43rd biggest club in the country

[Norfolk Royal]

Oh yes.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/footba ... ebate.html

[jd82]

I bet the Brighton forum is having an absolute shitfit about being below us..

[SPARTA]

Load of nonsense how they've worked that out. Wigan bigger than us? Winning a cup doesn't make you a bigger club than another. Consistant attendances are a better indicator of that. Arsenal bigger than Liverpool lol.

[No Fixed Abode]

I was just about to post this having just looked at the Daily Mail.

Reading languishing in 43rd sport behind the likes of Notts County, Blackpool, Huddersfield, Wigan, Preston and just above the likes of Bury, Barnsley and Bradford.

[jd82]

Not your best work m8

[No Fixed Abode]

Load of nonsense how they've worked that out. Wigan bigger than us? Winning a cup doesn't make you a bigger club than another. Consistant attendances are a better indicator of that. Arsenal bigger than Liverpool lol.

Liverpool are only as high as they are due to their dominance in the 80s. When you factor in what they've judged it on - I think Liverpool should actually be below Chelsea now. The grey is 'player quality' - they've given Chelsea 5 points and Liverpool only 1. They based it on club players who've played for England and dismissed foreign players totally.

[No Fixed Abode]

Not your best work m8

I'm just stating what's in the table m9. No need to get so worked up about it.

[jd82]

Load of nonsense how they've worked that out. Wigan bigger than us? Winning a cup doesn't make you a bigger club than another. Consistant attendances are a better indicator of that. Arsenal bigger than Liverpool lol.

Liverpool are only as high as they are due to their dominance in the 80s. When you factor in what they've judged it on - I think Liverpool should actually be below Chelsea now. The grey is 'player quality' - they've given Chelsea 5 points and Liverpool only 1. They based it on club players who've played for England and dismissed foreign players totally.

Not quite accur8 about foreign players, they've counted the ones that played in the 2014 WC - although I agree that L'pool being above Chelsea in player stakes is laughable.

[Geekins]

I bet the Brighton forum is having an absolute shitfit about being below us..

Who?

[genome]

Brighton m8 it says it in the post

[LUX]

we score well on global fanbase.

I'd like to think that's me.

[peterroyal76]

Brighton m8 it says it in the post

Never heard of them/him/her.

[Silver Fox]

Genuinely surprised to see Chelsea ranked 7th in terms of trophies won, have they w8ed recent success?

[royalsteve]

I was just about to post this having just looked at the Daily Mail.

Reading languishing in 43rd sport behind the likes of Notts County, Blackpool, Huddersfield, Wigan, Preston and just above the likes of Bury, Barnsley and Bradford.

Worst list ever and proves the Daily Mail doesn't like Reading FC and is written/produced by Chelsea and Man U loving muppets

Wigan - bigger global fanbase than Reading, Wolves, Forest, Cardiff, hahahahahahahahahahaha

Did they just use the "pin the tail on the donkey" method, yep :

Crowds - so they based it on this season and the biggest historic gate - surely not to add up all the stats of all seasons

Global fanbase - based on Facebook and Twitter WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! hahahahaha! this a very lazy measure and has NOTHING to do with a Global fanbase

Trophies - cant disagree with the measures except surely Premier League should be weighted higher than the Champions League as a heck of a lot more games and each league win should have lower points eg Premier League win 10 points, Championship win 8 points, League 1 6 points, League 2 4 points

Player quality - a very loose measure

Income - based on current season - why is this not based on all seasons like above - this will skew results in favour of Premier League clubs - poor measure. If you did this next season you would end up with an almost completely different result!


Why did Leeds and Wolves finish so high? - JUST PROVES THIS TABLE IS CRAP - HOW LONG AGO WERE THEY SUCCESSFUL AGAIN??

[genome]

^meLOLtdown

[Armadillo Roadkill]

I'm quite glad if some no-mark journalist claims we're a small club. Just emphasises how we've punched above our weight these last 10 to 15 years.

[Sutekh]

Not this argument again. It's all a load of meaningless cobblers as how do you say Reading are bigger than Brighton or Scunthorpe are not quite the size of Colchester

Liverpool and ManU are the only true big clubs in this country, clubs with immense histories, fan base, international recognition etc.

That's not to say other clubs won't catch up with them eventually but there's a long way to go yet for most of them.

[linkenholtroyal]

ah well suck on that watford and brighton we are bigger

[Brum Royal]

This was F365's take on it:

My Dad's Bigger Than Your Dad...
If you needed an indicator of the arrival of an international week wilderness, the Daily Mail have sounded the alarm at ear-bleeding volume. 'How Big Is Your Club?' screams the headline on their back page.

Mediawatch is actually almost impressed by their front, for there is no attempt to sell their 'Special Report' as anything other than a what-else-were-we-meant-to-talk-about admission. 'The Sportsmail study that will get everyone arguing,' is the tagline. 'Are you happy or angry at where your club has finished?' asks the inside page. 'Pretty please click here' it might as well say.

They've ranked the top 50 English clubs according to various measures. A few issues, of course:

- Ranking 'player quality' by the number of players to have played for England from that club only really works if England are seen as the best country to play for. Mediawatch would rather have members of the German or Argentinean squad than England's squad right now, and would have for most of the last forty years.

- Also on 'player quality', using the number of players provided to the 2014 World Cup squads is an odd way of judging how big a club is, given that some countries are obviously better than others. Do Roger Espinoza and Juan Carlos Garcia of Wigan playing for Honduras really equate to, say, Sergio Aguero and Yaya Toure for Manchester City?

- The study is intended to rank clubs across the course of history (since 1888). So how does ranking teams only by their most recent income reflect the entirety of the last 127 years?

- Trophies are ranked according to importance, which seems fair. But is the Champions League really only worth 25% more than a league title and twice as much as an FA Cup. Mediawatch wonders whether Arsenal would swap their 11 FA Cups for five Champions League titles and a single FA Cup win. We can guess the answer.

- That measurement also fails to make any recognition for teams that reach finals or semi-finals. So in Champions League terms, Atletico Madrid were as big as Daugava Daugavpils of Latvia last season. 'Here at Sportsmail, winning is everything, second is nothing,' is the reason given. The Guardian being named Sports Website of the Year must really smart.

- However, it's the 'crowd' element of bigness (their word, not ours) that will most annoy. A cynic might say that ranking Liverpool's crowd below Aston Villa, Chelsea, Manchester City and Tottenham, amongst others, is intended to cause spittle to be emitted from Scouse lips. Still, at least they were one place ahead of West Brom and six ahead Charlton.

If you think we're being pedantic: 1) Have you not read Mediawatch before, and 2) the Daily Mail claim this a 'forensic' study that 'finally settles' the great debate. Pffft.

Still, it filled three pages and got people angry. That counts for so very much.

[Z175]

Its a bloody hard exercise to do this and of course some would say futile - how do you compare 5,000 fans from Indonesia with a Simod Cup win in 1988?

But lets face it all real football fans have an idea in their head of who is a sleeping giant/tinpot/proper club etc. So i think people are interested and personally I don't disagree too much with their placing of us/many of the clubs.

Wigan is curious but any formula that is applied consistently will spin out some exceptions - and Wigan are a true exception having played so much top flight football and won the FA cup in recent years despite being a non league side with non league support! And of course if you reissue this table at the end of May we will be catch up with of them!

I don't recognise the team in 44th either...