1. Everton (1930-31 and 1951-52 to 1953-54)

Arsenal are usually the first team mentioned in dispatches when the subject of longevity in the top flight of English football crops up. No wonder in some respects: having been regulars since 1919, the aristocratic north Londoners hold the current record for unbroken membership of the division, the majority of that time spent swishing up and down the marble halls of their art-deco stands like Bertie Wooster. But, as in other walks of life, while the posh boys get most of the credit, it's the real people who have been doing the legwork. Arsenal's amazing unbroken record, and accordant establishment glamour, often obscures the fact that it's people's club Everton who hold the record for most seasons spent in the top flight. Having helped to form the Football League in the first place, they've stayed in the first division of English football for all but four seasons. All but four!

They have only suffered relegation twice. The first relegation, in 1930, was something of a Manchester City-esque farce, coming two seasons after Everton won the title thanks to 60 goals from Dixie Dean. The striker's 23 goals in 25 games that fateful campaign couldn't help keep the Toffees up; having struggled to keep the goals out all season – they would only post three clean sheets in total – they embarked on a fatal run of six straight defeats from the start of March. Even four wins from their last five games couldn't save them, and they slipped out of the top flight for the very first time. Only Aston Villa and Blackburn Rovers were still able to boast full and unbroken membership of the First.

Dean stayed with Everton, though, and scored 39 times in 37 appearances as the Merseyside club stormed the Second Division. They opened with five straight wins, and by the turn of the year had only lost three games. At which point they put a sequence of 10 straight league wins together, effectively guaranteeing them promotion by the start of March. Having built a 13-point lead over nearest challengers Tottenham Hotspur, the team took their foot off the gas, losing six of their last 11, but still won the division by seven points from West Bromwich Albion. Conserving their energy was quite the plan: they won the league championship the following season, and the FA Cup the one after that.

Everton's second stint in the second tier began in 1951, when a distinctly more average side – they had sold star striker Tommy Lawton after the war – slid out of the First with a shameful lack of fight. Requiring only a draw to ensure safety in their last match at fellow relegation strugglers Sheffield Wednesday, they were defenestrated 6-0. "To abuse Everton would be too much like picking up a person badly mauled from a street accident and reading him a lecture on the folly of jaywalking," wrote the tinder-dry Donny Davies in this paper. (Poor Wednesday, for the record, went down with Everton anyway.)

Despite presiding over this shambles, manager Cliff Britton kept his job, and slowly rebuilt the team. It took him three seasons to get Everton back up – the club finished in 16th spot in 1953, their lowest ebb – but his insistence on modern training methods eventually paid dividends in a physical division. Some of Britton's methods met with resistance – Norman Greenhalgh remembered that "you hadn't to smoke, you hadn't to drink, you hadn't to go with women, it's ridiculous", while Jimmy O'Neill habitually nipped off for a crafty fag in the bogs before the match, as well as at half-time. But Britton was a fair man, and when the team won promotion in 1954 after winning at Oldham, he took his players out for a meal at the swanky Midland Hotel in Manchester. O'Neill asked the waiter for a packet of snouts, which duly arrived on a silver salver. "I put my hand in my pocket to pay for the cigarettes," O'Neill remembered years later. "Cliff Britton said: 'Oh no no. Put that on our bill tonight.' That was my bonus for winning promotion."

2. Tottenham Hotspur (1977-78)

By the mid 1970s, the glory, glory days were long behind Tottenham Hotspur. Bill Nicholson, the architect of the famous double side of 1961, had enjoyed an Indian summer in the early 1970s, leading Spurs to a couple of League Cups and a Uefa Cup, but he had resigned in a righteous funk after his club's fans rioted at the 1974 Uefa Cup final (which Feyenoord had won). Meanwhile the era of Martin Chivers, Martin Peters and Alan Gilzean was over. Terry Neill, considered a worthless urchin as a result of his Arsenal background, took over as manager and presided over a gamut of nonsense. Between 14 December 1974 and 22 March 1975, his side won one league game. Deep in relegation trouble, they required five wins from their last seven games, and a 4-2 win in their last match over a Leeds side who had just come back from Barcelona where they'd just booked a place in the European Cup final, to stay up by a point.

