Most of this is ancient history. I would say a "size" of a club is mainly it's current/recent status, wealth, fan-base etc. all this 1950's - 1889 stuff is just "pedigree." West Brom are best 11th for crowds where we are a distant 34th due to "historic" attendances. Sunderland, big in the 1800's, recent success is so distant they've only ever competed in 2 european ties, and when they were in div 2 in the 70's, where as Villa have played 40 odd in that time.
I think we are handicapped by the last 9 or 10 years at the Dell after it became all-seated, with a capacity of just over 15,000. Even though we were in the Premier League the whole of that time, it would have seriously dented our overall average attendance.
Leeds a massive club_? They must be losing a lot of support to more attractive clubs the other side of the Pennines!!!! Long my that continue until their supporters lose their pathological hatred of Manchester United!!
I don't quite understand this post. Why would you want fans of one club to support another? And yes, Leeds are a massive club.
Hi Tiis! Happy Easter to you!!! Because Leeds are now a mediocre Championship side and have been for a few seasons now, I can see the next generation of football fans in that part of the world following the likes of Manchester City as well as United, Liverpool and Arsenal. We have it in our own area where numerous football fans follow these top teams rather than our beloved Saints. Leeds were massive a decade ago, They still have a big support but nowhere near the numbers a few years back!!!
We were still in the Premiership, teams like Wolves and WBA would have had smaller gates in the leagues below but they were getting +40k gates for a lot of the 50's and 60's and substantially bigger gates than Saints in the previous decades. Besides the stats are dodgy, Newcastle far a larger historic attendance record than Sunderland, for example.
I quite like tables like this as they are so meaningless even if you weight the criteria to rank each club to cater for distortions such as the FA Cup having more clout in the pre-EPL era. From the dates given, it looks like the compilers went back to the original Football which would account to league funder members such as WBA and Villa ranking so high. It would be interesting to see the lower rankings to find out how many non-existent clubs some in between 50-100 or to learn whether the success of a team like Leeds City under Herbert Chapman has been grafted on to Leeds Utd's rating even though they were different clubs - the original having been wound up due to financial irregularities around 1922. If they went back to 1872 and the inaugural FA Cup, I bet you find teams like The Wanderers and the Royal Engineers rated quite highly! I love reading books about Victorian football but it is a shame that the Southern League has never attracted the interest that the earlier Football League has as I would love to see how Saints fitted into a league context with other clubs. The Saints histories obviously concentrate on St. Marys / Southampton, but I would love to see how they rated compared to other teams in the league. I am surprised by Portsmouth's lowly ranking given their success either side of the war.
