1) Tom Jennings’ hat-trick of hat-tricks (1927)

The 1920s were giddy times in much of the world and many folks, even in Yorkshire, viewed life with a Yes! We have no Bananas! kind of cheer. So Leeds United supporters were not bitter that Huddersfield Town won three league titles in a row between 1924 and 1926 under the stewardship of Herbert Chapman, who had been the manager of Leeds City until that club was booted out of the league and dissolved in a dispute over a financial pong.

As a new club tried to get off the ground in Leeds, a plan was hatched to subsume Huddersfield but that never came to pass, though one of the prime movers behind the idea did go on to become manager of the newly-formed Leeds United in 1919. The appointment of Arthur Fairclough, who had hired many of the players who would later enjoy such success under Chapman at Huddersfield, was welcomed. “Mr Arthur Fairclough, than whom there is probably no more astute team builder in the country, has been given a free hand in the signing on of players. Leeds United should, with ordinary luck, qualify for the first division within three years,” reckoned the Yorkshire Post, who were only a little out, as United reached the top-flight in 1924.

Fairclough prepared for that ascent by showing his recruitment acumen, though two of the most significant acquisitions, Tom Jennings from Raith Rovers and Russell Wainscoat from Middlesbrough, did not arrive until towards the end of the debut top-flight campaign, when their goals enabled Leeds to clamber to 18th in a 22 team league. It was a dandy time for hungry forwards to come together, as a change to the offside law in June 1926 skewed the game back in favour of attackers. In the seasons just after that change, there were goals a-gogo, with Jennings ending the 1925-26 campaign with 26 – including two against Tottenham Hotspur on the final day to stave off relegation. Meanwhile, Blackburn’s Ted Harper finished the season as the league’s top scorer with 43, more than anyone else had ever managed in a season.

Jennings’s most productive period was still ahead: with defences still confuddled and Bobby Turnbull arriving to tee up chances, Jennings thrashed in 35 goals in the 1926-27 season, including 19 in a preposterous nine-match spell between late September and November. He began by hitting a hat-trick in a 4-1 victory over the previous season’s runners-up, Arsenal, then struck all four goals in a 4-2 tonking of Liverpool. One week later Leeds battered Blackburn 4-1, with Jennings hogging the home team’s scoring and thus becoming the first man to score three consecutive hat-tricks in the English league.

But Jennings had peaked. He only managed two in his next match so Leeds lost to Leicester 3-2 and could only net once the following week in a 3-1 defeat at Everton. Huddersfield – who had just completed their hat-trick of titles – then beat Leeds 4-1, with Jennings getting the only goal for his side. Jennings shared the scoring in Leeds’ next match – only striking once in the 2-2 draw with Sunderland – and did not find the net at all in the next game, a 4-2 loss against West Bromwich Albion. He flashed a tantalising return to form in the next game – plundering another hat-trick in a 4-1 victory over Bury – but then his goals dried up. And Leeds kept conceding at the other end. Though they scored 69 times that season, they let in 88 and were relegated with West Brom. Still, at least Huddersfield only finished second that year. PD

2) SK Brann’s yo-yo (1979-1986)

1979: The 1980s were in sight and the mood was optimistic at the Brann Stadion in Bergen. New coach Ivar Hoff, who had won the Norwegian championship in 1977 with Lillestrom, expected to lead an SK Brann title charge for the first time since the club had been runners-up in 1975. It didn’t quite work out. The Hoff was fired midway through the season and the club were relegated after picking up just 10 points from their 22 games, winning only three times, one of which was the first game of the season. Relegated

1980: A romp. SK finished six points clear of their nearest rivals, and lost just twice all season in Avdeling B. Promoted.

1981: A miserable start – one win in their first 16 games –had SK staring down the barrel with six games to go. Then, stunningly, they won four and drew two of that last half dozen to finish third bottom and qualify for the post-season relegation play-offs, where they would face Molde and Pors Grenland, runners up in the two second divisions. Hope was soon extinguished – they lost to Grenland and despite beating Molde it was the latter who would play first division football in 1982 thanks to their 3-1 win over Grenland. Relegated.

1982 A season that ended with one of the most controversial games of football in Norwegian history. Brann had been neck-and-neck with Steinkjer for much of the season but with one game to go things looked bleak. The teams were level on points but Steinkjer’s goal difference was five goals superior. It would take a remarkable final day swing … and that’s exactly what it got. Steinkjer won 2-0, meaning Brann needed to beat Varegg, near neighbours on the west coast, by eight goals to go up.

It finished 9-1. “With hand on heart, I must say that Varegg put everything they could into it,” said referee Roald 30 years later. “They fought to the end.” Not everyone was convinced: “This smells questionable,” reckoned the Steinkjer coach Einar Asp. Smelly or not, Brann were up again. Promoted.

