Welcome to today's fun time who we bigger than debate

First up...

Birmingham City.

Yay or Nay.

All round gut feeling is the key. 

3 hours ago, captainmed said:

Everton are bigger than everyone except Utd, Liv & Arsenal.

Maybe similar to Spurs. 

Just my opinion of course. 
 

If we are talking about the ability to pull big crowds, Newcastle bigger than Everton, Leeds and West Ham similar to Everton. 

Edited March 21, 20242 yr by Mounts Kipper

36 minutes ago, Mounts Kipper said:

Sounds like a deluded QPR fan to me. Don’t think QPR ever brought more than 500 to Burnden, Chelsea another story. 

He supports Man City. 

3 minutes ago, jayjayoghani said:

He supports Man City. 

Could be a ten pager in coming😂

2 minutes ago, tomski said:

Could be a ten pager in coming😂

He has supported them since late 70s. 🙂

The history thing is interesting as time inevitably moves on. There's fully fledged adult Bolton fans who will start university next year who were not born when we played Guimaraes for example.

Most older fans would be happy to go say that 29 years ago when we had the LC and playoff finals in a few months of each other is "recent" history that laid the basis for what came after. People would also realistically say you could go back another 30 years and Shankly transforming Liverpool has direct modern relevance. But another 30 years? Well why not; Herbert Chapman transformed Arsenal and the game in general - and he got that gig after setting Huddersfield up for the 3 titles in a row.

So to a certain extent you can keep going and trace direct lines to the modern game. Thing is, maybe a good starting point then is the 23 Cup Final when a national stadium was built for the first time, 300k turned up inside or out of it, and we there. 100 years ago, but as i say you can trace direct lines to the modern game and modern clubs fortunes back to then. So even if being there on day one of the league is pushing it a bit in terms relevance other than purely historical, 23 isn't and we should be proud of that; and stuff that we and others have done since, even though it's a century's worth of football, still "counts" to the legacy and "size" of current clubs. After all, there's 15k+ people (enough to sell out Peterborough's ground) alive in the UK now who were also alive that day in 1923.

15 minutes ago, SatanGreavsie said:

The history thing is interesting as time inevitably moves on. There's fully fledged adult Bolton fans who will start university next year who were not born when we played Guimaraes for example.

Most older fans would be happy to go say that 29 years ago when we had the LC and playoff finals in a few months of each other is "recent" history that laid the basis for what came after. People would also realistically say you could go back another 30 years and Shankly transforming Liverpool has direct modern relevance. But another 30 years? Well why not; Herbert Chapman transformed Arsenal and the game in general - and he got that gig after setting Huddersfield up for the 3 titles in a row.

So to a certain extent you can keep going and trace direct lines to the modern game. Thing is, maybe a good starting point then is the 23 Cup Final when a national stadium was built for the first time, 300k turned up inside or out of it, and we there. 100 years ago, but as i say you can trace direct lines to the modern game and modern clubs fortunes back to then. So even if being there on day one of the league is pushing it a bit in terms relevance other than purely historical, 23 isn't and we should be proud of that; and stuff that we and others have done since, even though it's a century's worth of football, still "counts" to the legacy and "size" of current clubs. After all, there's 15k+ people (enough to sell out Peterborough's ground) alive in the UK now who were also alive that day in 1923.

Isn’t it incredible that there a folk around who were alive in 1923, there was a lady on the BBC NW news this week who was 110 and she was originally from Wembley area, she remembers them chopping trees down to build Wembley, mind boggling there’s folk alive who remember the original Wembley being built. 

Liverpool?

Where do they rank in the world?

I'd have us 2nd behind Real

10 hours ago, jayjayoghani said:

My mate grew up in West London in 70s 80s. QPR were the big team, no-one supported Chelsea. 

 

10 hours ago, Casino said:

Would qpr not have been a division above for a few of those years?

And had a very good team that came close to winning the league?

Yeah, QPR had some really good teams around that time and some good players.

Think they might have won the League cup in the late 60's and were runners up in the top division a few years later, and they were always entertaining.

Stan Bowles, Rodney Marsh, Gerry Francis. Morgan twins etc

I think they probably overachieved compared to their relatively small fan base.

7 hours ago, Lostock Whites said:

Either way you look at things, there's certainly a lot of things to be proud about when saying you're a supporter of such a magnificent, traditional club of the English game like ours.

Whether you mention Lofthouse to a 90 year old, or Okocha to a 30 year old, people across the world know of us.

