If you are a football fan definitely you must have argue in one occasion or the other that your club is one of the greatest or biggest club in England maybe because of their overall achievement in terms of trophy, earnings, fan base, and players. Yes I am guilty of this too, as I support a team in England too, I leave that for you to guess which team MP Supports *winks* ...
Ok lets go on, Sportsmail have rank the top 50 out of the 59 teams who has participated in top flight football in England. They use no opinion, just hard evidence to determine the answers. Certainly the outcome might surprise you and also it will certainly spark debate. So here we go ...
HERE'S HOW THEY WORKED IT OUT
Crowds
We ranked all clubs on the size of their average gates during this season to reflect contemporary pull. Then we ranked each club by the size of their biggest historic gates. Their overall crowd rank is an aggregate of current pull and also potential based on past highs.
Global fanbase
We added up the total number of fans and followers for each club on Facebook and Twitter by far the most popular global social media platforms. Every club has official accounts.
Trophies
We counted ‘major’ trophies won by each club, giving points for each; 10pts for each European Cup/Champions League win, 8pts for each top-division English title, 5pts for each FA Cup or other European trophy win, and 3pts for each League Cup win. No ‘one-off’ trophies such as the Charity Shield are considered because they are not the product of multi-match competitions. And being a losing finalist does not count for points either — here at Sportsmail, winning is everything, second is nowhere.
Average league finish
The average league finish position for each of the clubs since 1888-89.
Player quality
We counted the number of players from each club who have played for England, all-time, ranking the clubs by total. This reflects historic ‘bigness’. We then ranked the clubs by the number of players provided to the 2014 World Cup a measure of modern ‘bigness’. The overall ranking is an aggregate of these two.
Income
We ranked the clubs by their income for the most recent season available.
The biggest clubs have generally had the most money and been able to buy and pay the best players.
THE CONTENTIOUS QUESTIONS
How do Arsenal finish above Liverpool?
Narrowly is the diplomatic answer! In key areas like trophies, Liverpool are on top. But in others, like crowds, now and historically, Arsenal are bigger, as they are in terms of money, itself partly a reflection of Arsenal’s global popularity in this multi-media age. Why might that be? Arsenal have consistently punched above Liverpool for most of the Premier League era, when the league has been a global commodity.
How are Sunderland and West Brom so high?
A combination of multiple historic major honours, a tradition of being able to draw big crowds plus current ongoing membership of the Premier League, which in itself brings worldwide attention, and money. Both have also fielded relatively high numbers of stars over the years.
Aren’t Leeds too low?
Leeds fans will point to the dominance of the Revie era and a Champions League semi-final in the not too distant past, to the size of Elland Road and their potential to be mighty whites again.
But there are 14 other teams with a better haul of major trophies. There are 11 others who have a higher all-time average league finish and 14 with bigger crowds when the current season and historic highs are both considered. Leeds rank only 25th of the 58 clubs in the study for the calibre of the players measured by all-time England players plus current global stars, and 23rd for global popularity, and 26th by income. They were giants for a time, some decades ago. But they are much diminished, for now.
What did Wolves do to finish so high?
They’ve won the league three times and have four FA Cups among six other major trophies. They’re comfortably top 20 in terms of all-time league position and crowds, and have higher global popularity and income than most non-Premier League teams.
Ok that's it, what is your take about the rating? Please drop your comments, views and observation on the comment box
No comments:
Post a Comment