The Premier League era started in the 1992/93 season whilst at the same time, the European Cup morphed into the Champions League. In particular, the strongest leagues were allowed more than one entrant. Around the same time, the UEFA cup final switched to a straight final instead of a 2-legged affair in 1998 and the Cup Winners Cup was abolished in 1999 (reintroduced as Conference League in 2021/22 season).
By the way, you may find this earlier post of mine about GOATs (Greatest Of All Time) of interest. It is where I first came up with the graphic below.
Dynasties
This lists 5 dynasties I have identified using the criteria shown but I do not regard all 5 as equally dynastic. I explain all the details in this article “Are Man City now a Dynasty?”
Data1956-2025UEFAclubs
This lists the winners and runner ups from all countries to the 3 main trophies offered by UEFA i.e.
- Champions League – Started in 1956 and was known as the European Cup until 1993
- Europa League – Started in 1958 as the Fairs Cup, became the UEFA cup in 1972, switched a straight final instead of a 2-legged final in 1998, added a group stage in 2005 and was renamed the Europa League in 2010.
- Conference League – Started in 2022. A previous incarnation as the Cup Winners Cup started in 1960 and ended in 1999.
RankingsUEFA
Like the RankingsEngland worksheet, here you can summarise European performance by club. The format here is slightly different to RankingsEngland but you should be able to figure out the differences. This sheet also summarises European performance by country as well. Note there are a lot of flags which are a legacy of a copy and paste from Wikipedia and are tiresome to delete!
Data1956-2025UEFAcountries
This worksheet is exactly the same as DATA1956-2025UEFAclubs except only countries are shown rather than clubs. As far as possible, I’ve used today’s countries rather than historical countries so it is Germany rather than East & West Germany and its Croatia, Serbia, etc rather than Yugoslavia. I’ve used this to determine which countries were dominant in Europe by tracking the rolling 5 year average of % of finals contested by clubs from England, Spain, Italy, Germany & Others. Today it is England.
— Would you like to comment on this article? —-
Please do leave your comments on this Twitter thread.
— Subscribe to my newsletter to receive more articles like this one! —-
If you would like to receive notifications from me of news, articles and offers relating to sport, please click here to go to my Newsletter Subscription page and tick the Sport category and other categories that may be of interest to you. You will be able to unsubscribe at anytime.
