Here’s a question from a pub quiz I hosted last week.

“Since the Premier League started in 1992 how many teams have won the competition only once?”

Even if you know nothing about football you could guess a number. If you have been following football for the last 33 years you might have worked out that the answer is 2: Blackburn Rovers (1994-95) and Leicester City (2015-16).

It was a quiet quiz and the winner was a solo player. When I read out the question he said that he had an interesting fact about teams and the number of times they have won the Premier League and would tell us after I had read the answer. He did and he was right: it is an interesting fact, to me certainly, and probably to anyone who has ever considered the Fibonacci Sequence.

Thanks to Liverpool’s title win last season, the number of Premier League wins per team currently forms the first 7 numbers (after zero) in the Fibonacci Sequence. This will not happen again in the near future.

Rather than give you my own definition of the sequence, here’s how the “AI Overview” of a Google search describes it:

“The Fibonacci sequence is a series of numbers where each number is the sum of the two preceding ones, starting with 0 and 1. The sequence begins: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, and so on. It’s found in various natural patterns like flower petals, seed arrangements, and even some animal structures.”

Again, if you have been following football for the last 33 years you might be able to match up the numbers and the teams:

1: Blackburn Rovers, Leicester City (as noted above).

2: Liverpool

3: Arsenal

5: Chelsea

8: Manchester City

13: Manchester United.

Somehow this piece of information passed me by in the spring, but it was reported at the time. The BBC website noted it on 29 April 2025.

It would take another 21 years for the next number in the sequence to arrive. We can be confident that it’s not going to happen. Leeds United have just been promoted back to the Premier League and although I have supported the team since childhood and still hope for a bright future I am not deluded enough to imagine a straight run of 21 league titles, for us or any other team. If some hugely improbable set of circumstances leaves us with the first 8 numbers in the sequence, building up to a team with 21 titles, I’ll try and let you know. Come back in 2046.