PREMIER LEAGUE

• The Premier League is a league competition for English football clubs at the top of the English football league system.

• For historic reasons, a few clubs from Wales compete in the English football system.

• The competition started as the FA Premier League on 20 February 1992 after the decision of clubs in the Football League First Division to break away from The Football League.

• This was originally founded in 1888.

• The Premier League has since become the world's most watched sporting league.

• It is the world's most lucrative football league, with combined club revenues of £1.93 billion ($3.15bn) in 2007–08.

• It is also ranked first by UEFA. • This rating is based on performances in European

competitions over the last five years. • In this English Premier League is ahead of Spain's

La Liga and Italy's Serie A.

• A total of 45 clubs have competed in the Premier League, but only five have won the title: Manchester United, Blackburn Rovers, Arsenal, Chelsea, and Manchester City.

• The Premier League is a corporation in which the 20 member clubs act as shareholders.

• Seasons run from August to May, with teams playing 38 matches each, totalling 380 matches in the season.

• Most games are played in the afternoons of Saturdays and Sundays, the other games during weekday evenings.

• It is currently sponsored by Barclays Bank and thus officially known as the Barclays Premier League.

• Outside of England it is commonly referred to as the English Premier League (EPL).

• This deal is worth £1 billion a year as of 2013–14, with BSkyB and BT Group securing the rights to broadcast 116 and 38 games respectively.

• The Premier League is the most-watched football league in the world, broadcast in 212 territories to 643 million homes and a potential TV audience of 4.7 billion people.

• In the 2010–11 season the average Premier League match attendance was 35,363.

• The second highest of any professional football league behind the German Bundesliga, and stadium occupancy was 92.2% capacity.

MANCHESTER UNITED

• Manchester United Football Club is an English professional football club, based in Old Trafford, Greater Manchester, that plays in the Premier League. Founded as Newton Heath LYR Football Club in 1878, the club changed its name to Manchester United in 1902 and moved to Old Trafford in 1910.

• Manchester United have won many trophies in English football, including a record 20 League titles, a record 11 FA Cups, four League Cups and a record 20 FA Community Shields.

• The club has also won three European Cups, one UEFA Cup Winners' Cup, one UEFA Super Cup, one Intercontinental Cup and one FIFA Club World Cup.

• In 1998–99, the club won a continental treble of the Premier League, the FA Cup and the UEFA Champions League, an unprecedented feat for an English club.

Old Trafford

• Alex Ferguson won 28 major honours, and 38 in total, from November 1986 to May 2013, when he announced his retirement after 26 years at the club.

• Fellow Scot David Moyes was appointed as his replacement on 9 May 2013.

Fergurson

• Manchester United is the third-richest football club in the world for 2011–12 in terms of revenue, with an annual revenue of €395.9 million, and the second most valuable club in 2013, valued at $3.165 billion.

• It is one of the most widely supported football teams in the world.

ARSENAL

• Arsenal Football Club is an English Premier League football club based in Holloway, London.

• One of the most successful clubs in English football, it has won 13 First Division and Premier League titles and 10 FA Cups.

• Arsenal holds the record for the longest uninterrupted period in the English top flight and would be placed first in an aggregated league of the entire 20th century.

Emirates Stadium.

• Arsenal was founded in 1886 in Woolwich and in 1893 became the first club from the south of England to join the Football League.

• In 1913, it moved north across the city to Arsenal Stadium in Highbury.

• In the 1930s the club won five League Championship titles and two FA Cups.

• After a lean period in the post-war years it won the League and FA Cup Double, in the 1970–71 season, and in the 1990s and first decade of the 21st century won two more Doubles and reached the 2006 UEFA Champions League Finale.

Arsene Wenger

CHELSEA

• Chelsea F.C. is an English football club that plays in England, starting in 1905.

• The club plays in the Premier League, and they play at the Stamford Bridge Stadium in London.

• Chelsea's owner is Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich.

• Chelsea finished sixth in The Barclays Premier League in the 2011–12 season, but won Europe's club championship, the UEFA Champions League, in the same season.

• In 2003 the Russian billionaire, Roman Abramovich, purchased Chelsea and invested lots of capital to employ new football players.

• He also employed Luiz Felipe Scolari, as the manager of the club.

• Abramovich also employed Peter Kenyon as the chief executive to be responsible for the commercial strategies of the club.

Roman Abramovich.

• This made Chelsea more and more powerful, and they won the Premier League in consecutive years.

• A third straight FA Premier League title slipped through Chelsea's fingertips after their failure to defeat Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium meant that Manchester United had won their ninth league title in fifteen tries.

• On September 20, 2007, the very successful manager José Mourinho left the club by "mutual consent".

• This exit came just days after a shockingly poor performance which saw them barely scrape out a 1-1 draw in a Champions League tie against Norwegian side Rosenborg B.K.

• Following Mourinho's exit, Chelsea made Director of Football Avram Grant the new manager of the club, until May 2008.

• Grant took over with Chelsea trailing in the Premier League "title race" behind Manchester United and Arsenal, and managed to keep Chelsea in the hunt for the league until the last game of the season.

• He got Chelsea into the Champions League Final for the first time as well as the Carling Cup Final.

Jose Mourinho

• Chelsea's regular kit colours are royal blue shirts and shorts with white socks.

• The club's crest has been changed several times in attempts to re-brand the club and modernise its image.

• The current crest, featuring a ceremonial lion rampant regardant holding a staff, is a modification of the one introduced in the early 1950s.

• The club has sustained the fifth highest average all-time attendance in English football.

• Their average home gate for the 2012–13 season was 41,462, the sixth highest in the Premier League.

Stamford Bridge.

LIVERPOOL F.C

• Liverpool Football Club is an English football club.

• They were created on March 15, 1892, and are also known as The Reds.

• The club plays in the Premier League. The stadium they play in is Anfield.

• The club is managed by Brendan Rodgers.• The club is owned by John W Henry.

• Liverpool F.C. is one of the most successful clubs in England and has won more European trophies than any other English team with five European Cups, three UEFA Cups and three UEFA Super Cups.

• The club has also won eighteen League titles, seven FA Cups and a record eight League Cups.

• Liverpool was founded in 1892 and joined the Football League the following year.

• The club has played at Anfield since its formation.

• The most successful period in Liverpool's history was the 1970s and '80s when Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley led the club to eleven league titles and seven European trophies.

Anfield

• The club's supporters have been involved in two major tragedies.

• The first was the Heysel Stadium disaster in 1985 in which charging Liverpool fans caused a wall to collapse, killing 39 Juventus supporters and resulting in English clubs being banned from European competitions for five years.

• In the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, 96 Liverpool supporters lost their lives in a crush against perimeter fencing.

Heysel Stadium

Hillsborough.

• Liverpool has long-standing rivalries with neighbours Everton and with Manchester United.

• The team changed from red shirts and white shorts to an all-red home strip in 1964.

• The club's anthem is "You'll Never Walk Alone".