1983: This time a last-day goal deluge was not enough. Again SK started horribly, with one win from the first 12, but another stunning run of four wins and a draw from their next seven meant that with two games to go they had clambered clear of the relegation zone and were a point clear of Rosenborg and Kongsvinger, who were battling out for that play-off spot. Next up for Brann was a crucial trip to Rosenborg, which they lost 3-1. Kongsvinger also picked up a win – 6-1 at high-flying Moss, leaving Brann back in the play-off spot once more.

SK were a point behind their two rivals with a far inferior goal difference – 10 worse than Kongsvinger, nine worse than Rosenborg. Only a win (worth two points) would be enough, while one of Kongsvinger and Rosenborg would have to lose. Unless there was another wild goal difference swing …

They gave it a decent shot but the 9-2 win over Viking in Bergen was not quite enough because Kongsvinger held on for a 0-0 draw away at the champions Valerenga and Rosenborg won away at Moss. So the play-offs beckoned once more. Two draws weren’t enough and Strindheim replaced them in the top flight. Relegated.

1984: Another championship, but no suspicious goal difference swings this time around. They could even afford to lose their final game and still finish top. Promoted.

1985: The mirror opposite of 1981 and 1983. Brann were top of the league after the first round of matches thanks to a 3-0 win over the Valerengen side who had failed to do them a favour two years previously. And they were dreaming of Europe when handily placed in third after eight games. But then things unravelled. Nine defeats in the next 14 games were enough to send them down without the added indignity of a play-off. Relegated.

1986: Another romp. Two defeats all season. Promoted.

1987: Norway rather brilliantly took up a 3-2-1-0 point scheme, with draws decided on penalties. But they sadly did not get involved in the drama. On the final day of the season Brann still needed a win to be certain of survival … and they hammered Tromso 5-0. The streak was over and they have not been relegated since. JA

3) Dejan Lovren’s red card collection (2010-2013)

Dejan Lovren is sent off against Bastia on 4 November, 2012. Photograph: Robert Pratta / Reuters/Reuters

First impressions do not always last. In fact, sometimes they get chased away quicker than Harry Redknapp could say “no, of course I wasn’t one of those people who thought Gareth Bale would never amount to anything and no way would I ever have contemplated selling him for a slither of the fee that Real Madrid eventually paid for him”. And it is just as well that some young players have the hardness of mind to persevere despite criticism and realise that one day they will turn their luck. Otherwise Dejan Lovren would never have found himself cast by Brendan Rodgers as the man to solidify Liverpool’s leaky defence, a notion that would have seemed laughable to some Lyon fans a few years ago, when Lovren was viewed by many as a liability.

Lovren arrived at Lyon at a time when the club was trying to prolong an era of dominance that was in danger of receding into the past. Fans were impatient and, given the high fee paid for him, expected their new recruit to make a quick impact despite his young age and new surrounds. “The criticism started directly at the beginning and that was a difficult time for me,” recalled Lovren in an interview with the Guardian. “I hadn’t even arrived and they were talking bad about me just because of the amount they paid for me – €10m for a 20-year-old. I didn’t speak French for one and a half years; I didn’t understand anything and they didn’t have the time to wait for me.”

In his first full season Lovren showed a lot of promise but was also quite error-prone. The French media’s condemnation of him became so intense that after one performance – a 4-3 Champions League defeat to Benfica in 2010 during which Lovren played at left-back and scored a goal but was at fault for some of the opposition’s – Lyon issued a press release to denounce journalists’ idée fixe about the Croat and published statistics suggesting his display had not been as dire as reported. But the perception of him did not really change and a red card against Auxerre on the final day of that season signalled the start of an alarming trend. Lovren began to get a reputation as a hatchetman and it seemed that every rugged tackle was punished with a card: in 72 appearances for Lyon, he was sent off five times, including a record three times in an eight-match spell in his final season at the club. “I was thinking: ‘Oh my god, what am I doing?’” he said before deducing that referees, too, had formed an idée fixe about him. The fact that he has never been sent off since arriving in England suggests the new environment has done him good. And the penalty that Yuichi Nishimura gave against him when Croatia played Brazil in the opening match of last summer’s World Cup suggests French football may have at least one follower in Japan.

4) Juventus Bucuresti to Flacara Ploiesti (1947-1952)

Hull City’s Assem Allam seems to be getting increasingly fed up with The Man’s refusal to sanction the club’s name change to the global-advertising-goldmine that would obviously be the Hull Tigers. Perhaps he would have had better luck in post-war Romania.

