by Sutekh »
17 Oct 2020 10:51
Millsy I was brushing up on the history of Everton and Liverpool last night before today's monumental derby and was quite surprised not to see us as one of the 12 founding members of the league.
Why is this?
It's a matter of some pride that we are one of the oldest clubs in English football, and iirc we were the oldest club at the time in the PL etc but actually we had nothing to do with forming the league. In fact they were all northern clubs (and Midlands).
If we'd been playing footy for years
before the likes of Everton even existed how come we had nothing to do with it?
Money! Many clubs in the Midlands and up north paid their players
and so were professional. Clubs in the south were much more reticent about paying players and somewhat distanced themselves from the “common lot up there” and were happy carrying on in the old fashioned way of friendlies and cup competitions
Woolwich Arsenal were the first club to turn professional in the south in 1891 and after that southern clubs slowly started taking up professionalism and eventually formed the Southern League as a rival to the FL (though Woolwich got hacked off by failure to get their own SL off the ground and so joined the second division of the FL and were for a time the only southern club in the competition).
Reading turned professional in 1895 and at the time the Southern League was seen as a rival the FL (but with bot professional and amateur clubs) so why spend a shed load more cash to go up north when you can have a nice “local” league down in the south?