Neill was eventually replaced by Keith Burkenshaw, but though Spurs rallied the following season to finish in mid-table, they went down in last place in 1976-77. "Tottenham's present troubles stem from their failure, in the late Sixties and early Seventies, to replace outstanding players," wrote David Lacey in the aftermath of the 5-0 loss at Manchester City which sent Spurs crashing into the Second Division. "Burkenshaw is likely to be taking down the most promising Tottenham side, from the point of view of individual ability, for several seasons," he added, citing goalkeeper Barry Daines, centre back Keith Osgood and his occasional partner Steve Perryman, and especially Glenn Hoddle, who Lacey predicted "will be a marvellous creative player once he begins to assert the authority that his skills warrant".

Along with young Neil McNab, all played their part as Spurs bounced back instantly. They started the season brilliantly, scoring regularly and playing some pretty football. The high point came in October, with a club-record 9-0 win over Bristol Rovers, striker Colin Lee scoring four on his debut after signing from Torquay United. It made the 21-year-old Lee an instant hero: the last time Spurs had scored nine times, against Nottingham Forest in 1962-63, the four-goal hero was Jimmy Greaves, who was not bad either. By the time March was drawing to a close, the team were clear at the top and hot favourites to win the division, but then they touched cloth, winning only two of their final eight games.

It was still enough to win promotion, though only just. In their penultimate match, at home to already relegated Hull, Spurs required a wholly illegal 81st-minute goal by Perryman to take the points, the visiting keeper Eddie Blackburn having been barged to the ground by Chris Jones. "There was more than a modicum of doubt about the validity of the goal," reported Lacey. "It belonged firmly to the age of Ted Drake." The win left Spurs needing a point at Southampton, who had already won promotion and consequently had the cigar on. A "soporific" goalless draw having been played out, Spurs pipped Brighton & Hove Albion to third spot on goal difference. That difference? The nine goals of the Bristol Rovers match. Spurs were back, with domestic and Uefa cup success to come, neatly bookending this rather inglorious period in their history.

3. Manchester United (1974-75)

United's fall from European champions to the Second Division is well documented: the lack of ambition, hunger and financial investment; the George Best affair; the sackings of Wilf McGuinness and Frank O'Farrell; the meddling of Sir Matt Busby; Denis Law's backheeled goal which relegated the club symbolically if not mathematically. So no point going into that. There's not too much to be said for the way United bounced straight back up, either. It was both predictable – no club as grand as this has gone down in the modern era – and straightforwardly brilliant. Promotion was assured; United breezed it. Look at the players at their disposal: Lou Macari, Martin Buchan, Steve Coppell, Sammy McIlroy, Stuart Pearson, Jimmy Greenhoff, Stewart Houston, Alex Stepney. No wonder Tommy Docherty's team would take a tilt at the league and cup double the following year.

But what's interesting, and often forgotten now United's support has long been slandered with accusations of day-tripping and prawn-sandwich munching, is just how much United's season in the Second was overshadowed – and at the time very much defined – by the constant threat of ultraviolence.

United's support was, by the mid 1970s, the most feared in the land. In 1969, during the European Cup semi-final, Milan's goalkeeper Fabio 'Carlo's Dad' Cudicini had been hit by a missile. Uefa ordered the club to erect wire fencing behind the goals. Two years later, during a match against Newcastle United, some eejit sent a knife whistling on to the field of play. When Law scored his famous/infamous backheel, United's fans stormed the pitch while setting fire to the stands, in the hope of getting the game abandoned. The last four minutes of United's 36-year stint in the top flight were never played.

