Bristol City
After four solid campaigns, City were promoted in 1906 having won the Second Division championship. The following year they finished in second place three points behind champions Newcastle. In 1909, there was another near-miss when City reached the FA Cup Final only to lose to Manchester United 0-1. (The crest was worn in this match on the blue shirts worn for the occasion.) Two years later, City were relegated on the last day of the season: they would not return to the top flight for 66 years.
In 1922, City were relegated to Division Three (South), returned the following season as champions only to be relegated for a second time the year after that. In 1928 they were promoted once more but in 1932 it
was back to the basement.
During the Fifties the coat of arms crest was worn once again embroidered onto a white patch. Their next promotion did not come until 1955 when they spent five years in the
Second Division before being relegated once more. In 1965, City were promoted again and this time succeeded in consolidating and holding on to their place.
The city crest appeared once again in the 1969-70 season, now embroidered directly onto the shirts, and was used until 1976.
In 1976, City finished in runners-up position and were promoted to the First Division. To mark the occasion, a new badge replaced the city's coat of arms on players' shirts,
featuring a robin (the club's nickname) and the Clifton suspension bridge, Bristol's most famous landmark. Predictably they struggled to survive at this level, narrowly avoiding relegation twice before finishing a respectable 13th in 1979. The following year, however, City were relegated and in successive seasons plunged all the way down to Division Four and bankruptcy. A new company was formed (Bristol City 1982 Ltd) and closure was narrowly avoided. The club was so strapped for cash that for the opening weeks of the 1983-84 season, an old set of shirts with the (now obsolete) Umbro diamond trim down the sleeves were pressed into service before a new set were delivered, made by Bukta. The crest was missing from the new set, replaced by "BCAFC" embroidered on the chest.
In 1984, The Robins began the long climb back up the league, gaining promotion in fourth position. In 1987, the robin crest was reinstated but without the background shield.
By the early Nineties, City were back in the Second Division but, aside from an FA Cup win against Liverpool in 1994, there was little for the fans to cheer about. Indeed, following that cup win, the team were relegated to the third tier (now Division Two) at
the end of the season.
At the beginning of the 1994-95 season, a simplified version of the Bristol coat of arms once again became City's official crest, appearing with and without a white shield background. The team became stuck in the third tier and struggled to avoid relegation in 2005-06. The following season, however, they were promoted to the Championship (second tier) as runners-up in League Two.