Please note: to see my most recent map-and-post on the English 3rd division, click on the following: category: eng-3rd-level-league-1.
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England: 2015-16 League One [3rd division], location-map with 14/15 attendances, all-time seasons in 1st division + major titles listed
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Links…
Teams…2015–16 Football League One (en.wikipedia.org).
News, fixtures, results, table, etc…Football League One page at BBC.com.
Kits…Sky Bet League One 2015 – 2016 [home, away & alternate kits] (historicalkits.co.uk).
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England: 2015-16 League One [3rd division], location-map with 14/15 attendances, all-time seasons in 1st division + major titles listed
By Bill Turianski on 11 July 2015; twitter.com/billsportsmaps.com.
This is the second post in my newest category (2015-16 English football). As I am going backward-up to the Premier League, we now take a look at the third tier {fourth-tier map, here,
England: 2015-16 League Two [4th division], location-map with 14/15 attendances, all-time seasons in 1st division + major titles listed.}.
From the Footy Headlines site, Sheffield United 15-16 Home Kit Released (footyheadlines.com). On the map, you will notice that there is a larger red shield floating in the North Sea, and that is Sheffield United’s crest for this season – a 125-year anniversary nod to their first crest, from 1890-91. From the brilliant and invaluable site Historical Football Kits, …’ A crest appeared in the 1890-91 season that consisted of the badge of Sheffield, featuring three sheaves of wheat, apparently a typical heraldic play on words, Shef-field being interpreted as “the open space by the River Sheaf.” (quote from historicalkits.co.uk/Sheffield_United/Sheffield_United.htm). The following season (1891-92) was the first season the Blades wore their ‘butcher’s-stripes’ red-white-verticals, but they were pinstripe-width red verticals (fat-red-verticals appeared on Blades’ jerseys a few years later in 1894-95…and, much to the disgruntlement of many supporters, Sheffield Utd will be wearing the pinstripe-width red verticals this season).
Sheffield United, the highest-or-second-highest-drawing 3rd division club the last 4 seasons, will hope that the fifth time is the charm, as they try once again to get out of League One and back on to the path to the top flight, where they were last seen in 2006-07. One can’t help thinking that the black cloud hovering over Sheffield United settled into place there in South Yorkshire in May/June 2007, when the Blades went down from the Premier League only because of the independent Premier League commission’s outrageous decision to only impose a £5.5m fine instead of a points deduction. The Premier League thus rewarded anarchy and cheating by merely giving West Ham a slap on the wrist. Sure, it was expensive slap on the wrist for the Hammers big-shots, but guess who got to stay up? The claret-and-sky-blue cheaters. (You know, that whole affair – the West-Ham-cheating-via-signing-Carlos-Tevez-affair, despite the fact that WHUFC knew it was an illegal Third Party Ownership deal.)
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Notes for 2015-16 League One…
-Last season’s (2014-15) League 1 total league average attendance was 7,034 per game/ median avg crowd was the 5,694 drawn by Gillingham.
-Two seasons ago (2013-14), the League 1 total avg attendance was a bit higher [about 440-per-game-higher than 14/15] at 7,476/ median avg crowd was the 6,219 drawn by Gillingham.
-Three seasons ago (2012-13), the League 1 total avg attendance was a bit lower [about 700-per-game-lower than 14/15] at 6,319/ median avg crowd was the 5,522 drawn by Notts County.
-(Don’t try to read too much into the above, because League 1 avg crowd-size variability is largely a function of how many medium-to-big-ish clubs get stuck in League 1 in any given season. And this season, there are 5 such clubs: Blackpool, Bradford City, Coventry City, Sheffield United, Wigan Athletic. [Clarification - by 'medium-to-big-ish clubs', I mean to say: Clubs which can draw above ~15 K in a good year.])
