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September 25, 2012

England: League One – 2012-13 Location-map, with 2011-12 attendance data, and 2012-13 home kit badges.

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League One map with attendance data & kit badges




Note: to see my latest map-&-post of the English 3rd division, click on the following, Eng-3rd Level/League One.

Tranmere Rovers are from the suburb of Tranmere in Birkenhead, Wirral Peninsula, Merseyside – just a short ferry-ride away from Liverpool. The population of Birkenhead is around 83,000 {2001 census figure}. Tranmere Rovers sit atop the 2012-13 League One table after 8 matches, 3 points ahead of Notts County in 2nd place, and 4 points ahead of Stevenage in 3rd. League One Table, Fixtures, Results (soccerway.com).

From Liverpool Echo, from 21 Sept.2012, by Nick Hilton, ‘Tranmere Rovers FC manager Ronnie Moore focusing on his own team‘. As of 25 September, Tranmere Rovers are undefeated, with 6 wins including a 2-5 win at Crawley Town last weekend. Birkenhead-born Tranmere MF/winger Andy Robinson was voted League One player of the month for August 2012, and Liverpool-born manager Ronnie Moore was voted the League One manager of the month for August. Both are seen below, along with 19-year old Wolves’ loanee Jake Cassidy, a North Wales-born striker who has also scored 7 league goals so far for Tranmere this season – all of them in the month of September.

Tranmere Rovers were in the second division for a 10-year spell from 1991-92 to 2000-01. Except for one season – 1938-39 – that 10 season stint in the old Second Division/Football League Division One was in fact the only other time the club has ever been as high as the second tier in English football. Tranmere Rovers’ gates back then were in the 8,000-range when they went up in 1991-92, and the club maintained an 8K to 9K-per-game average pretty much throughout that whole decade in the second division. These days, now 12 seasons back in the third division, Tranmere draws in the 5,000-range, but their gates will probably start increasing if they continue this solid start and if they keep playing the attractive passing football that Ronnie Moore has got them playing. 13 years ago Moore brought Rotherham United up for a 4-season-spell in the second division (from 2001-02 to 2004-05), and Moore could very well do it again with a similar-sized club, this time, with a club from his home region.
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Photo credits above – Prenton Park, wirralglobe.co.uk. Anfy Robinson with ‘Justice for 96 / YNWA’ shirt, sportinglife.com. Andy Robinson, photo by PA at itv.com/sport/football/article/2012-08-08/league-one-season-preview-tranmere/. Photo of 2012-13 TRFC badge, footballkitnews.com/6089/new-tranmere-kit-12-13-fila-tranmere-rovers-home-shirt-2012-2013. Ronnie Moore, clickliverpool.com. Jake Cassidy, Paul Redding/Action Images via sportsdirectnews.com.

From Historical Football Kits, ‘Npower League One 2012-13 [all 24 clubs' kits]‘.

Facsimilies of each clubs’ home jersey badge (2012-13) are shown at the top of the map page, placed alphabetically, left to right. I assembled them using photos as reference – photos obtained either from each club’s website, or at footballfashion.org/wordpress or at footballkitnews.com/ League One. Using my drawing program I sampled the colors of the jerseys to make the background rectangles which the badges at the top of the page are sitting in. For this map (of the English third division), I didn’t have to use any photos of home jersey badges which are different from the club’s official crest, like I had to do on my 2 previous maps within this category – the 2012-13 Football League Championship or the 2012-13 Premier League. But I did have to do a bit of work on a few of the badge designs. Tranmere Rovers’ badge on their 2012-13 home kit bafge is in a slightly lighter (and slightly blue-greenish) shade of blue {see it here (footballkitnews.com)}. A couple of the clubs have more elaborate striping than usual – Colchester United’s usual light-electric-blue-vertical-stripes are accented by thin pale-metallic-gold stripes on either side, while Sheffield United’s red vertical stripes are edged on either side by thin black lines. Two clubs have devices that their official crest sits in. Coventry City’s 2012-13 home jersey badge has it’s official crest inside a deep-powder-blue-with-lighter-blue-edged rounded-rectangle. Stevenage’s badge this season features a basic shield in white edged by a thick band of dark red. Then there were the 3 clubs whose badges this season features text elements that are different from the clubs’ official crests. Hartlepool United’s home jersey badge (a very underrated badge in my opinion) has text elements that are a reverse of their official crest, and the same applies to Crewe Alexandra’s home jersey badge this season, plus the Crewe badge does not include the shield. So I had to cut and paste areas, and I also had to make letters (in Arial font), then kern and angle each letter. [ 'Kerning' (en.wikipedia.org) ]. The hardest was Yeovil Town’s badge, because besides having to kern and angle every letter, I first had to figure out what the inscription said, and this was the best image I had to work with (it says ‘Celebrating 10 Years In The Football League – Yeovil Town FC’).
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Thanks to footballkitnews.com/english-football-league-one, for info on 2012-13 League One kits.
Thanks to footballfashion.org/english-football-league, for info on 2012-13 League One kits.

Thanks to soccerway.com for attendance data and stadium capacities, http://www.soccerway.com/national/england/league-one/20122013/regular-season/.

September 19, 2012

2012-13 UEFA Europa League group stage: attendance map.

Filed under: UEFA Cup / Europa League — admin @ 2:02 pm

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2012-13 UEFA Europa League Group Stage: attendance map



Clubs from 25 countries will be competing in the 2012-13 UEFA Europa League group stage.
Europa League page at UEFA.com.
2012–13 UEFA Europa League group stage‘ (en.wikipedia.org).
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Thanks to Roke at commons.wikimedia.org, ‘BlankMap-Europe-v4.png‘.
Thanks to European Football Statistics.co.uk, for attendance data, http://www.european-football-statistics.co.uk/attn.htm.

