Football The distribution of success in English football

[cHodAX]

Was a bit bored earlier so I was looking through wiki at some football pages, I came across the page about league title winners and somewhat to my suprise I noticed that London clubs have only won 18 league titles between them over the course of 120 years. Beforehand I knew it wasn't a massive number but only after looking at the cold hard figures did I realise how poorly London clubs have fared, especially when you consider the population of London and the potential finances available. Liverpool and Manchester as city's have won more even though both have populations 90% smaller than London and the North West as a whole has taken 57 league wins in that period.

Thing is, I can't really find a viable explanation for all of this. Surely the clubs from the capital city with a massive population thrown in should have the biggest stadia, the highest revenues and much more in the way of trophy success. Yet that just isn't the case and I can't really understand why.

Your thoughts?

 

[cHodAX]

Oh and the figures are...

List of English football champions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Madmaxx]

Was a bit bored earlier so I was looking through wiki at some football pages, I came across the page about league title winners and somewhat to my suprise I noticed that London clubs have only won 18 league titles between them over the course of 120 years. Beforehand I knew it wasn't a massive number but only after looking at the cold hard figures did I realise how poorly London clubs have fared, especially when you consider the population of London and the potential finances available. Liverpool and Manchester as city's have won more even though both have populations 90% smaller than London and the North West as a whole has taken 57 league wins in that period.

Thing is, I can't really find a viable explanation for all of this. Surely the clubs from the capital city with a massive population thrown in should have the biggest stadia, the highest revenues and much more in the way of trophy success. Yet that just isn't the case and I can't really understand why.

Your thoughts?

My geography is crap but there's only a few say decent manchester teams, AKA man united and man city.

But in london you have chelsea,arsenal,tottenham,west ham,fulham, the superior QPR , watford,reading,charlton errr maybe a few more i cant remember. so maybe with london teams its quantity over quality. I mean Fulham is literally down the road from QPR atleast if they pooled there fans/clubs together that would be a pretty big club. Maybe london is spread abit thin.

 

[Sparx]

even if you look as recent as the 70s London was less one city and more around boroughs, towns all joined together

 

[cHodAX]

Yep but even with all those boroughs and clubs, we are still talking a bigger population per club than any of the other teams outside London.

 

[Sparx]

Yep but even with all those boroughs and clubs, we are still talking a bigger population per club than any of the other teams outside London.

But more urban teams also have supports further out for example Motherwell has supporters in the further out places like Strathaven, Stonehouse Larkhall etc. Hamilton have supports more than hamilton but Blantyre etc

In london someone from Islington would be more likely to support only Arsenal. There are alot of boroughs in london much smaller than you think, and less people than a larger area of supporters like motherwell for example ( i use these examples cause i was brought up in scotland but live in london now)

 

[Lucius]

The statistics are misleading, because we don't know what the population differences were like in the 20th century, as that is when Liverpool and Manchester won a lot of their titles. Also, since when has population = success? Look at China, India etc, they don't have great football teams. Perhaps the north-west cities such as Liverpool have a greater emphasis on football, I don't know. But population doesn't mean much .

 

[megadave]

I'd go with the explanation that there are so many different clubs in London.

Also these days, i'd actually put money on there being more Man Utd fans in London than any other club. So the large population in London doesn't mean there are more fans supporting London teams.

 

[leviathane]

you're never more than 5m away from one

 

[cHodAX]

you're never more than 5m away from one

Plastic rats

 

[megadave]

They say that in London you are never more than six feet from a rat. Funny, that's what London rats say about scousers. Perhaps we should start leaving big traps with hubcaps as bait?

 

[cHodAX]

Not gonna say any more on that subject or I will get in trouble