Sometimes when you go looking for something, looking for when and why something happened in football, you end up somewhere very different.
The Premier League is very different to the other four of the top five levels in English football.
One of those major differences is the number of clubs and therefore the number of league matches played.
The Premier League has 20 clubs and each of them play 38 league matches a season, whilst the Championship, League One, League Two and the National League all have 24 clubs in each of them playing 46 league games each.
None of that was news to me.
Like the Premier League, both La Liga and Serie A also have 20 clubs. Ligue 1 did have 20 clubs but it reduced to 18 from the 2023/24 season onwards. The Bundesliga increased from 16 to 18 clubs in 1965 and has stayed that way since, apart from a temporary measure when they increased to 20 for the 1991/92 season to integrate East German clubs after reunification.
Many of you though will remember when the top tier of English football had 22 clubs and they played 42 matches each.
It was when I checked back to see exactly which season it became 20 clubs in the English top tier that things went a bit strange. Where I don’t remember this sequence at all.
This is how many clubs were in the English top tier each season across a ten year period:
22 – 1986/87
21 – 1987/88
20 – 1988/89
20 – 1989/90
20 – 1990/91
22 – 1991/92
22 – 1992/93
22 – 1993/94
22 – 1994/95
20 – 1995/96
I knew that at some point the English top tier had reduced from 22 clubs to 20 but I have absolutely no recollection of that sequence of seasons. Where across a decade it went from 22 to 21 to 20, then back up to 22 before falling once again to 20.
As a Newcastle United fan I was watching NUFC play 46 matches in each of the 1989/90, 1990/91, 1991/92 and 1992/93 seasons in the second tier. So maybe that in part is why I don’t really remember the bit when it jumped back from 20 to 22 in the top tier.
Speaking of not remembering stuff, I know I wasn’t that old when they happened, but I don’t recall the Chester Report or the Heathrow Agreement at all.
Everybody thinks the Premier League was when greed first really became the big driving force in English football but it happened long before that.
In the domestic cups, the FA Cup and League Cup, clubs share the gate receipts after expenses are deducted for the cost of putting the match on, plus a percentage of gate money/ticket sales goes into the competition prize money pot.
Back in the day the clubs also shared gate money from their league matches, it turns out that the Chester Report in 1983 brought that to an end as the biggest and richest clubs didn’t like sharing the money they took at home league games. Especially when back then that was by far the biggest revenue stream for top tier English clubs. Imagine these days for example Manchester United and Bournemouth playing each other twice in the league and home crowds of around 75k and 11k respectively, then each having to give the same percentage of their home receipts to the opposition club. In the domestic cup competitions that is why these days many clubs are quite happy to charge lower prices for cup matches because they get to keep a far lower percentage of the money generated by ticket sales at home games.
We then get to the 1985 Heathrow agreement, which I honestly had never heard of before.
This was a 10-point plan negotiated by English football officials at a Heathrow hotel to try and rescue football from financial ruin, falling attendances, and the threat of a top flight breakaway. Once again, the richest and most powerful clubs pushing much of the agenda.
This is when it was agreed to cut the top tier of English football from 22 to 20 clubs and that happened between 1986 and 1988 as the top tier reduced by one club each of two seasons. Amongst the other measures the Heathrow Agreement brought in was the idea of play-offs to help generate more interest and more money. Play-offs of one form or another have now been in place for four decades and I think fair to say they’ve been a huge success in terms of end of season interest for more clubs and generating more cash, with many more teams still standing a chance of getting promotion, as they are in reach of the play-offs.
So what happened though with the English top tier, why between 1986/87 and 1995/96 did it go from having 22 teams to 21 and then 20, before bouncing back to 22, then reducing again to 20?
No surprise that it appears to be the greed of the richest and most powerful that pushed all of these changes.
Ahead of the newly branded Premier League kicking off in the 1992/93 season you saw the number raised back to 22 clubs for the 1991/92 season when it was still known as the First Division.
However, by the time we got to the 1995/96 season the Premier League was back down to 20 teams because the richest and most powerful thought that reduction would benefit them the most. No doubt the rise of Champions League football and the European competitions overall, leaving the most powerful feeling that success in Europe would be more likely and more financially rewarding, if there were two fewer top tier clubs involved, four fewer domestic league games to bother with.
If anybody asks you about the Heathrow Agreement now, then like me you will no longer have a blank expression on your face.