September 13, 2012

England: League Championship – 2012-13 Location-map, with attendance data, and 2012-13 home kit badges.

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2012-13 League Championship – Location-map, w/ attendance data



From Historical Football Kits site, ‘Npower Championship 2012 – 2013 [Kits of all 24 Championship clubs in the 2012-13 season]‘.

Facsimilies of each clubs’ home jersey badges (2012-13) are shown at the top of the map. I assembled them using photos as reference – photos obtained either from each club’s website, or at footballfashion.org/wordpress or at footballkitnews.com/Championship kits. Using my drawing program I sampled the colors of the jerseys to make the background rectangles that the crests (at the top of the page) are sitting in.

First off, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the biggest news this season in Football League Championship kits – the PR disaster that is Cardiff City’s switch from blue to red home jerseys. Here are 2 articles on the subject…
From buzzfeed.com, from 25 August 2012, by Mark Hudson, ‘The Biggest Insult Owners Can Inflict Upon Their Team’s Fans‘.
From mindofmaus.wordpress.com, from 7 June 2012, ‘Cardiff City Jersey Debacle: A Taste of the Future Far Beyond Football‘.

On the top of the map page are facsimile images of the 24 home jersey badges of the clubs in the current iteration of the English second division – the 2012-13 Football League Championship. The crests are displayed in alphabetical order from left to right. In case you are wondering why Bristol City’s crest is sitting in a charcoal-black-colored rectangle instead of a red one, well, the Robins are sporting home jerseys this season that have a black band that covers the top third of the jersey. The same thing is the case with Hull City (same Adidas template). Burnley has a pale blue horizontal band at the level of the badge, so that explains why there is not a claret-colored rectangle there. Derby County’s kit badge has gone back to the classic angry-ram-in-profile-done-in-minimalist–thick-line-style, with no inscription or surrounding disc or ribbon flourish, just the ram, and it looks pretty sharp (the ram looks pretty cool on the away kit, too – it is in white on the black jersey, {see it here (footballfashion.org)}. Speaking of Derby, a couple of images at the top of the map page are actually photos (that I then drew on, or did a bit of cut and paste on, to make the image sharper)…the Derby County 2012-13 home jersey badge is from footballfashion.org/wordpress/derby-county-home-kit/, and the Nottingham Forest 2012-13 home jersey badge is from nottinghamforestdirect.com. The only place I could find an image of the Barnsley 125th anniversaey crest (sorry it’s a bit fuzzy) was at historicalkits.co.uk/Barnsley/, so thanks to historicalkits.co.uk. With Ipswich Town’s jersey badge, this photo by KrisLissimore at flickr.com was very useful. You can see all the clubs’ kits at the link at the top of this post, or at the following link, at Historical Football Kits’ 2012-13 League Championship page.

Thanks to soccerway.com for attendance data and stadium capacities, http://www.soccerway.com/national/england/championship/20122013/regular-season/.

September 6, 2012

2012-13 UEFA Champions League Group Stage: attendance map.

Filed under: UEFA Champions League — admin @ 8:54 am

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2012-13 UEFA Champions League Group Stage: attendance map


The 2012-13 UEFA Champions League begins on 18 and 19 September. Here are the 1st Mathday fixtures (uefa.com).

Here are the groups, ‘2012–13 UEFA Champions League group stage‘ (en.wikipedia.org). The ‘group of death’ is Group D, which is comprised of Real Madrid, Manchester City, Ajax, and Borussia Dortmund.

Three clubs are set to make their debut appearances in the Champions League Group Stage – Montpellier (champions of France), Nordsjælland (champions of Denmark), and Málaga (fourth-place finishers in Spain).

The map page shows attendance data of the clubs involved. Listed at the upper left-hand corner are 2011-12 home average attendance figures (from domestic league matches), along with percent-change from the previous season. On the map itself, in the center of the map page, the clubs’ locations are shown on a large map of Europe. Surrounding the large map are enlarged inset maps of each of the 17 countries which have teams involved in this season’s competition. The club crests on the inset maps are sized to reflect each club’s average attendance – the larger the crest, the higher that club’s average attendance is.

Breakdown of clubs in the 2012-13 UEFA Champions League by country…
4 clubs -
England (Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City, Manchester United), Spain (Barcelona, Málaga, Real Madrid, Valencia).
3 clubs –
France (Lille, Montpellier, Paris Saint-Germain), Germany (Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, Schalke), Portugal (Benfica, Braga, Porto).
2 clubs –
Italy (Juventus, Milan), Russia (Spartak Moscow, Zenit), Ukraine (Dynamo Kyiv, Shakhtar Donetsk).
1 club -
Belarus (BATE Borisov), Belgium (Anderlecht), Croatia (Dinamo Zagreb), Denmark (Nordsjælland), Greece (Olympiacos), Netherlands (Ajax), Romania (Cluj), Scotland (Celtic), Turkey (Galatasaray).
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Thanks to Roke at commons.wikimedia.org, ‘BlankMap-Europe-v4.png‘.
Thanks to European Football Statistics.co.uk, for attendance data for 31 of the 32 clubs, http://www.european-football-statistics.co.uk/attn.htm.
Thanks to the contributors to the pages at en.wikipedia.org, for crests and locations, and crucially, for hard-to-get (nonexistent, really) Turkish Süper Lig attendance figures, ‘2011–12 Galatasaray S.K. season‘.

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