125 years of the Football League and the top flight - which team comes top?

Which teams have the upper hand after a century and a quarter of football?

• Download the data
• More data journalism and data visualisations from the Guardian
Preston North End, unbeaten in 22 games 1888 View larger picture
Preston North End, unbeaten in 22 games 1888. Photograph: Howard Barlow

Today exactly 125 years ago, The English Football League was founded at the Royal Hotel in Manchester, becoming the first national football league in the world. Twelve teams started into the first season on September 8 1888, which would produce Preston North End as their very first champions.

We've crunched the numbers of all 113 top flight seasons (1888-1892: Football League, 1892-1992: First Division, 1992-today: Premier League). Eleven seasons had been suspended during the first and second world wars.

Since the foundation of the Football League, a total of 64 teams have played at least one season in the respective top flight of English football. Everton, one of the twelve founding members, is currently playing its 110th season in the top league, having missed only four for two spells in the second division. It is topping the list of most seasons played in the top flight.

23 teams have been crowned champions at least once, Manchester United (19 titles), Liverpool (18) and Arsenal (13) being the most successful collectors of silverware.

If we combine the two metrics – championships won and seasons played in the top league – we can calculate an efficiency index in winning tropies when in the race. Which puts Huddersfield Town right in the top group along the above serial winners.

From a geographical perspective, London might have been and still be the city with by far the most teams, but its the North-Western cities that picked up most of the trophies to date. Our map shows how the 113 championship trophies have been spread across the country.

Over all 113 completed seasons, the average number of goals scored is just above three per game. It has been the highest in the very beginning, at 4.63 in the second season. After being at a steady low for the past fourty years, average goals scored per game have been rising again in the past three seasons. They are now – at a current 2.83 goals per game – on course to finish higher than in any other season since 1967-68.

Finally, if we count every single game played in England's top league since it was founded towards one table, this is what it would look like as of April 14 2013. Points are counted as they were awarded at the time, so two points for a win until 1981, three afterwards (did you know that the initial idea of the founders was to award points for wins only, so that it would make no difference if you drew or lost a game?).

What can you do with this data?

Data summary

How each team compares

Click heading to sort table. Download this data
Rank
Club
Games
Won
Drawn
Lost
Goal Diff
Points
1 Liverpool 3,901 1,800 974 1,127 1,640 5,220
2 Arsenal 3,900 1,753 1,009 1,138 1,500 5,159
3 Everton 4,284 1,746 1,070 1,468 734 5,055
4 Manchester United 3,544 1,688 869 987 1,569 4,975
5 Aston Villa 3,951 1,618 943 1,390 626 4,612
6 Chelsea 3,163 1,246 825 1,092 254 3,837
7 Tottenham Hotspur 3,160 1,275 774 1,111 438 3,827
8 Manchester City 3,385 1,291 836 1,258 140 3,744
9 Newcastle United 3,269 1,278 798 1,193 275 3,704
10 Sunderland 3,183 1,227 735 1,221 122 3,361
11 Blackburn Rovers 2,720 1,017 651 1,052 -42 2,947
12 West Bromwich Albion 2,912 1,053 702 1,157 -232 2,933
13 Bolton Wanderers 2,802 1,017 641 1,144 -311 2,824
14 Sheffield Wednesday 2,582 980 612 990 -44 2,781
15 Derby County 2,468 906 585 977 -146 2,510
16 Wolverhampton Wanderers 2,422 943 546 933 79 2,480
17 Leeds United 2,060 846 523 691 295 2,455
18 West Ham United 2,238 761 554 923 -353 2,420
19 Nottingham Forest 2,178 800 549 829 -102 2,404
20 Middlesbrough 2,400 813 601 986 -314 2,401
21 Sheffield United 2,356 871 560 925 -231 2,363
22 Birmingham City 2,306 724 583 999 -607 2,146
23 Stoke City 2,177 716 529 932 -540 2,059
24 Burnley 2,020 792 453 775 -34 2,045
25 Leicester City 1,900 603 500 797 -451 1,839
26 Preston North End 1,720 671 390 659 132 1,732
27 Southampton 1,449 473 402 574 -219 1,671
28 Coventry City 1,390 430 396 564 -350 1,500
29 Portsmouth 1,356 484 322 550 -187 1,367
30 Huddersfield Town 1,260 480 317 463 20 1,277
31 Ipswich Town 1,084 402 265 417 -58 1,206
32 Blackpool 1,172 415 282 475 -153 1,122
33 Charlton Athletic 1,050 355 253 442 -227 1,093
34 Norwich City 935 283 288 364 -277 1,045
35 Queens Park Rangers 893 291 242 360 -131 1,030
36 Notts County 1,068 341 253 474 -309 983
37 Fulham 954 288 253 413 -280 969
38 Bury 804 279 180 345 -164 738
39 Wimbledon 554 186 171 197 -52 729
40 Luton Town 658 213 168 277 -148 725
41 Cardiff City 630 224 154 252 -128 602
42 Crystal Palace 530 137 156 237 -246 514
43 Oldham Athletic 484 159 129 196 -109 483
44 Bradford City 468 152 126 190 -87 444
45 Grimsby Town 488 167 97 224 -184 431
46 Watford 326 104 77 145 -58 389
47 Wigan Athletic 297 84 74 139 -160 326
48 Bristol City 358 114 94 150 -82 322
49 Swansea City 154 53 39 62 -17 198
50 Brentford 210 76 46 88 -29 198
51 Brighton & Hove Albion 168 47 48 73 -62 164
52 Oxford United 124 27 38 59 -79 119
53 Reading 109 31 22 56 -47 115
54 Bradford Park Avenue 122 40 27 55 -32 107
55 Accrington 122 35 33 54 -87 103
56 Millwall 76 19 22 35 -31 79
57 Hull City 76 14 23 39 -66 65
58 Barnsley 38 10 5 23 -45 35
59 Northampton 42 10 13 19 -37 33
60 Swindon Town 42 5 15 22 -53 30
61 Darwen 56 11 8 37 -120 30
62 Carlisle United 42 12 5 25 -16 29
63 Leyton Orient 42 6 9 27 -44 21
64 Glossop North End 34 4 10 20 -43 18

Download the data

• DATA: download the full spreadsheet
• SOURCE: Myfootballfacts.com, Premier League, Football League, Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation

NEW! Buy our book

• Facts are Sacred: the power of data

More open data

Data journalism and data visualisations from the Guardian

World government data

• Search the world's government data with our gateway

Development and aid data

• Search the world's global development data with our gateway

Can you do something with this data?

• Flickr Please post your visualisations and mash-ups on our Flickr group
• Contact us at data@guardian.co.uk

• Get the A-Z of data
• More at the Datastore directory
• Follow us on Twitter
• Like us on Facebook
We have switched off comments on this old version of the site. To comment on crosswords, please switch over to the new version to comment. Read more...
Preston North End, unbeaten in 22 games 1888

Preston North End, unbeaten in 22 games 1888. Photograph: Howard Barlow