It's hard to get a sense – from the papers, anyway – of just how well Docherty's brilliant team played while slumming it in the Second. That's because most contemporary reporters used up most of their word count in describing what the hoodlum element of the United support was up to. Here's the Observer on United's opening-day 2-0 win at Leyton Orient: "Two policemen injured, 200 spectators thrown out of the ground, a Tube train taken out of service, arrests ... the anticipated rampage by United's fans brought havoc to Orient ... terrified shopkeepers boarding up their windows, pubs closing, and the peace-loving bourgeoisie fleeing the disaster zone ... United fans responded with violent stupidity ... the Manchester mob went into action the minute they hit London, 11 young heroes in Black Marias before the main posse cleared Euston ... United's players, however, distinguished themselves."

The low point came at Hillsborough, where mounted police had to restore order when fighting spilled on to the pitch, momentarily stopping an otherwise uneventful 4-4 draw with Sheffield Wednesday. "What can we do?" sighed Docherty. "We have a minority of supporters who are a disgrace. Every club has one or two troublemakers, but because of the size of our following, our problem is bigger than any other club." Indeed, David Lacey noted that United – whose home attendances were the biggest in the country, and whose away visits ensured all-time record attendances for all-but-one club in the division – were suffering from the actions of "youngsters who have not been within a hundred miles of Manchester".

When United sealed promotion with a 1-0 win at Southampton, Macari scoring the winner, the Guardian still concentrated on the off-field consequences. "The shopkeepers of Highbury, Birmingham and Leeds will soon be snug behind their boarded-up windows on cold winter nights as the red and white motley descend from coaches marked Salford or even Sutton Coldfield. Policemen in Southampton and Oxford will be relieved of their extra judo classes."

But as Docherty had implied, United's achievements were being undersold thanks to the actions of the minority. "We're supporters, not hooligans," a young lad told the press box at Old Trafford on the final day of the season, as the crowd celebrated their departure from the division. The week before, during United's visit to Notts County, a police officer had been clanked upside the head by a large stone, a block of concrete and a "kung-fu star" (a five-inch metal disc with sharpened points). But back at home, after Blackpool had been seen off 4-0, the jubilant fans were on their best behaviour. "Their conduct was almost angelic," reported the Guardian. "Pure boisterous geniality."

4. Sunderland (1958-59 to 1963-64)

Anyone caring to suggest that Sunderland aren't a big club might like to note that, despite not having won a championship since 1936, they're still the sixth most successful club in the country, behind Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Everton and Aston Villa. And even if their star has faded somewhat over the past three decades, with plenty of time served in the Second Division, plus one ignominious year in the Third, they were certainly one of the game's giants back in the 1950s.

Albeit a giant losing its grip. The war having stopped Sunderland in their tracks, the club tried to go again with a series of big money signings, including Len Shackleton, Ivor Broadis and Trevor Ford. But the investments by a club then known as The Bank of England paid no dividends. Yeovil famously dumped Sunderland out of the Cup in 1949; the team stumbled through the business end of the title race in 1950 to allow Portsmouth to make off with the spoils; they lost to Manchester City in the 1955 FA Cup semi, spurning the chance to face Cup specialists Newcastle in the final. Shackleton, perhaps apocryphally, spent most of his time imparting ludicrous amounts of spin on the ball to make Ford look inept.

While Sunderland's status was slipping on the field, their Bank of England reputation took a huge knock off it. Then, as now, those working in the financial sector were fancy of finger and not to be trusted. In 1957, the club were found guilty of making illegal payments to players, over and above the maximum wage. The club were fined, and manager Bill Murray resigned. Alan Brown took over, got rid of the underperforming big names, and flooded the team with young talent. Sunderland were relegated within the year, the first time they had slipped out of the top flight since making it there in 1891.

The Mackems took a while to acclimatise to their new, more modest surroundings. They finished in the lower half of the Second Division for the first two seasons of their stay – in 15th and then 16th position – and then a well-off-the-promotion-pace sixth in 1960-61. At which point the club decided to stop buggering about and purchased Brian Clough from Middlesbrough for £45,000 and George Herd from Clyde for £40,000. The new season started badly for Sunderland, who lost three of their opening four games, and it would cost them dearly. On the final day of the season, they needed to match the result of surprise promotion contenders Leyton Orient to be assured of promotion. But Orient won at Bury, while Sunderland – despite Clough opening the scoring in their match at Swansea with his 34th goal of the season – could only draw, a late freakish deflection pegging them back.

