The Remaster: 100 Owners - John Houlding (Everton AND Liverpool)

One of English football's first ownership controversies came on Merseyside, leading to the formation of a new club and one of our most enduring local rivalries.

There is a point of view held by some that the olden days were better and somehow purer than the world in which we live today. Considering the 24-hour saturation news coverage that football entertains these days, this is unsurprising. Every tiny story can be blown up out of all proportion, and every word that anybody even remotely connected to the game utters is forensically analysed and interpreted in as many different ways as conceivable.

For many years, however, the game remained largely invisible to all those that didn’t attend matches, and the political manoeuvring that took place behind the scenes was veiled in even greater secrecy. For this profile, we’re reaching back to a time before television and cinema, to the frenetic and frequently chaotic days that saw the introduction of the professionalism of football in England.