ROUND · every league

RUND PREMIER LEAGUE

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History

PREMIER LEAGUE · FOUNDED 1992

English league football has been played since 1888, but the Premier League is only as old as the television deal that created it. Twenty-two First Division clubs resigned from the Football League in one afternoon and sold their broadcast rights themselves.

The moments

1. 1992

   The breakaway

   The clubs of the First Division left the Football League to keep their television money. The first Premier League goal was scored by Brian Deane for Sheffield United against Manchester United on the opening Saturday, and the division has never had a season without a title race worth watching since.

2. 1995

   Twenty clubs

   The league cut itself from twenty-two clubs to twenty, which is the size it has kept: thirty-eight games, nineteen at home and nineteen away, every club playing every other twice.

3. 1996

   “I would love it”

   Newcastle led by twelve points in January and finished second. Kevin Keegan’s reply to Alex Ferguson on live television in April is quoted more often than the final table is.

4. 1999

   The treble

   Manchester United won the league on the final day, the FA Cup the following Saturday and the European Cup four days after that, with two goals in injury time. No English club had done it before.

5. 2004

   The Invincibles

   Arsenal went through all thirty-eight league games unbeaten — twenty-six wins and twelve draws. It has not been done since, in any of the seasons that followed.

6. 2012

   93:20

   Manchester City needed to beat Queens Park Rangers to take the title from Manchester United on goal difference, went 2–1 down, and scored twice after the ninety minutes were up. Sergio Agüero’s winner arrived at ninety-three minutes and twenty seconds.

7. 2016

   Leicester City

   Leicester had avoided relegation the previous spring and were quoted at 5000–1 to win the league. They won it with two games to spare, and no bookmaker has offered those odds on anything since.

8. 2018

   One hundred points

   Manchester City finished on a hundred points, the first club to reach the figure in England, winning thirty-two of their thirty-eight matches.

9. 2020

   Thirty years

   Liverpool won their first title since 1990, sealing it with seven games left, in a season stopped for three months and finished in empty stadiums.

10. 2022

    The last kick again

    Manchester City came from two goals down against Aston Villa on the final afternoon while Liverpool led at Anfield, and took the title by a point. It was the fourth time the destination changed inside the last ten minutes of a season.

Records that stand

Roll of honour

These are Premier League titles only. English championships won before 1992 are counted separately, and on that longer list Liverpool and Manchester United are far ahead of everybody.