When it comes to long stays in one place, Lincoln City are not really the masters.
Our current stay in League One extends to seven seasons, which is unusual for us. We usually find ourselves dipping in and out of divisions quite a bit. Since 1945, we spent ten consecutive years in the Second Division (1952-1961), 14 in the Fourth Division (1962-1976), another ten in the basement division (1988-1998) and 13 back there (1999-2011). If it weren’t for our brief foray into the current third tier in 1998/99, we’d have been a basement team for a huge period.
It’s rare we spent seven seasons on the third tier, or indeed any tier, and as we hopefully prepare to exit League One, I thought it might be interesting to see which divisions have clubs stay around the longest.
The obvious answer is the Premier League. Nine Premier League teams have spent ten years or more in the top flight, and seven have spent 20 years or more there. Arsenal, remarkable as it is, have never been relegated, and have 100 seasons in the top flight. Madness, but when you consider in other divisions, three or four usually go up and three or four go down, team churn is greater.
Championship Runs
The Championship doesn’t have a huge churn of clubs, and every season in the last eight has featured Swansea City, Stoke City, Blackburn Rovers, Millwall, Middlesbrough, QPR, Preston and Bristol City. The latter trio have spent 11 seasons in the division, which is closing in on a modern record.
Post-war, the record is 17 seasons, Ipswich Town dropping into the division in 2002 and dropping out of it in 2019.
League One
League One has the lowest churn, and with seven seasons, we’re the most League One team there is, bar Burton, who have been here eight. After that, Bolton and Wycombe have five seasons apiece, and Barnsley, Exeter City and Peterborough United have four.
11 of the current division have experienced two seasons or fewer at present, making League One a constantly evolving beast that always seems to feel different. When you consider we’ve had 50 different League One opponents, that becomes obvious. Other than the 23 we have faced this season, we’ve also had Accrington, Southend, Bristol Rovers, Coventry City, Fleetwood, Gillingham, Ipswich, MK Dons, Oxford, Portsmouth, Rochdale, Sunderland, Swindon, Tranmere, Charlton, Crewe, Hull, Cambridge, Shrewsbury, Cheltenham, Morecambe, Sheffield Wednesday, Forest Green, Derby County, Carlisle, Birmingham City and Crawley.
I think that is it!
The record for this division is held by Bournemouth, who were a third-tier side for 40 seasons between 1923 (when the third division was the bottom division) and 1970. As a division you could be relegated from, their stay spans 12 years, 1958 to 1970. They had to apply to be re-elected during their run and finished second, which was not a promotion, in 1948.
League Two
This is one you’d expect to see a long run in, as there have only been relegation spots since 1987 (as we know). Currently, the most ‘League Two’ game of all is Colchester United (10 seasons) and Newport County (13 seasons). Salford and Walsall both have seven seasons, with Barrow, Harrogate and Tranmere on six. It looks likely that two of those long records will go this season.
The longest stay in the division was by Rochdale, who played every season in the basement between 1974 and 2010. Oddly, their two stays since then have both been two seasons, promoted in 2014, then relegated to the National League in 2023.
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