It's a debate that many Football League fans constantly have, just who is the 'biggest club' in the league?
For fans of 'smaller' clubs, it's a tired old debate that seeks to reinforce the old hierarchies of League football. For fans of 'bigger' clubs it is something to hold on to during times of hardship.
Whilst many would argue against the benefit of the debate, it does seem to figure heavily in the mentality of many up and down the 72 Football League teams. It affects things from where players go to, what sponsorship deals clubs can attract, which club is taken over by wealthy foreign investors, even down to how teams approach individual games against each other.
For such a subjective debate, it has a massive impact on the actualities of life in the Football League.
This article is an attempt to use statistics and data to quantify what makes a big club and then rank all 72 of the current line-up of Football League teams.
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What Makes A Club Big?
This is the crux of the debate. What is it that makes one club feel that it is bigger or smaller than any other in the Football League?
It's tough to quantify exactly but I would argue that the three factors are: fan-base, league position and success achieved.
To ask a question, would you rather see your club promoted and then relegated or spend three seasons in the same division? For me, the answer is unquestionably the former. You want to your club to be associated with success rather than mediocrity, even if that entails an equal amount of abject failure.
Essentially my data-set is based on this very idea of what size means in football. The bigger clubs are the ones who are generally more successful, are generally in the upper echelons of the Football League and therefore generally attract more fans.
I chose to base all of my data based on the past five seasons of English football. Five years is close enough to the present to be relevant enough to affect peoples' thinking of club stature. It is also long enough to counter the effects of short-term success or failure via a club having one particularly good or bad season.
The three areas of data that I looked at were specifically: average attendance over the past five seasons, average league finish over the last five seasons and the amount of promotions, play-offs or trophies won over the past five seasons.
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The Results
1 Cardiff City
2 Norwich City
3 Fulham
4 Reading
5 Wolverhampton Wanderers
6 Nottingham Forest
7 Wigan Athletic
8 Derby County
9 Birmingham City
10 Leeds United
11 Brighton & Hove Albion
12 Bolton Wanderers
13 Blackburn Rovers
14 Blackpool
15 Sheffield Wednesday
16 Sheffield United
17 Charlton Athletic
18 Ipswich Town
19 Middlesbrough
20 Watford
21 Huddersfield Town
22 Millwall
23 Bristol City
24 Portsmouth
25 Doncaster Rovers
26 Peterborough United
27 Barnsley
28 Preston North End
29 Coventry City
30 Bournemouth
31 Brentford
32 MK Dons
33 Swindon Town
34 Rotherham United
35 Yeovil Town
36 Bradford City
37 Leyton Orient
38 Notts County
39 Chesterfield
40 Scunthorpe United
41 Carlisle United
42 Tranmere Rovers
43 Gillingham
44 Colchester United
45 Walsall
46 Shrewsbury Town
47 Plymouth Argyle
48 Oldham Athletic
49 Southend United
50 Crewe Alexandra
51 Stevenage
52 Port Vale
53 Rochdale
54 Exeter City
55 Hartlepool United
56 Bury
57 Wycombe Wanderers
58 Oxford United
59 Crawley Town
60 Burton Albion
61 Northampton Town
62 Cheltenham Town
63 Dagenham & Redbridge
64 Luton Town
65 Accrington Stanley
66 Morecambe
67 AFC Wimbledon
68 York City
69 Fleetwood Town
70 Mansfield Town
71 Newport County
72 Cambridge United
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In Conclusion
So Cardiff City have come out as the 'biggest club' in the Football League. Just to remind you, this study was based on average attendance, league position and 'success' over the past five years. Cardiff City have consistently attracted crowds over 25,000 in the past five years. They have also either been in the play-offs, promoted or relegated from the Premier League in each of the years included in the study. By some distance, Cardiff City were the most 'successful' team in the Football League over the past five years.
Some Sheffield Wednesday fans reading may be wondering why Blackpool, a team with currently just eight first-team players, can possibly come out as a 'bigger' team than the Owls. It's true that Sheffield Wednesday attract far more fans than Blackpool, over the past five years an average of around 8,000 more have flocked to Hillsborough compared to Bloomfield Road. However Wednesday played two seasons in League One out of the last five, Blackpool made it to the Premier League and made the play-off final in the following season. That constituted a greater measure of success and inflated Blackpool's comparative league position compared to Sheffield Wednesday.
Another interesting example is that of Portsmouth, who have the highest disparity between their most recent league position and standing in the list. Pompey's high average gates, 19th highest out of the 72 current Football League clubs in the past five years, gives them a massive advantage many League One and Championship sides. The club's relatively quick flight down the leagues works to their advantage also, Portsmouth score 30th out of 72 in average league position over the past five seasons.
Does this data driven effort really quantify where each club ranks in terms of 'size' in the Football League? That's debatable, the study focuses on the past five years of league football, thus is biased towards the present. Teams like Blackpool and Wigan have scored highly on this study thanks to a focus on the present and the immediate past.
How different would the study look had it been conducted over the past 10 or 20 seasons? It would be vastly different. However given that club 'size' is used as a factor in decision making for many involved with football, successes that are long in the past are less important than those of the present. Ask Callum Wilson why he chose to leave Coventry City for Bournemouth. Most of the Cherries' success has come over the past five seasons, whilst Coventry City have been in sharp decline.
That's not to say that there are not other factors that affect the decisions that are made in football. Ryan Lowe recently joined Bury from Tranmere, a club 14 places lower down on the rankings. The factor of money, coupled with Lowe's association with Bury from a previous spell is likely to have made up Lowe's mind. Examples like these prove that the debate over club size is not the be-all-and-end-all in the Football League.
In closing, as far as the meaning of club size matters as some sort of grand ranking of where all Football League teams should be. I believe that my list accurately reflects how recent form affects the way most people would view the stature of their club.