“Which team has played the highest number of current Premier League and Football League teams in competitive matches,” asks John Sullivan.
“I am sad enough to have spent a pre-internet school holiday drawing up charts of who had played who,” writes Mitchell Sandler, saving us a job. “These days it’s all on spreadsheets and much easier to update. The key to the question is new boys Sutton United who have, occasional FA Cup matches excluded, yet to play any of the other 91 ‘first-class’ clubs. Twenty-three of these will have played them in the next few months and of these, precisely four – Bradford City, Northampton, Port Vale and Swindon – will be able to claim the full set.”
That’s if we’re only looking at the current 92 clubs. “If we assume a team can’t play itself then the answer lies outside the Football League,” says Richard Gunn. “I think Notts County have faced all 72 Football League sides, as well as all 20 currently in the Premier League. I suspect Wrexham might have played all 72 as well, but not all 20 in the Premier League.” Now would be a handy time to be invited to share Mitchell’s spreadsheet. We thought Notts County might have missed out on facing Salford City but an FA Cup tie in 2015 means they have ticked the Class of 92’s favourite plaything off their “competitive game” list .
And David Price takes us on a trip north for an answer that would have done the job a season ago. “With our tumultuous fall down the leagues in the last few years (and now thankfully moving back in the right direction), this has enabled my team, Bolton Wanderers, to have played every team that was in the 2020-21 Football League in a league match, not just a competitive match. However, if by ‘current’ you mean the members of the Football League in the 2021-22 season, then the only exception is league newcomers Sutton United.”
Supreme individual feats in humiliating defeats
“Barbra Banda scored a hat-trick for Zambia in the 10-3 defeat by Netherlands at Tokyo 2020,” begins John Carlisle. “Has there been a more supreme individual feat in a humiliating defeat before?”
Almost, says Jeremy Simmonds, who notes that Everton’s Jimmy Harris scored three in a 10-4 defeat by Spurs in October 1958. He takes up the story: “This was the legendary Bill Nicholson’s first game in charge at Tottenham, the new boss apparently spending most of the post-match debrief castigating the home defence for letting Harris in so often. Harris was outdone by Tottenham’s Bobby Smith, who bagged four that afternoon.”
John Brough also suggested the same performance, sending the bucket back into the Knowledge well with the related query: “Has anyone had a better start to a managerial job?”
But back to the original poser, Doncaster fan Howard Groves says Kerry Dixon went one better: “I can recall visiting Reading forward Kerry Dixon scoring four in a match in September 1982 – a tremendous effort although Doncaster eventually won 7-5. In one of football’s twists of fate, Dixon became the Doncaster manager some years later.”
Horses named after footballers (the final furlong)
Last week we brought you a selection of racehorses named after footballers and a best XI. A few more have arrived in the paddock since then.
“I once bet on Frank LeBoeuf,” writes Nick Gascoigne. “It ran at Del Mar (California), probably around 2000. I lost my money. Better player than racer.”
Devin Govender also writes in, informing us as follows: “Here in South Africa, we had a sprinter called Tevez who enjoyed a pretty successful career, winning up to Grade 2 level. There was also Solskjær – actually an Irish-bred who won a couple of stakes races in Ireland but ended up in South Africa for stud duties, where he sired a filly called Giggs (not sure how they got the gender mixed up, but there it is). Surprisingly, none of his other progeny were named directly after footballers, although many had football-themed names, the most apposite perhaps being a filly called The Special One.”
And Peter Gorvin keeps the Manchester United theme going. “I named a horse Bryan Robson about 25 years ago,” he says. “I wish it had been 10% as good as its namesake. I got him to sign a consent form for use of his name at Bangor-on-Dee races one day.”
Top, top players winning nothing
“A couple of weeks ago someone asked about unwinningest top players,” writes Adam Webster. “Seeing as nobody has answered I feel it is my obligation to put forward Bernd Schneider. He played 81 times for Germany, including a World Cup final, and for a fine Bayer Neverkusen Leverkusen team which does explain it somewhat.”
“Honours”: Bundesliga runner-up: 1999–2000, 2001–02. DFB-Pokal runner-up: 2001–02, 2008–09. Champions League runner-up: 2001–02. World Cuprunner-up: 2002.
Knowledge archive
“Which was the last team to win the English top flight playing in a striped home kit?” asked Stuart Young in November 2007.
Well Stuart, it basically all depends on how discerning you are about your stripes. Obviously we’re not going to count teams with a few skinny lines down their sleeves and shorts, nor indeed will we accept Blackburn’s blue and white halves, but would you accept the alternating shades of red on Arsenal’s title-winning top from 1988-89?
If not, then the white pinstripes Liverpool sported during their triumphant 1983-84 campaign (and indeed in 1982-83), are a little more clear cut. But if you’ll only settle for wholehearted, chunky, even slices of markedly different colours, then you actually have to go all the way back to 1935-36, when Sunderland won the old first division in their traditional red and white.
Can you help?
“On 1 August in the EFL Cup, Huddersfield won their 10th penalty shoot out of 13 in their history. Which English team has taken part in the most such events and which has won the most,” asks Richard Askham.
“By the end of the second matchday, no team in the Polish Ekstraklasa has a 100% record (each team has at least drawn). Has this ever happened sooner (each team drawing in the first week) anywhere? And what is the soonest it has happened in the English top flight,” asks Paul Vickers.
“Whilst excruciatingly bored ‘working from home’ I came across the Wikipedia entry for a Mr J Bosman (no, not that one). This is the former Dutch international. It turns out that he scored nine of his 17 (52.9%) international goals against one side, Cyprus. Has anyone with such a decent international return ever had a better strike-rate against a single team,” asks Mike Shaw.
“Albion Rovers’ capacity is reported as 1,238 on the SPFL website,” begins Adam Hookway. “The record crowd at the same ground is 27,381. Has anyone got a more impressive record to capacity difference? That ratio might be unbeatable.”
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