Every Premier League club’s origin story: Armaments, class, and a St Bernard dog

“Origin stories are everywhere. Every single successful film franchise seems to have at least one instalment where we go back to the beginning, to tell the tale of why the main character is the way they are. Some are pretty tenuous: in Kenneth Branagh’s recent adaptation of Death On The Nile, there was an origin story for Hercule Poirot’s moustache. In that spirit, we thought we would tell the tales of how all 20 of the 2025-26 Premier League teams came into existence. Their origins include churches, factories, local council decrees, cricket clubs, rugby clubs, ‘bandy and shinty’ clubs, more than one from the ashes of a team that didn’t quite make it, and many because the young lads involved just needed something to do in the winter. The stories involve skullduggery, under-the-counter deals, Victorian fascinations with wholesome pursuits, hands across the class divide, meetings in pubs, a club formed because its founder had a stadium but no team, another claiming to be the oldest club in the world, teachers, William Shakespeare, a man called Charles Daft, and more dogs than you might imagine. …”
NY Times/The Athletic

Chelsea at Stamford Bridge in 1909-10, four years after forming