Bit of an odd one, but Sunderland were twice turned down for the English League in the 1880s because they were too far away from the west midlands/lancashire heart of the league and it was deemed uneconomic. Sunderland's spin off club and rival, the all amateur Sunderland Albion, formed by players who'd left the club out of protests over it's increased commercial direction were in fact the first Sunderland club to play in a league being founder members of the Football Alliance and joining the Northern League in it's second season, alongside the other north east amateur teams such as Middlesbrough, Darlington and the two Newcastle teams, West and East End.
In 1890 Sunderland were accepted into the league after offering to pay for the other clubs travel costs and Stoke City, twice bottom, were unelected by the other members.
But lets say they weren't. Stoke play a bit better and the meeting between Sunderland and the other league teams goes a bit worse.
On the one hand, you could reasonably delay a truly national league forming. Woolwich Arsenal would turn pro in 1891 and their initial desire was to form a Southern League, which the Football League reacted to by inviting Arsenal into their league rather than allowing a competitor to grow. If instead the league are more parochial maybe the Southern League goes ahead and you see a much more German situation in victorian football, rather than the national league of OTL. The Northern League would seem an obvious choice to take off in this world, except for its determinedly amateur and Sunderland aren't. Not to mention the genuine bad blood between Sunderland Albion and Sunderland, Sunderland had previously withdrawn from the FA Cup to avoid playing them and thus giving them gate receipts.
But well the Scottish League formed in 1890 and Glasgow is closer to Sunderland than Birmingham. Would you possibly see Sunderland apply to that league, they tended to have a very scottish team in the early days?
In which case, could Albion remain a going proposition and Sunderland become a two team city, which each team playing in different countries?
It's probably hugely unlikely, but it's something that struck when I was walking to work as a fun wacky football pod.