Crewe Alexandra v Southend United

The club was formed in 1877 and reputedly named after Princess Alexandra (somesuggest that the decision to form the club was actually taken in a pub named after the Princess and the club was named after the pub).

They were founding members of the Second Division in 1892 but only lasted four years in the Football League. Since re-entering the competition in 1921, they have mostly remained in the lower divisions and have no major honours to their name.

In June 1983, Crewe appointed Milan-born Dario Gradi as manager. At that time, Crewe had again just avoided being voted out of the Football League. Gradi quickly gained a reputation for developing young talent, allowing Steve Walters to become the youngest ever player to pull on a Crewe shirt: aged just 16 years and 119 days he played against Peterborough United on 6 May.

Gradi's efforts paid off in 1989 when Crewe won promotion to the Third Division. They went back down two years later, but were promoted again in 1994. In the same year, Neil Lennon became the first Crewe Alexandra player to gain an International cap for 60 years when he was selected to play for Northern Ireland against Mexico.

Gradi then led his charges to the unprecedented height of Division One in 1997, after victory over Brentford in the Division Two playoff final, and kept his team there until 2002, despite a club income on which many more lowly clubs could not survive.

As of the summer of 2007, Gradi was the longest serving manager in English league football; he celebrated his 1,000th game in charge of Crewe on 20 November 2001 - an away fixture at Carrow Road, the home of Norwich City F.C., and completed 24 years in sole charge of the club.

During Gradi's control, the club gained a strong reputation for its youth policy, and gained official status as an FA Youth Academy. By concentrating on developing its own players the club remained profitable (a rare thing in lower division football at the time) by selling them on after they have gained experience with Crewe. The Academy is known to stress technical excellence, which accords with Gradi's aim to have his sides play attractive, passing football.

On 24 December 2008 the Icelandic former manager of local rivals Stoke City, Gudjon Thordarson, became the boss with Gradi taking a backseat role, but after a good start the team then went on a poor end-of-season run, in which they did not win for 10 games, and were relegated back down to League Two.

On 2 October 2009, after only nine months in charge, Thordarson was sacked as Crewe manager after a run of poor results.Dario Gradi was reinstated as caretaker manager in time for the following day's match against Rotherham.

With the club on course to finish in a relatively safe mid-table position, despite lingering close to the playoff places for the majority of the season, a later run of poor form saw the team booed due to the dissatisfaction of their own fans.

The season ended with the club in 18th place, only five places above the relegation zone. Gradi responded to this disappointment by refusing to take the team on a pre-season tour, as with last year, stating that he "doesn't want to reward the players for what happened this season".