Thetownend.com

Shamelessly nicked this from Peter Gibbons' post on the Bristol/Swindon topic, as it throws up a few surprises, for me at least, about the non-linear relationship between the size of an urban area and its club's support. Is Bournemouth really a sleeping giant, as the wealthy Russian who was shown this table must think, or is it just a napping granny? Ipswich really does do well for support, and Sunderland amazingly, but Southend and Aldershot really need to pull their fingers out. And where in hell is the Dearne Valley and its 200k inhabitants?

Rank    Urban Area - Population
 1   Greater London Urban Area - 8,278,251
 2   West Midlands Urban Area - 2,284,093
 3   Greater Manchester Urban Area - 2,240,230
 4   West Yorkshire Urban Area - 1,499,465
 5   Greater Glasgow - 1,199,629
 6   Tyneside - 879,996
 7   Liverpool Urban Area - 816,216
 8   Nottingham Urban Area - 666,358
 9   Sheffield Urban Area - 640,720
10   Belfast Metropolitan Urban Area - 579,554[7]
11   Bristol Urban Area - 551,066
12   Brighton/Worthing/Littlehampton - 461,181
13   Portsmouth Urban Area - 442,252
14   Leicester Urban Area - 441,213
15   Edinburgh - 420,893
16   Bournemouth Urban Area - 383,713
17   Reading/Wokingham Urban Area - 369,804
18   Teesside - 365,323
19   The Potteries Urban Area - 362,403
20   Coventry/Bedworth Urban Area - 336,452
21   Cardiff Urban Area - 327,706
22   Birkenhead Urban Area - 319,675
23   Southampton Urban Area - 304,400
24   Kingston upon Hull - 301,416
25   Swansea Urban Area - 270,506
26   Southend Urban Area - 269,415
27   Preston Urban Area - 264,601
28   Blackpool Urban Area - 261,088
29   Plymouth - 243,795
30   Aldershot Urban Area - 243,344
31   Derby Urban Area - 236,738
32   Luton/Dunstable Urban Area - 236,318
33   Medway Towns Urban Area - 231,659
34   Dearne Valley Urban Area - 207,726
35   Northampton Urban Area - 197,199
36   Norwich Urban Area - 194,839
37   Aberdeen - 193,379
38   Milton Keynes urban area - 184,506
39   Wearside (Sunderland Urban Area) - 182,974
40   Crawley Urban Area - 180,177
41   Wigan Urban Area - 166,840
42   Warrington Urban Area - 158,195
43   Mansfield Urban Area - 158,114
44   Dundee - 157,808
45   Swindon - 155,432
46   Burnley/Nelson - 149,796
47   Oxford - 143,016
48   Slough Urban Area - 141,848
49   Ipswich Urban Area - 141,658
50   Newport Urban Area - 139,298

I guess one point to make is that you dont have to be from an urban area to support the club, so ipswich has cornered the suffolk market, and norwich the norfolk market.  Swindon ought to do better for the same reasons, but maybe wiltshire doesn't appeal in the same way?  Although....

Norfolk   859,400
Dorset   745,400
Suffolk   730,100
Wiltshire   684,000

As PG says the size of catchment area will be relevant as well as size of urban area. Also, take into account level of competition nearby and tradition (e.g. Burnley).  It also depends how urban area is defined.  Cheltenham & Gloucester with Churchdown form an almost contiguous urban area that combined would place in the top 30 of this table and I would guess there are other examples.

I thought this thread was going to about blokes and their birds. Instead it's a gay attendance thread. For shame.

But feel free to hijack it.

Surely the Swindon one is out of date?

Well the obvious starting point would be Peter Crouch who has had a quite sensational touch.

Very true. So tell me Abi what first attracted you to the millionaire football Peter Crouch?

Urban Area stats are generally a lot more meaningful than local government population figures.  They better represent how big a place is - how big a mark it makes on the map - and do not get messed about by arbitrary political divisions.  A good example is Reading, where the local authority controls only a fraction of the urban area (with probably half of the overall urban area controlled by Wokingham Borough and West Berkshire), so the quoted population of Reading itself sometimes looks artifically small.  These stats are better.

You do get a few oddities though.  Aldershot just happens to be a part of a wider connurbation that stretches from Sandhurst in the north to Farnham in the south and takes in Farnborough, Camberley, Frimley and a stack of smaller villages.  The overall urban area (often referred to as the Blackwater Valley area) taken together is quite a bit bigger than Swindon, but none of the individual towns are anywhere near the same size.  And I can't see Aldershot attracting much in the way of support from most of those places.  Loyalties are too fragmented and everyone seems to support Chelsea anyway.

Mansfield is another surprise.  Really larger than Swindon?  Bournemouth is massive (when you include Christchurch and Poole), and yes...the football club really could benefit from a large local population if they continue to succeed (and not blow up).

But the real dunce of the pack has to be Bristol.  Top 10 city, huge population and consistent underachievement.  Long may it continue.

I think Rotherham...could be wrong though.

Depends as last population figure I saw was around the 209,000 mark but not sure how that relates back to urban area?

 :hmmm:

sorry but that table is very misleading. Swindon's urban area population is 180,000 ( 2012 census) with the borough  of Swindon being 209,000.Preston's urban population is about 140,000 so the figure in that table must include every village and small town in a huge council controlled area spread over half of Lancashire  which is very misleading.

I love his quote from when he was at Liverpool. He was asked what he would be if he wasn't a footballer & he answered " A Virgin "

I believe all the figures are urban area (so nothing to do with councils) but I agree that the figures appear to be out of date.  The Preston Urban Area includes Chorley, Euxton, Leyland, and Bamber Bridge (and Preston, obviously) which does not appear unreasonable - as best I can find online, an "urban area" can involve two built up areas joined by a road, provided they are less than 200 metres apart (source attached, third tab entitled 'notes').

I've bored myself with this but you did cast aspersions upon my meticulously copy/pasted table :)

Punching above their weight....? Yeovil, Bournemouth and Doncaster next season.

Chris Coleman

Mark Hughes

Reece Mastin  :badmood: