A we look forward to a pleasant sporting contest against our dear neighbours Sheffield Wednesday, let’s check out some facts about their home city.

The city’s name derives from the River Sheaf, which runs through the city.

Sheffield has long been known as the steel city, as long ago as the 14th century, it was already noted for the production of knives, as mentioned in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. By the early 1600s it had become the main centre of cutlery manufacture in England outside of London

During the 1740s, two innovations spurred Sheffield's growth as an industrial town, a form of the crucible steel process to allowed the manufacture of a better quality of steel and a technique to fuse a thin sheet of silver onto a copper ingot to produce Sheffield Plate.

So the population of the town grew rapidly throughout the 19th century; increasing from 60,095 in 1801 to 451,195 by 1901. But this led to the construction of many back-to-back dwellings that, along with severe pollution from the factories, inspired George Orwell in 1937 to write: "Sheffield, I suppose, could justly claim to be called the ugliest town in the Old World".

Sidney Pollard's analysis of the 1851 Census data caused him to describe Sheffield as "the most proletarian city in England" at the time, it having more people per 100,000 employed in manufacturing occupations (187.6 for Sheffield, as compared to 146.1 for Leeds) and fewer people per 100,000 employed in professional occupations

Inevitably the industry attracted the intention of the Luftwaffe, and the ‘Sheffield Blitz’ of 12 and 15 December 1940 cost 660 lives, with many buildings destroyed in the process.

This inspired the local authorities to carry on with the process of wrecking the city after the war, and although many of the city's slums were demolished in the 1950s and 1960s, they were replaced with abominations like the Park Hill flats.

By this time the steel industry was suffering from cheap competition from abroad, and the run-down of Sheffield Steel accelerated during the recession of the early 1980s, thanks to the economic policies of the recently departed Margaret Thatcher.

At this time the city was known as the "Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire", as Sheffield City Council was led by David Blunkett, who was showing rather more socialist tendencies than he did as Home Secretary a decade later. At least they had ridiculously cheap bus fares.

 The building of the Meadowhall shopping centre on the site of a former steelworks in 1990 was a mixed blessing, creating much needed jobs but hastening the decline of the city centre (in other words it probably wiped out as many jobs as it created).

Another attempt to regenerate the city were kick-started when the city hosted the 1991 World Student Games, which saw the construction of new sporting facilities such as the Sheffield Arena, Don Valley Stadium, and the Ponds Forge complex.

Lack of central government funding and television sponsorship meant the event was in doubt until the Council guaranteed the money itself, in the face of complaints from local ratepayers, and recently they have had to announce the closure of the Stadium through lack of money. The games got off to an inauspicious start when Helen Sharman, Britain's first astronaut, tripped and dropped the games torch, but she succeeded in lighting the gas-fuelled flame from its embers.

Compared to other English cities, Sheffield has few buildings with the highest Grade I listing—This situation led the noted architecture historian Nikolaus Pevsner, writing in 1959, to comment that the city was "architecturally a miserable disappointment", with no pre-19th century buildings of any distinction.

But much as I’ve been trying to imply that Sheffield is a bit of a dump, I’m going to have to admit that 61% of Sheffield's entire area is green space, and a third of the city lies within the Peak District National Park. There are more than 200 parks, woodlands and gardens in the city, and an estimated 2.5 million trees, giving Sheffield the highest ratio of trees to people of any city in Europe.

The city's lowest point is just 29 metres (95 ft) above sea level near Blackburn Meadows, while some parts of the city are at over 500 metres (1,640 ft); the highest point being 548 metres (1,798 ft). So in other words, it’s pretty hilly.

In 1857 a collective of cricketers formed the world's first-ever official football club, Sheffield F.C.,  and the world's second-ever, Hallam F.C., who also play at the world's oldest football ground in the suburb of Crosspool . Sheffield and Hallam contest what has become known as the ‘Sheffield derby’, whilst United and Wednesday contest the ‘Steel City derby’.

‘Aagrah’, an Indian restaurant in the square which serving Kashmiri cuisine, has recently been voted "Best Restaurant Group in the UK" at the prestigious British Curry Awards. And I’m guessing that they also managed to be listed first in Yellow Pages.

Sheffield has been the home of several well-known bands and musicians, with an unusually large number of synth pop and other electronic outfits in the late 70s/early 80s. These include The Human League, Heaven 17, ABC, and the more industrially inclined Cabaret Voltaire and Clock DVA.

And they have contributed to other genres over the years with Joe Cocker, Pulp, Def Leppard, Richard Hawley, and Moloko, along with current young Indie heroes Arctic Monkeys. Not to mention the infuriating Sheffield Wednesday supporters band.

The Sheffield Walk of Fame in the City Centre honours famous Sheffield residents past and present in a similar way to the Hollywood version. So in addition to the above musicians they can pay tribute to Michael Palin, Jessica Ennis, Roy Hattesley, and Tango man, a fat Wednesday fan who was famous in the 1990s for taking his shirt off.

Photo: Action Images

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