It wasn’t a “special” anniversary but last Friday I noticed a lot of posts on social media about the English Football League being officially formed 138 years ago on 17th April 1888 at the Royal Hotel in Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester (the site is now a Primark, formerly the Lewis store¹ ).

All twelve founder members were famously from the North and Midlands, with six being from Lancashire so obviously I decided to analyse how many fanzines this lead to, roughly 100 years later. Obviously, I mean why wouldn’t you do this, it makes perfect sense…Jesus wept I need to get a life.

First things first, in terms of pure numbers the decision of this group of victorian dignitaries sitting in a smoky room in Manchester lead to the creation of 114 fanzines. I should note here that 3 of these fanzines weren’t JUST for the member clubs, 2 being for Notts County AND Forest (Saturday Afternoon and Sunday Morning
and 400 Yards) and one being for Liverpool as a city but with Everton obviously included (The End) but still, you already knew that. There was also a fanzine called Flickin’ and Kickin’ devoted to Notts County AND Subbuteo.

Would you like some meaningless ‘stats’ and a made up league table? Of course you would.

• The 12 founder clubs have led to the creation of 6.2% of all football fanzines created on the British Isles (At time of going to press etc)
• West Brom had the first recognisable fanzine of this group with Fingerpost appearing in September 1983.
  • Note; The Manchester Wolves supporters club apparently started producing newsletters in 1977 but we don’t believe this was a fanzine as such and distributed to members only
• Almost all of these fanzines were A5 with the exception of
  • The first 20 (?) issues of Grorty Dick before the more sensible compact A5 size took over (A4 making a one-off return for the fanzine’s 50th issue)
  • All issues of Preston’s 53 Miles West of Venus
• Bolton had the cheapest fanzine with The Trotter starting out at 20p a copy
• We think the fanzine from furthest away was The Norwegian They produced by the magnificently named ‘The ‘Fellowship of the Norwegian Accrington Stanley Supporters’
  • An honourable note here for Blackburn fans as they created 2 exile fanzines Many Miles From Home based in London and the superbly titled Many Miles From Home M5 M6 Ewood Heaven by Rovers fans based in the South West who upon realising their favoured name had been taken added the motorways they used to get to Ewood heaven.
• Stoke city had by far an away the most prolific fanzine with The Oatcake lasting 654 issues.
• The shortest fanzine we’ve seen of this group was the September 1995 issue 5 of Bolton’s Wanderer’s Worldwide which, improbably, contains Diego Maradonna.

• The lengthisest fanzine we’ve seen in this group is the 100 page September 1991 issue 14 of Grorty Dick from West Brom, a zine that features a survey on how fans had reacted to being beaten 4-2 at home by Woking in the FA Cup in /January that year.

• Blackburn (4000 Holes) and Preston (The Nose Bag) still have print zines going though sadly The Nose Bag have announced that their next edition will be the last.

The following table proves conclusively the link between performance in the first year of league competition and number of fanzines the club would go on to produce…if you only consider Preston. I’ve seen far worse attempts at stats in fanzines.

For the sake of completeness, here is the 1st table in full.

How about a table of our favourite fanzine titles by team and the reasons behind them

At this point I was going to do a fanzine piece from at least one of all the teams but we’re already over 1500 words and that is a treatise that can wait until the 140th anniversary in two years time (Plus, confession time, I don’t have any Stanley fanzines. If anyone out there knows of some please get in touch) So instead I’m going to give you great covers from each of the club’s fanzines..

Finally, here is the full list of fanzines from these clubs that we currently have. I fully expect and for sure hope that someone will correct me here and add more fanzines to this list, I’m still finding about 2 new ones as week in general so fingers crossed. Thanks to @LuvEvertonForum and /or @_AlwaysWolves for the superb figurines and WOW look at some of those original kits.

Accrington Stanley

Accystan
Rawmilk
The Barber’s Pole
The Norwegian They
Theres No F In Roof

Aston Villa

Between The Lions
Ellis Out!
Heroes and Villains
Holy Trinity
Missing Sid
Never Loved Ellis
The Villa Bugle
The Witton Wag
Witton Wisdom

Blackburn Rovers

4000 Holes
Beamo!
Blue and White Telegraph
Colin’s Cheeky Bits
Loadsamoney
Many Miles From HomeM5 M6 Ewood Heaven
Many Miles From Home

Bolton Wanderers

Come On Feel The Wanderers
Here we Go Again!
Now We Want Pele
Pheep!
The Good, the Bad and The Ugly
The Last To Leave The Bridgers
The Normid Nomad
The Wanderer
Tripe ‘n’ Trotters
The Trotter
Wanderers Worldwide
White Army
White Love

Burnley

Bob Lord’s Sausage
Claret And Blue News
For Ever And A Day
Kicker Conspiracy
Marlon’s Gloves
No, Nay Never
The 29th
The Claret Flag
When The Ball Moves
Who Hate All The Pies?

Derby County

Derby County Memories
Bloomer Shoots – Shilton Saves
C Stander
Hey Big Spender
Interesting, Very Interesting
Perfect Day
The Mutton Mutineer
The Sheep
We’ll Be Back In 91

Everton

Blue Blood
Blue Wail
Gwladys Sings The Blues
Satis?
Singing The Blues
Speke From The Harbour
The Black Watch
The Evertonian
When Skies Are Grey

The End

Notts County

Gerrit Forward
Magpie Nonsense
The Thin Yellow Stripe
The Wheelbarrows
County Till I Fly
Flickin N Kickin
Magpie George
No More Pie In The Sky (Never Mind the Forest, Here’s the Magpies)
Piefect Day
The Better Half
The Pie
The Stylish Magpie

Saturday Afternoon and Sunday Morning
400 Yards

Preston North End

53 Miles West Of Venus
Deepdale Invincible
Deepdale Rudge
Gonzo
Hyde Hyde! What’s The Score
Preston’s Pride and Joy
Raising The Coffin
Silence Of The Lamb
Sleeping Giant
Tales From The Potting Shed
The North End Melon
The Nose Bag
The Pie Muncher
The PNE View
Tommy Who?
Win on the Plastic

Stoke City

A View To A Kiln
Duck
He’s Magic You Know
Potters Monthly
She Stood There Laughing
The Jolly Potter
The Oatcake
The Victoria Voice

West Bromwich Albion

Almost A Chant
Fingerpost
Last Train To Rolfe Street
The Albion Chronicle
The Floppy Dick
The Grorty Dick
The Throstle

Wolves

A Wandering Star
A Load Of Bull
BBBBs
London Wolves
Manchester Wolves
The Wright Way

The Back Page

Yes I know that the Accrington that exists today is not the original club but the whole pretext for this blog is pretty flimsy so who cares? This whole thing comes very much under the “You never know when you might need this list” category of blogs about fanzines. It’s right up there with the list of Ranger’s Scottish Cup Final appearances list that appeared in The Rangers Historian², hard to justify the work it took but compelling all the same.

That’s what filled acres of print and sometimes what fanzines were about and at least you now know that a section of Ewood Park used to serenade Colin Hendry with a request to see his arse.

1. https://manchesterhistory.net/manchester/gone/royalhotel.html ↩︎
2. https://footballfanzineculture.blog/2026/01/29/do-not-trust-any-statistics-you-did-not-fake-yourself/ ↩︎