Sunderland would be denied again on the final day of the following season, when Chelsea beat them at Roker Park to steal off with the second promotion spot instead. The season hinged on the fateful events of Boxing Day, when Clough's career was effectively finished in a collision with Bury keeper Chris Harker. Sunderland lost that game 1-0, then drew seven and lost four of their next 15 league games, having been robbed of the services of a player who had scored 24 in 24 games. Sunderland eventually made it up the following season, third time lucky in a comparatively uneventful campaign, one mainly remembered now for an FA Cup run which saw them knock out the league champions Everton then come within five minutes of knocking Manchester United out at Old Trafford with the semi-final in sight. Promotion would have to suffice; after a six-year exile from the top flight, incorporating so much bitter disappointment, it was more than enough.

5. Aston Villa (1967-68 to 1974-75)

At the start of the 1966-67 season, only Arsenal and the newly crowned champions Liverpool had won more English titles (seven) than Aston Villa's six. By the end of the campaign, Manchester United would join the gang at the top of that list, while Villa were on their way down to the second tier. In truth, most of the gold lettering on Villa's roll of honour had been etched before the war. The first world war, that is. They hadn't won the league since 1910, and barring three second places in the following four seasons, and a couple more during the 1930s, they rarely troubled the top end of the table. Indeed, they'd spent a year out of the top division as recently as 1959-60, but that episode had been bookended by winning the 1957 FA Cup and the first-ever League Cup in 1961. Joe Mercer, who managed Villa's young team to the latter trophy, went on to suffer a stroke in 1964, and was sacked despite making a full recovery.

As he tottered off to bring delight to Manchester City, Villa – who had admittedly not been much cop in the league under Mercer anyway – started to seriously struggle. The sale of star striker Tony "Mark's Dad" Hateley to Chelsea in 1966 seems to have been the catalyst for implosion, and the team went down the season later. Their exit from the top flight was ignominious – a 6-2 thrashing at Southampton on a day when the other relegated club, Blackpool, departed with some pride thanks to a valedictory 3-1 win at the home of newly deposed champions Liverpool.

Blackpool would have bounced straight back the season after, were it not for an increasingly hapless Villa – now a struggling Second Division side – bungling home an own goal eight minutes from time at home to Queens Park Rangers, sending the Rs up ahead of the Seasiders by one fifth of a goal. Blackpool required two more seasons to get back up, and in 1969-70 departed the division in an upwardly mobile fashion, while Villa – perhaps in karmic kickback for what they had done to the Tangerines – were dispatched in the other direction.

Vic Crowe, who had been unable to save Villa in that relegation campaign after taking over a rock-bottom team from Tommy Docherty, could not get the grand old club out of the third tier at the first time of asking. But he did manage to lead Villa to Wembley that year, beating a Manchester United team featuring George Best, Bobby Charlton, Denis Law and Jimmy Rimmer in the League Cup semi-finals. Villa faced Spurs in the final, and despite the two-division chasm between the two sides, held the favourites until 78 minutes. According to the Observer, Villa "played the more skilful and dashing soccer before Tottenham casually crushed them with two goals in three minutes ... only then was the disparity in class apparent".

Before that, Ian 'Chico' Hamilton had tormented the Spurs defence, even hitting a post straight from a corner. A bittersweet defeat, but a high point nonetheless in a bleak period for the club. Crowe led the club back up to the Second Division the following season as champions, but could take them no further, and was eventually sacked by chairman Doug Ellis, who brought in Ron Saunders.

