How big a club are we? (2 Viewers)

[Skyblueweeman]

I'd question those stats though...it's got us playing between 400 and 1,000 less games that some clubs who've been formed as long as us. I suspect that it doesn't take into account 10-11 years we were known as Singers FC...I suspect that points from those games would bump us up the table a little.

I can't see why we'd play approx. 15% less games than the top 3 when we've spent more seasons than them in divisions where you'd play more games per season and approx. 17% less games than the likes of Leicester/Blackpool etc.

WM

 

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[Godiva]

I'd question those stats though...it's got us playing between 400 and 1,000 less games that some clubs who've been formed as long as us. I suspect that it doesn't take into account 10-11 years we were known as Singers FC...I suspect that points from those games would bump us up the table a little.

I can't see why we'd play approx. 15% less games than the top 3 when we've spent more seasons than them in divisions where you'd play more games per season and approx. 17% less games than the likes of Leicester/Blackpool etc.

WM

The site has us formed in 1883 when we were 'The singers' so I'd guess that period is included.
But I agree that statistics are always 'wrong' one way or another.

Even if we could argue a case for some 'modifications' to the way the table is build, then it wouldn't take us up where I thought we would be ... around 30th.

In any case - next time I read that we are a bigger club than Walsall I will remember this table.

 

[torchomatic]

Ex-biggish, I would say.

 

[Godiva]

Ex-biggish, I would say.

Yeah, we had spell that started with the appointment of Jimmy Hill. He made us big and in his reign we were innovative in almost all areas.
Today - well try suggesting even the slightest innovation and you'd be in front of a firing squad before dawn.

 

[Skyblueweeman]

The site has us formed in 1883 when we were 'The singers' so I'd guess that period is included.
But I agree that statistics are always 'wrong' one way or another.

Even if we could argue a case for some 'modifications' to the way the table is build, then it wouldn't take us up where I thought we would be ... around 30th.

In any case - next time I read that we are a bigger club than Walsall I will remember this table.

Hi Godiva, yeah I realised we were formed in 1883 but I think the table is taking into account games starting from 1888-89 giving us 10 years worth of missing games potentially.

You could filter a number of ways to see where we ranked...number of trophies (winning leagues, FA Cup etc) would have us higher than in the 60's I'd imagine.

Damned statistics! Apparently 9/10 are made up anyway

 

[Godiva]

Hi Godiva, yeah I realised we were formed in 1883 but I think the table is taking into account games starting from 1888-89 giving us 10 years worth of missing games potentially.

You could filter a number of ways to see where we ranked...number of trophies (winning leagues, FA Cup etc) would have us higher than in the 60's I'd imagine.

Damned statistics! Apparently 9/10 are made up anyway

And there could be factor applied as to which league points is earned.

Anyway - what we are doing is trying to fix the statistics rather than accepting our position. I guess that's a good thing as it shows ambition.

 

[LJC_CCFC]

The question is what defines the size of a club? There are many factors obviously, which can be weighted differently in terms of importance. The Mail has compiled this table http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...-finally-settles-football-s-great-debate.html which compares several factors to determine the 'biggest' club.

 

[Covstu]

Deja Vu here, did we not speak about this about 2 weeks ago???!

 

[Skyblueweeman]

Deja Vu here, did we not speak about this about 2 weeks ago???!

Dunno....did we? Ask me again in a fortnight.

 

[SkyBlue_Bear83]

Yes to Doncaster - Barnsley is way ahead of us (all time ranking).

http://www.statto.com/football/stats/england/all-time-table

I weren't basing it on that table, a L2 who get 75 points a season but always miss out on promotion would be one of the biggest clubs in the country on that logic

 

[SlowerThanPlatt]

We've spent the last few years languishing in the third tier and I don't buy into much else and at the moment we're at a low and IMO that's all that matters. We have to concentrate on pulling ourselves up rather than assuming we are a big club because we were in the Prem for a long time

 

[Travs]

I haven't read the entire thread, so apologies if repeating what anybody else has said....

If you list out all league teams, and put them in order of 'size of club'..... we could be placed anywhere between bottom of 1st division and middle of 2nd division, depending on your particular criteria....

My opinion is we would be 2nd division playoffs/mid-table.....

