Sleeping Giants....

[paultheroyal]

Thread crossover, but got me thinking. Which clubs would you put in the sleeping giant category. Oh and if you had unlimited money, what club would you buy as a "hobby" to be successful.

Sleeping Giants for me - Bradford City, Plymouth and bizarrely will add Carlisle due to the fact they have a large population area with no team in sight.

On the non-league circuit i always feel Dover should be bigger than they are.

As for who to buy, it would actually be Basingstoke. Cant sink much lower but they must surely be the largest size town in population etc with the lowest ranked football club, be struggling to think of anyone bigger?

[Zip]

Wrexham for me. When I was growing up they were a cracking team with a terrific Cup pedigree backed by a strong, passionate following and a good sized ground. Massively underachieving these days. I hope that changes under their Hollywood owners.

[Winston Biscuit]

As for who to buy, it would actually be Basingstoke. Cant sink much lower but they must surely be the largest size town in population etc with the lowest ranked football club, be struggling to think of anyone bigger?

The internet tells me its Dudley

Population 320,000, football team plays in level 10

[Winston Biscuit]

Thread crossover, but got me thinking. Which clubs would you put in the sleeping giant category. Oh and if you had unlimited money, what club would you buy as a "hobby" to be successful.

Sleeping Giants for me - Bradford City, Plymouth and bizarrely will add Carlisle due to the fact they have a large population area with no team in sight

Funnily enough when I only saw the thread title my mind went to Plymouth & Bradford.

At least Bradford have had a few seasons near the top. Plymouth have achieved very little in their history

Plymouth have also been pretty reasonably supported in the past. Looking at their average attended though they went from 23,000 at the start of the 60's down to 9000 by the end of that decade and have never really recovered much from that (averaged 4944 in the 00-01 season! )

maybe the attendance thing was a wider trend than just with Plymouth though

[Brogue]

bristol with a population of 571,922 the 4th largest city in England ahead of manchester
Northampton who are just above Reading in population size defo underachieving for a population as large as that

[paultheroyal]

As for who to buy, it would actually be Basingstoke. Cant sink much lower but they must surely be the largest size town in population etc with the lowest ranked football club, be struggling to think of anyone bigger?

The internet tells me its Dudley

Population 320,000, football team plays in level 10

Great research - cheers.

[paultheroyal]

York is another one surely? Mass population playing in conference north.

[Sutekh]

Plymouth have been a division 3 side for most of their time in the FL (just) having amassed 44 seasons at that level to date compared to 12 in division 4 and 41 in division 2. They have never played in division 1 but do have an enormous following to call on as we know from sharing many seasons with them. Highest ever position was 4th in division 2 twice (1932 and 1953). Managed to finish 2nd in Division 3S for 6 consecutive seasons between 1921 and 1927 - and we moan about finishing 2nd in 1995

Bradford have amassed 12 division 1 seasons in total though 10 of those seasons were a consecutive run finishing in 1922 meaning just 2 top flight seasons since then but they were in the PL years (99-01). 25 seasons have been in division 4, 29 seasons in division 2 and the remaining 42 seasons in division 3. Highest ever position was 5th in division 1 in 1911.

[leon]

Yeah Plymouth for me. Great away following. Should be a lot bigger.

[From Despair To Where?]

Bradford's a funny one. They're probably the 3rd best supported team in the city after Leeds and Manchester United and latterly, the Bulls got more support as well until they went into financial meltdown.

You go further out towards Keighley and Skipton and you see more Burnley shirts than Bradford.

They practically give season tickets away (just under £200 for an adult which is a £50 increase on 2 seasons ago) but it costs £25 on the day so a lot of people buy the season ticket but go to less than half the games. They had about 15,000 season ticket holders before Covid which all count towards gates whether they turn up or not so don't let their attendance figures fool you. They'll turn up for the big clubs or Leeds but their support is actually pretty fair weather and they're the victims of having more illustrious neighbours.