OK. A Little bit of lesson time goes into history...
I figure I might start this at about when Alex Ferguson took over at Manchester United, a mere 22 years ago. Back in the 80s, there was really only one power in English football: Liverpool. With Kenney Daglish as player-manager, Liverpool won the League in 86. Manchester United had a poor season and eventually finished 11th but Ferguson's work paid off and in the following season, they finished second. Chelsea, under Ken Neal, had recently just got back into the Premiership after a poor couple of seasons in the early 80s. They struggled again in the later 80s and eventually, in 88 I think, were relegated a second time, only to bounce back immediately. Arsenal were under new management as well in '86. The new coach, George Graham, did better than Ferguson and won a league cup. Shortly following it up with a league win in the 89/90 season.
But this is just background because the golden league era of football in England began in 1992, with the forming of the Premier League.
The first big thing to point out is that it is officially the most watched football league in the world. 20 teams compete each season and a total of 40 different clubs have made it into the Premiership but only 4 have ever won it.
These teams are: Arsenal, Blackburn Rovers, Chelsea and Manchester United.
United's dominance of the league was based on a golden generation of players, such as Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes, who came into the team as youngsters replacing some big names in the United line-up, which infamously led to pundit Alan Hansen (who was a player in the dominant Liverpool squad mentioned previously) on Match of the Day saying "You'll never win with kids." Ferguson proved him wrong and went on to win the league. Several times. 9 in fact, with the latest being the 06/07 season. They also famously won a treble in 1999 which included an incredible victory at Bayern Munich in the Champions League.
The next team to win the Premier League was Blackburn Rovers. Spurred on by quality players such as Alan Shearer, Chris Sutton and Graeme Le Saux, Blackburn won the league title in the 94/95 season.
In 1996, Arsenal gained a massive boost when Arsene Wenger was appointed manager and acted quickly, securing Arsenal a League and Cup double in the following season. They have won the Premiership a total of 3 times. Players such as Nicholas Anelka (Now at Chelsea), Ian Wright and Dennis Bergkamp were certainly a prolific strike force.
The last team to win the League were Chelsea. They had a torrid time in the 80s but in the 90s, under newly installed player-manager Ruud Gullit, they brought in some great players, such as Gianfranco Zola and established themselves as a very positive, exciting attacking squad. Unfortunately, often supporters of teams like United forget that, even in their treble winning season, they lost by 5 goals to Chelsea. They won cup competitions, including a very impressive Cup Winners Cup win against Stuttgart with a goal by Zola with practically his first touch after coming on as a sub - if you didn't see it, it's worth looking up on Youtube - and they went on to win the UEFA Super Cup against Real Madrid.
They also managed to gain a regular champions League squad, which led to Roman Abramovich, a very affluent Russian businessman buying the squad. He replaced then manager Claudio Ranieri with Jose Mourinho and the self dubbed "Special One" went on to win consecutive league titles in the '04/'05 and '05/'06 seasons, playing a more efficient brand of football.