-Promoted from League Two for 15/16:
Burton Albion
Shrewsbury Town (yo-yo club)
Bury
Southend United
-Relegated from Championship for 15/16:
Millwall
Wigan Athletic
Blackpool
-I know I have not been following English football for that long (since circa 2003-04), but I have never come across a season in the Football League which features one of the divisions having four times as many Greater Manchester-based clubs as Greater London-based clubs. The 2015-16 Football League One has 4 quasi-Mancunian clubs (Bury, Rochdale, Oldham Athletic, Wigan Athletic), and only one London-based-club (Millwall). OK, I know it was happening in, like, say, 1903-04 in the Second Division, because of course the Football League (est. 1888-89) initially grew from Northern-and-Midlands-based clubs, exclusively. But by 1907-08 there were [more than 1 London-based club, with] Clapton Orient and Fulham as lower-league-clubs in the Second Division. And I seriously doubt it [it being just one London team in a Football League division], has happened much at all since the 1920s. And this clustering up North in the third tier is even more pronounced than just that, because there are only 5 clubs in League One, currently, that can be considered Southern clubs (Colchester Utd, Southend Utd, Swindon Town, Millwall, Gillingham). Meanwhile Northern clubs are thick on the ground in the third tier now…2 clubs from Lancashire, 4 from Greater Manchester, 4 from Yorkshire, 1 from North Lincolnshire, 1 from North Derbyshire, and 2 from the Potteries/south Cheshire. It is such a thick cluster that many clubs (such as Chesterfield and Port Vale and Crewe) are going to have considerably less travel-time and less travel-costs this season.
-*Asterisk-note:
Because of a dispute between the venue-operators of the Ricoh Stadium (Arena Coventry, Ltd) and the Coventry City owners (a Bond-villian-worthy Hedge fund corporation called SISU), Coventry City played all their home matches in 13/14 and several of their homes matches early in 14/15 ~35 mi SE of Coventry, in the town of Northampton (at Sixfields, home of 4th division side Northampton Town). Supporter-protest resulted in very low attendances for these matches (ie, Coventry used to draw 14-16 K regularly, but were drawing only 2-3 K playing in Northants). CCFC have returned to their home-venue (the Ricoh Stadium), but more legal action (on both sides) is inevitable, and CCFC supporters are still stuck in the middle of this corporate farce.
-Finally, check out the rather-low-yet-rising attendance figures for one-quarter of the current League One… Six of the twenty-four current [2015-16] League One clubs drew under 4 K per game last season. And FIVE of those minnow-clubs have won promotion to the third division in the last two seasons:
-Bury, at 3.7 K (promoted to League One in May 2015).
-Scunthorpe Utd, at 3.6 K (promoted to League One in May 2014).
-Fleetwood Town, at 3.5 K (promoted to League One, for the first time, in May 2014).
-Rochdale AFC, at 3.3 K (promoted to League One in May 2015).
-Burton Albion, at 3.2 K (promoted to League One, for the first time, in May 2015).
These days, in the lower Leagues, minnows can run rampant.
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Thanks to all at the links below…
-Blank map of UK historic counties, by Nilfanion (using UK Ordnance Survey data), at File:United Kingdom police areas map.svg (commons.wikimedia.org).
-Blank relief map of Greater London, by Nilfanion (using UK Ordnance Survey data), at File:Greater London UK relief location map.jpg.
-Attendance, at E-F-S site, european-football-statistics.co.uk/attn.htm.
-League histories of clubs: a lot I have used (here on the chart on the map page) came from research I had done ~5 years ago, via a source (at Football 360 site) that is now sadly gone (and has not been replaced, anywhere, it seems, on the Internet [I am talking about comprehensive League histories of all English football clubs who have been in the Football League]). Some of the info I have used here on the chart on the map page came from Footy-Mad sites, such as Bury-mad, here, bury-mad.co.uk/league_history…but that means you basically have to literally count, by hand, the seasons a club has spent in each division (it is a lot of thankless work, I’ll tell you). Also, some info was found at some clubs’ Wiki pages (some clubs’ Wiki pages have their League histories spelt out, such as w/ Sheff Utd, here, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheffield_United_F.C.#League_history).