History has not recorded how the fans of Juventus Bucuresti, a club of 23 years standing, reacted when their club’s name was changed to Distributia Bucuresti for the 1948 winter season. But anyone particularly opposed did not have to put up with the new moniker for long – for the 1948-49 season they became Petrolul Bucuresti. Then the Petrolul scarf went into the back of the wardrobe with the Distributia pencil case and the Juventus keyking – and the club became Competrol Bucuresti for the cup competition in the autumn of 1949.

Keeping up? Good. The Competrol months were quickly over and the club became Partizanul Bucuresti for the 1950 season, before switching to Flacara Bucuresti in 1951. At that point the powers that be were just about satisfied. Flacara, or “The Flame”, was spot on, they reckoned. Just the ticket. Only now they weren’t so sure about the Bucuresti bit. And sure enough the club upped sticks to nearby Ploiesti for 1952 and as Flacara Ploiesti were presently relegated.

Seven team names in little more than five years was quite an effort, but even then they weren’t quite settled. The Flacara fans who celebrated promotion back to the top flight in 1953 found they were Energia Ploiesti fans come 1956. And no sooner had the starch come out of the Energia Ploiesti replica shirts, some bright spark fancied rolling back the years to 1948-49. Still, Petrolul Ploiesti won the league in 1957-58, though whether any of their long-suffering fans knew exactly who or what they were cheering is hard to say. JA

In 2009 Sligo Rovers contested their first FAI Cup final for 15 years and were leading 1-0 until the 85th minute, when Sporting Fingal striker Eamon Zayed collided with Sligo’s goalkeeper Ciaran Kelly and the referee awarded a penalty. Colm James tucked it away and then, in the final minute, Gary O’Neill jigged on Sligo’s pain by netting a late winner. But no one really remembers that now because of what happened the following year: Sligo reached the final again and this time Kelly would not let anyone ruin his day.

No one could beat Kelly and so, after 120 scoreless minutes, Sligo and Shamrock Rovers went to a penalty shoot-out. Kelly saved the Dubliners’ first two spot-kicks. Chris Turner, noting that the goalkeeper dived the right way each time, decided to hammer Shamrock Rovers’ third penalty straight down the middle. Kelly read his intentions and made a third save in a row, which was just as well, as Sligo had missed two of theirs, meaning that after six penalties the score was 1-0. Sligo netted their fourth and then up stepped Paddy Kavanagh to try to keep Shamrock Rovers in the match: but Kelly saved again to deliver his team to glory, just as Helmuth Duckadam had done when saving four penalties in a row for Steaua Bucharest against Barcelona in the 1986 European Cup final. OK, so that was a slightly bigger match – but did the Romanian repeat his heroics a year later? No, he did not, although he might have done if his career had not been interrupted by illness within weeks of his heroics in Sevilla.

Kelly, meanwhile, reached the FAI Cup final again in 2011, although this time he was only a substitute, as Brendan Clarke started in goal for Sligo. After a 1-1 draw with Shelbourne, the match went to extra-time and then, with another shoot-out looming, manager Paul Cook took the decision that Louis Van Gaal would rip off in a World Cup quarter-final three years later. In the 119th minute, Cook substituted his first-choice goalkeeper and threw on Kelly, who promptly saved two out of three spot-kicks as Sligo triumphed again.

6) Rochdale’s refusal to budge (1974- 2010)

Rochdale celebrate promotion to League One. Photograph: John Rushworth/Action Images

They may have suffered four relegations in seven seasons, but the early 80s must still have been a thrilling time to be a Brann fan. For all the misery of relegation there is are straws to be clutched – new away trips, the chance to rebuild, perhaps a few more wins.

Such small mercies were probably seized upon by Rochdale supporters in 1974, when after one of the worst seasons in the club’s history they fell into the fourth division. The club had had a spell in the bottom tier in the 60s but with Dick Conner booted from the dugout and Walter Joyce brought in to mastermind the recovery, surely they’d be back among the slightly bigger boys soon. Surely.

Rochdale became the anti-Brann. The 70s became the 80s, the 80s morphed into the 90s, and a new millennium burst into view. Prime Ministers and presidents came and went, inventions were invented then made obsolete, great business empires rose and fell … but The Dale did not move. No promotions. No relegations. Just 36 years bobbling along at the foot of the Football League.

They had a couple of decent stabs at getting out of their rut, finishing bottom of the 92 in 1978 and 1980, but were saved by the voting system then in place. And when they tried to escape from the other end, they fell at the final hurdle, losing play-offs in 2008 and 2009. In 2010, though, Chris O’Grady’s goal against Northampton secured promotion and an unenviable monotonous streak was at an end. JA