As a result, we ARE punching below our weight currently, but we ARE NOT by rights a premier league outfit any more than the likes of Ipswich, Norwich, Sheff Utd, etc

 

[Paxman II]

I think you have to drop the historical side of it a bit and look at it from a more generational thing. I can recall liberal governments for example but post war era would have you realising that is a long forgotten memory. I can recall Man.Utd yo yoing in the first two divisions when we were in the top flight.
I think we have to look at success over the post war years and the potential of the club based on its geographical location. For example Wigan are much better known for Rugby than their recent heady heights. Clubs in Wales suffer a similar dynamic.
Leeds are a massive club, top 6 easily. So where does all this place us? It's not about cup wins, even a small club can win a cup. Both Forest and Villa have won the European cup but today that would be almost unthinkable.
We should be in the top flight. A large city that is a footballing working class area with good catchment. We are a above average size club currently suffering below our natural place. Man City were where we are a few seasons ago. We are not as big as them but we belong in the lower half of the current premier league as a city and club. That makes us somewhere around 14th to 16th if wanting to put a finer point on it.

 

[Godiva]

I think you have to drop the historical side of it a bit and look at it from a more generational thing. I can recall liberal governments for example but post war era would have you realising that is a long forgotten memory. I can recall Man.Utd yo yoing in the first two divisions when we were in the top flight.
I think we have to look at success over the post war years and the potential of the club based on its geographical location. For example Wigan are much better known for Rugby than their recent heady heights. Clubs in Wales suffer a similar dynamic.
Leeds are a massive club, top 6 easily. So where does all this place us? It's not about cup wins, even a small club can win a cup. Both Forest and Villa have won the European cup but today that would be almost unthinkable.
We should be in the top flight. A large city that is a footballing working class area with good catchment. We are a above average size club currently suffering below our natural place. Man City were where we are a few seasons ago. We are not as big as them but we belong in the lower half of the current premier league as a city and club. That makes us somewhere around 14th to 16th if wanting to put a finer point on it.

You are doing exactly what I think is wrong - measuring our position by selecting a favourable period instead of the whole life span. Everything in this world is dynamic. Go back 25 years and look at the top 25 most successful companies at that time. How many is still in the top?
I don't think we 'belong' in the top flight - we haven't done enough over the past 130 years to earn us that right.
It's fine to have ambition to get there and to stay there - I have that ambition, as I believe we all do.

But what will it take to get us there, and more importantly keep us there?
New owners? More money?
I don't think it's enough. I think it will take a new revolution - like when Jimmy Hill was here.
Someone has to reinvent the club and make us look differently from the rest. Put us back on the football map, make people look at us - and wish they were us.
What we really need is a visionary strategy - what we have is forensic accounting (no offense OSB!).

 

[SkyBlue_Bear83]

You are doing exactly what I think is wrong - measuring our position by selecting a favourable period instead of the whole life span. Everything in this world is dynamic. Go back 25 years and look at the top 25 most successful companies at that time. How many is still in the top?
I don't think we 'belong' in the top flight - we haven't done enough over the past 130 years to earn us that right.
It's fine to have ambition to get there and to stay there - I have that ambition, as I believe we all do.

But what will it take to get us there, and more importantly keep us there?
New owners? More money?
I don't think it's enough. I think it will take a new revolution - like when Jimmy Hill was here.
Someone has to reinvent the club and make us look differently from the rest. Put us back on the football map, make people look at us - and wish they were us.
What we really need is a visionary strategy - what we have is forensic accounting (no offense OSB!).

I agree with you there, we have a bunch of fans who grew up with us in the top flight for 20-30 years and now they believe we are entitled to be there.

8k crowds, no stadium, poor team, poor owners. Sounds like we are exactly where we deserve to be.

 

[Alan Dugdales Moustache]

I watched us in the top flight for over 20 years but I know of no one like me who thinks we have the right to be there.

 

[Macca]

Forget the past even though we weren't really big then. Now, 8k crowds, bottom of 3rd tier. Lost our ground 10 years ago, second fiddle to a rugby team, can't afford decent players, no success for 15 years. I see us as a small club with potential

 

[maddog]

A guy on an Horizon type programme did a statistical analysis of all the UK football clubs and where they should finish. The only real factor over time that affected where a team ultimately finished was income. With the right owners we could be anywhere from Div 2 to Champions league with the odd shiek putting money in. See Monaco smaller gates than us. Deloitte some years ago said the two biggest underperformers in football were Coventry and Sheffield Wednesday, although how Leeds were below us was a mystery to me. In the late 60s we were the best supported club in the Midlands with 35k gates. Villa werein the old 3rd division with 8k gates. Its all down to owners.

 

[Hobo]

Historically: Reasonaby big. Success: Mid tier. Potential: Fairly big. Assets: Piss poor and living out of a weekend bag.

