2013-14 Premier League map & attendance chart (12/13 attendances)
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PREMIER LEAGUE – Fixtures, Results, Table (soccerway.com).
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2012-13 – a banner year for pro football in Wales.
Of the 20 clubs in the Premier League this season, 2 are based in Wales – the newly-promoted Cardiff City, and the third-year-Premier League-club Swansea City AFC, both of South Wales (and separated by only 55 km. or 34 miles). It is the first time in the history of the English 1st division (which was established in 1888-89) that 2 Welsh clubs are playing in the top flight at the same time. This will be the 16th season in the top flight for Cardiff City (Cardiff City’s total seasons spent in the 1st division: 1921-22 to 1928-29 [an 8 season spell]; 1952-53 to 1956-57 [a 5 season spell]; 1961-62 to 1962-63 [a 2 season spell]; 2013-14). This will be the 5th season that Swansea City are playing in the top flight (Swansea City’s total seasons spent in the 1st division: 1981-82 to 1982-83 [a 2 season spell]; 2011-12 to 2013-14 [a 3 season spell so far]). No other Welsh club has played in the English top flight, but Wrexham spent 4 seasons in the Second Division from 1978-79 to 1981-82; while Newport County (I) played the 1946-47 season in the Second Division. {To see a post I made a couple years back about the 6 Welsh football clubs which are in the English football league pyramid, click here.}
More positive news for Welsh pro football can be seen in the fact that last season, Newport County (II) of South Wales won promotion to the Football League. So after a 25-year absence, the city of Newport, Wales again has a club in the Football League. Newport County accomplished this by defeating Wrexham (of North Wales) in the 2013 Conference National Play-off Final at Wembley. Congratulations to Newport City AFC and supporters of the Exiles. And congratulations to the the Bluebirds’ faithful (I refuse to call Cardiff the Red Dragons)…for their club’s first top-flight-promotion in 51 years. And congratulations to 20%-supporter-owned Swansea City, and its fans, for winning the League Cup, and for demonstrating that playing attractive passing football in the first division – and actually staying up and winning silverware – can still be achieved by modest clubs from relatively small cities. Swansea is a pretty small city to be having a successful first division club, and now Swansea City are advantageously set-up to become the first Welsh club to qualify for a European competition {see this, ‘2013–14 UEFA Europa League/Play-off Round‘.
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The smallest cities to have an English 1st Division football club (since 1946-47)
Please note: all populations discussed below are not city populations, but rather metropolitan-area populations (which are also known as Urban Areas, and which are also known as Built-up areas). Why? Because there are not walls around these cities. People who live outside, but still nearby, any given city can and very often do attend home matches of a club in that city. Besides, some clubs (like Grimsby Town) don’t even play in the city or borough they are named after. This exercise is to look at what sort of population each club has as its potential catchment area. If I were to use populations from just within the city-limits of all these settlements, it would not accurately reflect the total population from which the club could reasonably expect (or hope) to draw upon as ticket-paying customers.
Here is my data source for metro-area populations – Source of data: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_areas_in_the_United_Kingdom.
The Swansea Built-up area is the 27th-largest in the United Kingdom, with a metro-area population of only around 300,000 {2011 figure; see the chart I made further below}. (Actually, it might be surprising to some that Swansea’s metro-area is slightly smaller than the metro-area of Newport, Wales.). At present [2013-14], the only Premier League club from a metropolitan-area smaller than Swansea is Norwich City. The Norwich, Norfolk Built-up area has a population of around 213,000, and is the 38th-largest in the UK. It must be mentioned that Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire – home of just-promoted Hull City AFC – is slightly larger than Swansea, as is Sunderland, Wearside – home of Sunderland AFC. Hull has a metro-area pop. of around 314 K, making Hull the 24th-largest metro area in the UK; Sunderland has a metro-area pop. of around 335 K (that figure does not include any part of the Newcastle metro-area), making Sunderland the 21st-largest metro area in the UK.
In the past and recent past (going back to the post-War period [from 1946-47 on]), there have been 8 First Division/Premier League clubs from cities smaller than Norwich (ie, smaller than around 200,000). Below are listed the smallest cities to have an English 1st division football club since the post-War period (1946-47 to 2013-14), with each club’s total seasons and their last season in the top flight noted, and current metro-area populations listed…
{all figures from the following link unless otherwise noted – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_areas_in_the_United_Kingdom}.
-Swindon Town, 1 season in the 1st division (in 1993-94): Swindon, Wiltshire is the 40th-largest built-up area in the UK at 185,000 metro-population currently;
-Ipswich Town, 26 seasons in the 1st division (last in 2001-02): Ipswich, Suffolk is the 42nd-largest built-up area in the UK at 178,000 metro-population currently;
-Wigan Athletic, 8 seasons in the 1st division (last in 2012-13): Wigan is the 43rd-largest built-up area in the UK at 175,000 metro-population currently;
-Oxford United, 3 seasons in the 1st division (last in 1987-88): Oxford, Oxfordshire is the 45th-largest built-up area in the UK at 171,000 metro-population currently;
-Burnley, 52 seasons in the 1st division (last in 2009-10): Burnley, Lancashire is the 54th-largest built-up area in the UK at 149,000 metro-population currently;
-Blackburn Rovers, 72 seasons in the 1st division (last in 2011-12): Blackburn, Lancashire is the 56th-largest built-up area in the UK at 146,000 metro-population currently;
-Grimsby Town, 12 seasons in the 1st division (last in 1947-48): Grimsby, North East Lincolnshire is the 58th-largest built-up area in the UK at 134,000 metro-population currently;
-Carlisle United, 1 season in the 1st division (in 1974-75): Carlisle, Cumbria is about the 108th-largest settlement in the UK at around 73,000 {that and its city-size-ranking is from 2008, obtained here (citypopulation.de/UK-Cities)}.
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Chart: Metropolitan-area populations in the United Kingdom – the 40 largest Built-up Areas in the UK (England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland). With clubs in the 2013-14 Premier League listed.
Click on image below.
Chart: Built-Up Area populations in the UK – the 40 largest Built-up Areas in the United Kingdom, with clubs in the 2013-14 Premier League listed
Source of data: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_areas_in_the_United_Kingdom.
This chart was uploaded onto reddit.com/soccer by iam8mai, one day after I posted it… here is the thread – http://en.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1k9hoh/premier_league_team_population_size/. Thanks to all the 90+ folks who commented there, and thanks to those who spotted my errors, and thanks to that St Mirren fan [portaccio] who pointed out that Motherwell should have been listed in the list of clubs currently in the Scottish 1st division which are located in Greater Glasgow, which he did after he pointed out to the other (disgruntled) St Mirren fan that Paisley is indeed officially considered part of Greater Glasgow].
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Thanks to D-maps.com, for the blank map of the UK, http://d-maps.com/carte.php?num_car=5546&lang=en.
Thanks to european-football-statistics.co.uk, for 2012-13 Premier League attendance figures.
Thanks to the Football League official site for 2012-13 Football League Championship attendance figures, http://www.football-league.co.uk/page/DivisionalAttendance/0,,10794~20127,00.html.
Thanks to Soccerway.com for stadium capacities.
Thanks to the Footy-mad sites for their invaluable League Histories of every club in Levels 1 through 5, such as ‘Cardiff City’s complete league history‘ (cardiffcity-mad.co.uk/league_history); and ‘Swansea City’s complete league history‘ (swanseacity-mad.co.uk/league_history).
