I suppose that could be. But I’ve lived in the South, Southwest and Hawaii, and “biscuit” all meant the same thing, and definitely not what the Brits mean when they say “biscuit.”.
I’ve lived and visited lots of places in the mid-west and west coast and lot of my family is from the south. A biscuit is a biscuit is a biscuit, the same everywhere.
What are these differences in ‘biscuit’?
Brooklyn was a city, not a neighbourhood.
What exactly is the point under contention here? My point is that American clubs, way back to the 19th century, claimed city-wide status, even if there were multiple clubs in the area.
Yes, there was “New York” and “Brooklyn” team. But there wasn’t a “Five Points” club or a “Flushing” club. That is the situation in London.
There is a major difference here in the development of professional clubs in London as opposed to the United States and that is the difference that I’m trying to puzzle out.
Why didn’t one of the early successful professional clubs in London just start calling itself “London”? It’s a trade name – it doesn’t have to be literally true that the club draws fans from all over London and such commercial ventures usually aren’t seen as having to justify such a name.
In fact, this was the case in places like New York, where there were multiple clubs that did largely draw their fan bases from geographic neighborhoods. The New York Yankees, the New York Giants, the New York Cubans, whatever. They all called themselves the “New York” club. Even barnstorming clubs that hardly ever played a game in New York took the name “New York” because it made them sound important.
:smack: Thanks for fighting my ignorance. I didn’t know it started out as a separate city.
Look at the histories of clubs: Arsenal, West Ham and Millwall grew up in the docks of the east end. Fulham were on the western edge of the city. No way would any of these had a need or an ability to create an identity for themselves of being an all-encompassing London team. And as for a ‘trade name’, there wasn’t big money in football until fairly recently.
Does anyone know of a map of England that indicates the locations of the home fields of the major clubs? It would be interesting to see the overall distribution, as well as the distribution in the London area.
Cunningly found by googling ‘england football clubs map’ 
I suspect the north-west rivals London for density of clubs compared to population.
In the US, none that I can tell. But what the British call a “biscuit” is what we call a “cookie.” I’m guessing that’s why the one poster thought another “mad” when he spoke of putting gravy on biscuits.
Yep, pretty much. Note the first organized game between the New York Nine and the New York Knickerbocker Club in 1846.
Baseball started out as a city-wide local thing and has moved to a state-wide thing, trying to encompass more fans. This may be because the Knickerbocker rules were formalized by Alexander Cartright in 1845, and the first professional teams were a scant 30 years later. Money entered into baseball very, very quickly, thereby establishing the need for widespread marketing.
If GorillaMan says there wasn’t big money in football until relatively recently, that could be one contributing factor: there wasn’t any need to try to market to a wide audience until loyalties had already been established — a hundred years had gone by since the establishment of the rules.
Not just that, but consider the sheer land area. I suspect that “local” means something different to English and Americans. “Local” to me is my city. Seattle, 60 miles away and 15 times as big, isn’t.
I suppose a better comparison is to take an area roughly the size and population of London — say, Los Angeles — and see what the names of the teams are who predominantly play each other.
Another contributing factor to the structure of Major League Baseball is its exemption from anti-trust (competition) laws. That means that, unlike in other businesses, they get to structure the rules solely to benefit themselves. Without that protection, I suspect that the major leagues’ control of the minor league system would not be kosher.
Wow, that is an impressive resource. Unfortunately it has far more detail than I’m looking for and I’m failing to find options to simplify the map. Hm.
A couple of questions:
(1) I have read that the formation of the Premier League several years ago constituted an attempt by the top English clubs to break away from control of the Football Association (primarily for better broadcast contracts, is my understanding). However, I can’t seem to reconcile from my perspective a “break away” that still allows for annual exchanges of clubs (through promotion/relegation) with the organization that has ostensibly been broken away from. If the top clubs are saying “we’re going to separate because we’re the best and we can make more money” why would they submit to the possibility of relegation?
(2) I have read that European soccer authorities are pressuring the Premier League to reduce the number of teams. What is the Europeans’ interest in shrinking the Premier League?
The formation of the Premier League wasn’t a clean breakaway. It was acrimonious, with players’ strikes threatened, etc. It was originally the FA’s idea to form a breakaway super league, to make the most of the money emerging at the top end of football after the dismal 1980s, but the Football League was understandably not happy at all.
The current setup came into being after all clubs in Division One resigned from the league, and an agreement was reached with the FA which would continue to operate promotion/relegation between the new Premier League and Division One (which now contained the teams from Division Two). The clubs of the Premier League are the shareholders of that organisation, and ownership of these shares is passed on to promoted clubs at the AGM each summer.
Oh, and there’s a drop-down menu on that map to select teams from only one league.
Yeah, I found that. What I’m looking for is a smaller (probably much lower resolution) simple outline map of England (without all the interior detail) that shows all the pips without grouping the metro areas into “click here for more detail.” In other words I want to be able to see the density of clubs around London and the northwest on the all-England map.
Trouble is, you’re simply not going to see the London clubs, or the north-western ones, on such a level. On a city-wide level, aerial shots show things better: Liverpool and Everton, Fulham and Chelsea. Man City’s new stadium is still a building site (that’ll be 2001, then) on Google Maps, but this gets their old one into the same shot as Old Trafford. (Apologies to anyone who’s screen resolution isn’t the same as mine 
)
Standing on a slag heap near my house, I can see the stadiums of two Premiership clubs, Wigan and Bolton, if that gives you some idea.
Thanks to this discussion of football stadia, I realized for the first time where the Isle of Man was (by zooming out on the Liverpool map). I always pictured it in the Channel, for some reason.
Well, there is Glasgow Nazarene FC, of the Strathclyde Evangelical Churches League. And Glasgow University FC.
But yeah.
Incidentally, the same situation is even more common among rugby clubs, who often have only a nickname/identifier and no location attached (Harlequins, Saracens, and so on).
This used to be the case but when rugby went professional Wasps, one of the clubs traditionally based in London, renamed themselves as “London Wasps” - they then moved to High Wycombe about 40 miles from London 