Who are the most successful English clubs? We look at the teams to have won the most major honours in English football history.
This weekend saw the latest opportunity to win major domestic silverware, as Manchester United and Manchester City faced off at Wembley in the English FA Cup final. It was Man City who took the win and added +1 to their total.
Both sides had already won silverware in 2022-23, with Manchester United defeating Newcastle in the EFL Cup final back in February, while Manchester City were looking to become just the second English club to win the (real) treble – they completed part II of the trilogy, having already won the Premier League and ahead of the UEFA Champions League final against Inter Milan in Istanbul next weekend.
For a game that venerates its own history so much, football has problems reconciling what should truly count when it comes to assessing the most successful clubs. Do you go for raw figures? Or do you apply some sort of era filter, given that the game’s laws have changed so much? For instance, three of Newcastle’s four league titles came when goalkeepers could handle the ball up to the halfway line, while both of Preston’s league titles came before the penalty kick was introduced. Fair? Football is it? Those honours certainly count, but should they matter as much as a modern trophy, forged in the high-intensity cauldron of modern football? Let’s investigate.
Readers should note that the myriad forms of ‘Super Cup’ honours have not been included in these gloried calculations as these are a) quasi-friendlies a lot of time, and b) aren’t open to most clubs. And while you get a gold badge to wear on your shirt, we haven’t included the Club World Cup in these figures. Please add on one honour for each of Manchester United, Liverpool and Chelsea if you deem that competition a worthy addition to this overall assessment of the most successful teams in English football history.
The competitions included here are the FA Cup (started 1871), the league championship (started 1888, reconstituted to the Premier League in 1992), the League Cup (started 1960), the European Cup (started 1955, rebranded as the Champions League in 1992), the UEFA Cup (started 1971, rebranded as the Europa League in 2009), the European Cup Winners Cup (started 1960, abolished 1999) and, perhaps controversially, the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, which was ran from 1955 to 1971 and is widely seen as the forerunner of the UEFA Cup. In regards to English football Leeds won it twice, Newcastle and Arsenal once. It’s not recognised by UEFA as part of a club’s European record but FIFA do, and that’s good enough for us.
The All-Time Leaders
Let’s start with the headline figure, which is that Liverpool are on 45 major honours (19 league titles, eight FA Cups, nine League Cups, six European Cups and three UEFA Cups), two clear of their eternal rivals Manchester United (43), who are one ahead of them on English league titles (20 vs.19) as it stands but three behind them when it comes to the beacon of prestigiousness that is the European Cup/Champions League. United, like Chelsea, have won all three major European titles – Liverpool never won the Cup Winners Cup – and maybe, at some point, one of these sides will win the UEFA Conference League.
The other thing to note is that despite seemingly endless online debate about whether clubs like Manchester City (first major honour: the 1904 FA Cup) and Chelsea (first major honour: the 1954-55 league title) have “history,” the fact is they are the joint fourth most successful teams in English footballing history, and are both narrowing that gap to Arsenal in third.
Ancient Lore
Football didn’t start in either 1992 or 1888, but you can draw arbitrary lines at any point if you’re looking to bolster or supress a club’s cachet. As New Years Day 1900 dawned the most successful league sides were Aston Villa (four title wins), Sunderland (three) and Preston (two). Villa added a fifth later in 1900 and a sixth in 1910 but have been champions of England only once since, in 1981, although that did allow them the opportunity to become European champions in 1982.
Other midlands sides of note include Nottingham Forest, who parlayed their single league title in 1978 to a pair of European Cup wins in 1979 and 1980, and Leicester, who began the 2010s without having ever been champions of England or FA Cup winners, an issue they sorted out in 2016 and 2021 respectively.
But if we’re going to draw a dividing point, why not use the Second World War, which saw league football suspended for seven seasons, and, contrary to what a lot of 1992 deniers claim, was often used as a neat football history dividing point prior to the foundation of the Premier League. The Before The War table has Villa well clear on 12 honours, four ahead of Blackburn and then five sides on seven. Arsenal are in there, and can lay claim to being the most historically consistent side, the only club in this list to regularly challenge for honours in the 21st century. The decline of north east football always deserves some considered thought, with all of Sunderland’s and Newcastle’s league titles coming before the war. Sunderland, in 1936, remain the last champions of England to play in stripes, which contrasts England significantly with Italy, among other nations.
Gleaming Modernity
Manchester United fans may be interested to learn that if we start football from 1945 (the FA Cup was played in 1945-46 but league football didn’t resume until 1946-47), then they are still behind Liverpool for major trophies won (41 vs. 40), because the Anfield side lose out on four league titles won before the war, while United only lose two leagues and the 1909 FA Cup. Liverpool famously had to wait a long time before winning their first FA Cup in 1965, losing finals in 1914 – the last one held at Crystal Palace – and 1950. Last season at Wembley, Liverpool won their first FA Cup since the “Gerrard Final” of 2006, and in doing so, they went joint-third with Chelsea (eight) in the list, with only Arsenal (14) and Man United (12) ahead of them.
The truth is that no side has been able to permanently dominate English football, although Liverpool and Man Utd stand above all other clubs. The honours table since 1945 contains the same top five as the all-time one, albeit with Chelsea already ahead of Arsenal, and Man City reaching 21 with their 2022-23 Premier League title win and then 22 with the FA Cup final victory. The only instruction to supporters is to make the most of every trophy and every big day out, because you never know when the ride is going to stop. Go back and tell a Preston fan in 1890, or a Sheffield United fan in 1898, or a West Brom fan in 1920, or a Huddersfield fan in 1926, or a Newcastle fan in 1927, or a Sheffield Wednesday fan in 1930, or a Sunderland fan in 1936, or a Wolves fan in 1959, or an Everton fan in 1987 or an Arsenal fan in 2004 that guess what, it was the last league title your club is going to win for a long time, perhaps forever. They simply won’t believe you because their team are the champions of England, and that’s not how it works.
The Future
There are few guarantees in football, but Liverpool and Manchester United maintaining their position as the two most successful English clubs is as close as it gets. Man Utd had the opportunity to draw level with Liverpool this weekend but lost the FA Cup final against rivals City. In truth, it’s going to take a major shift for any club to get close to the pair in the next decade.
Manchester City have the chance to overtake Chelsea’s total of 25 major honours next weekend, and the way things are going, it won’t be long until they catch Arsenal’s 30 in the list of the most successful English clubs.
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