16.1 History of the English football leagues since 1888

The English league started out with one division of 12 teams in 1888 and quickly added another in 1892. After the First World War a third division started and this was doubled and split into North and South divisions one year later. In 1958 the two third divisions were combined and split into national third and fourth divisions. In 1992 the old first division became the Premier League and the other divisions also changed their names (and again later). For simplicity’s sake this report, like the dataset, refers to the different levels as the four tiers. Seasons are denoted by the year they began, so 2021-22 is referred to as 2021.

Much information on the intricate details of football history can be found on the Wikipedia sites for individual league seasons. These have been very helpful for explaining how the league developed and for understanding various initially surprising features. The maintainer of the package, James Curley, has published several insightful articles on the 538 website using the dataset (Curley (2016)).