The new manager-messiah led Villa out of the wilderness at the first attempt, winning the manager of the year award, and his team were expected to go on to make a serious impression in the championship race the season after. They could only finish 16th, but they were back, and made up for the disappointments of 1971 by winning the League Cup that year, and again two seasons later. But the title, and any other attendant trinkets, would have to wait a year or two yet.

6. Leeds United (1982-83 to 1989-90)

Leeds United going down to the second tier in 2004, and then to the third for the first time in their history in 2007, was big enough news. But their demise from the top flight in 1982 was – fire up the italics, capital letters and bold – HUGE. In retrospect, the jig was up for Leeds the minute Don Revie took the England job. But an appearance in the 1975 European Cup final, followed by semi-final appearances in the FA Cup (1977) and the League Cup (1978 and 1979), kept the vultures off the scent, even if those were slim pickings compared to the glory decade of the Don.

Leeds had nevertheless turned into a middle-of-the-road side. Having never finished outside the top four under Revie, their post-Don finishes up until the 1981-82 season had been 9-5-10-9-5-11-9. And mid-table sides are only a couple of bad decisions away from getting themselves into serious trouble. Enter new manager Allan Clarke, who told the players that Leeds would win the European Cup within two years. Uh-huh. Clarke was given a whopping £1m purse to spend on a couple of players, and decided to blow the entire whack on Peter Barnes, who proceeded to spend the entire season asleep on the pitch.

By the end of the season Barnes had scored one goal, handed in the same number of transfer requests, and had ruined his international career by slagging off Ron Greenwood. He was hardly responsible for Leeds' subsequent relegation – the defence was in tatters, and only the late-season signing of Frank Worthington offered the doomed club any hope at all – but his story was symbolic of their demise.

As was their supporters' attempt to have their final game of the season, a 2-0 defeat at West Bromwich Albion, abandoned, Manchester United style, by ripping down a 15-foot barrier and storming the pitch. They managed to get the fence down, but the referee blew the final whistle before anyone could get on to the field of play, at which point mounted bobbies led a 100-strong baton charge across the pitch and up the terraces, an "unprecedented event on an English ground", according to this paper.

Clarke – who had suggested fans guilty of public order offences should be birched in the centre circle at half-time, and that he'd be quite happy to wield the big stick himself – was told to do one, and Leeds endured a couple of mid-table seasons in the Second under Eddie Gray. In 1984-85, they reigned in their inconsistency a wee bit, Gray having built a youthful side featuring the likes of Denis Irwin, Andy Linighan, Terry Phelan, Ian Snodin, John Sheridan and Scott Sellars. They entered the last day of the season with a slim chance of pipping Manchester City for the third promotion place behind Oxford United and Birmingham City. As it turned out, City thrashed Charlton 5-1 to take the matter out of Leeds' hands. Leeds lost at Birmingham 1-0 anyway, amid terrible scenes of rioting which led to the death of 15-year-old Ian Hambridge, who was attending his first-ever game.

An earlier match that season involving Leeds, at Oxford's Manor Ground in November, had seen the away supporters rip six-foot planks from the TV gantry and hurl them on to the pitch, forcing their manager to concede defeat four minutes before full time. Leeds had gone two goals up before losing 5-2, their second goal scored by the 37-year-old veteran Peter Lorimer, who was later sent off for protesting at being smacked in the mouth by Oxford's hat-trick hero John Aldridge. These were different times all right.

Billy Bremner replaced Gray, and got shot of most of the promising kids, yet thanks to a weak division and an easy draw in the FA Cup, took Leeds close to a promotion and Cup double in 1987. However his side were beaten by Coventry City in extra time of a classic semi-final at Hillsborough, and then bested by Charlton Athletic in a new-fangled relegation-promotion play-off. It was down to Howard Wilkinson to get Leeds back up. Slashing a symbolic line under the Revie era, he took down all the photos of the Don, signed chalk-and-cheese midfield duo Gordon Strachan and Vinnie Jones, and Leeds were back. A second glory era was on the horizon.

Many thanks to Cris Freddi, Rob Smyth, Jonathan Wilson and Rob Bagchi