 

[Paxman II]

I think some are tackling this from the wromg perspective. If I can simplify it a little like this:

Take the top most populated cities in England and you have the potential of a bigger club than smaller cities surely?
It can't be a measure of what the club won in terms of trophies - what has that got to do with it?
We are talking of a club able like us to attract over 50k people for a game if that game was important enough to earn the interest of those people. i.e. 1967 promotion day!
Now how many clubs could attract that or even 30+k in league one for a JPT game?
That's the measure of a 'bigger' club. It's there, it just lies dormant. Success will bring that back to us and that's why we live in hope.
You can't apply that to the likes of Chesterfield, Rotherham.

Currently we are a poorly supported club but a well supported club in league one terms even though we have had some terrible years recently. A bit of success can change things rapidly. For Bournemouth that means 15k crowds but if we were in that position that would mean sell outs each week. Even if Bournemouth built a new stadium for 30k in the premiership, they would not fill it. We would.
Those are the real criteria not what we have achieved on the pitch.
Arsenal have not won anything for years yet they must be one of the biggest clubs in the land?
When Sheffield Wed were in league 1 were they a small club compared to say Wigan in the premiership or would you accept they are far bigger than Wigan having a bad spell?
Crystal Palace mid table in the prem are they bigger than Leeds United? Not by a long shot.
Come guys get real....
I went to Blackpool a few season ago when they got promoted. They turned us over and we were awful. I heard their fans afterwards saying how they all expected much more from Coventry City and were surprised they beat us so easily. What? Why was that? because they saw us as a bigger club even though our seasons were diametrically opposed.
We could go on we are always debating this subject. But don't knock us we are a good sized club experiencing a bad few years of miss management decisions and poor owners. That will change.

 

[Sky Blue Harry H]

Historically: Reasonaby big. Success: Mid tier. Potential: Fairly big. Assets: Piss poor and living out of a weekend bag.

Were you trying to type Reda Johnson baby and had a touch of dyslexia ?!

 

[TheParsonsHose]

Surely it should go on catchment area, cov's the 8th biggest city in England, with only one real team. We should not be in the third tier...

Not really .... It's a fact that despite our population we are not a big football community. We have punched above our weight for far too long.

Mid table championship football is more our level IMO.

 

[TheParsonsHose]

I think some are tackling this from the wromg perspective. If I can simplify it a little like this:

Take the top most populated cities in England and you have the potential of a bigger club than smaller cities surely?
It can't be a measure of what the club won in terms of trophies - what has that got to do with it?
We are talking of a club able like us to attract over 50k people for a game if that game was important enough to earn the interest of those people. i.e. 1967 promotion day!
Now how many clubs could attract that or even 30+k in league one for a JPT game?
That's the measure of a 'bigger' club. It's there, it just lies dormant. Success will bring that back to us and that's why we live in hope.
You can't apply that to the likes of Chesterfield, Rotherham.

Currently we are a poorly supported club but a well supported club in league one terms even though we have had some terrible years recently. A bit of success can change things rapidly. For Bournemouth that means 15k crowds but if we were in that position that would mean sell outs each week. Even if Bournemouth built a new stadium for 30k in the premiership, they would not fill it. We would.
Those are the real criteria not what we have achieved on the pitch.
Arsenal have not won anything for years yet they must be one of the biggest clubs in the land?
When Sheffield Wed were in league 1 were they a small club compared to say Wigan in the premiership or would you accept they are far bigger than Wigan having a bad spell?
Crystal Palace mid table in the prem are they bigger than Leeds United? Not by a long shot.
Come guys get real....
I went to Blackpool a few season ago when they got promoted. They turned us over and we were awful. I heard their fans afterwards saying how they all expected much more from Coventry City and were surprised they beat us so easily. What? Why was that? because they saw us as a bigger club even though our seasons were diametrically opposed.
We could go on we are always debating this subject. But don't knock us we are a good sized club experiencing a bad few years of miss management decisions and poor owners. That will change.

Football is beyond recognition from 1967.

The only reason we had that many at the JPT game was because people had a sniff of Wembley. I am not convinced a JPT final win would have people flooding back beyond one trip to Wembley.

The passion has to be in the City for football. I would love to see it back but cannot see it coming sometime soon.

We had a reasonable spell in the 60's when football was booming in terms of attendances and that's about it. Even after winning the FA cup in 87 The stadium was only achieving approx 75% occupancy.

See this link: http://www.european-football-statistics.co.uk/attnclub/covc.htm