There's a lot of things about us that makes us unique. There's only a handful or two of clubs you could pull out that have achieved more or have had as big as an impact in England than us.

Founder of the league, first scorer, first team to win at Wembley, highest ever recorded attendance, first team to sign up to the army in the 2nd world war, 4x FA Cups, 3x runners up including Stanley Matthews final, 2x runners up League cup, 73 years in the top flight, only bettered by Sunderland & WBA outside the top current flight, 2x in European football knockout stages. There's a lot there. 

Our footprint on the English game is certainly huge. In short, we are massive.  

Didn’t we once win The Asia Cup? 

Using Zig's patented scoring system :

 

Bolton 417 Gonch points

BBurn 511

Ipswich 319

Wigan 162.5

Morecambe 40

QPR 208

Rog's lot 2205

 

Scoring:

Crowd :

5 points per 1,000 all time average crowd

3 points per 1,000 last season

History:

Founder Member +20 pts

Years in League +0.5 per year

Years in Top Flight +2 per year (+1 extra if in last 20 years)

Honors (won in last 20 years/21-50/Earlier)

League 80/40/20

FA Cup 40/20/10

League Cup 28/14/7

European Cup/CL 100/50/25

CWC/EL/EUFA/Fairs Cup 40/20/10

 

 

 

 

29 minutes ago, ZiggyStardust said:

Using Zig's patented scoring system :

 

Bolton 417 Gonch points

BBurn 511

Ipswich 319

Wigan 162.5

Morecambe 40

QPR 208

Rog's lot 2205

 

Scoring:

Crowd :

5 points per 1,000 all time average crowd

3 points per 1,000 last season

History:

Founder Member +20 pts

Years in League +0.5 per year

Years in Top Flight +2 per year (+1 extra if in last 20 years)

Honors (won in last 20 years/21-50/Earlier)

League 80/40/20

FA Cup 40/20/10

League Cup 28/14/7

European Cup/CL 100/50/25

CWC/EL/EUFA/Fairs Cup 40/20/10

 

 

 

 

You forgot 

Being from Bolton, 1000 points.

8 hours ago, Zico said:

19th

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_football_clubs_in_England_by_competitive_honours_won

the "Wanderers" are in 23rd who haven't existed since 1887

shout out for Old Etonians in 29th

and they are above Birmingham, who some here think are bigger than us

that's also another table along with all time league and PL where we are in the top 20

we're one of the biggest top flight teams not in the top flight

The (Leytonstone) Wanderers have won the FA Cup 5 times to our 4 - but we've won one Charity Shield so we also have 5 honours, How come a FACS (one off match) is considered better than winning the FA Cup?

Surely Leytonstone are more massive than us

13 hours ago, Zico said:

They've won six in total 

The same as Sunderland

One less than Villa and Everton *

*3 less than Everton.....😁

2 hours ago, Mounts Kipper said:

If we are talking about the ability to pull big crowds, Newcastle bigger than Everton, Leeds and West Ham similar to Everton. 

Its a funny one the crowds, Newcastle get more becasue they have a bigger stadium, thats it.

Before if was increased they had crowds less than Everton, and once the ground move happens, they will move above Newcastle in the Historic attendance table.

Leeds & West ham are way down that table.

2 minutes ago, Pablo said:

Its a funny one the crowds, Newcastle get more becasue they have a bigger stadium, thats it.

Before if was increased they had crowds less than Everton, and once the ground move happens, they will move above Newcastle in the Historic attendance table.

Leeds & West ham are way down that table.

aye and all of a sudden West Ham are the second most supported team in the county, in terms of attendances

1 minute ago, Zico said:

aye and all of a sudden West Ham are the second most supported team in the county, in terms of attendances

Yes exactly, crowds are hard to really judge, as it depends on size of the grounds over the years.

Every clubs has had ups n downs, but the historic average attendance table is probably the most realistic measure.

Some clubs attendances have been bizarre...Arsenal for a period getting 20's averages....one of the biggest clubs in the world.

 

We're bigger than most London clubs.

36 minutes ago, Traf said:

We're bigger than most London clubs.

Fulham?

Just now, gonzo said:

Fulham?

Not even a question (even though they’ve reached a European final).

Their gates and reputation would drop like a stone with anything close to a sustained period in the Championship. 

4 hours ago, Pablo said:

Yes exactly, crowds are hard to really judge, as it depends on size of the grounds over the years.

Every clubs has had ups n downs, but the historic average attendance table is probably the most realistic measure.

Some clubs attendances have been bizarre...Arsenal for a period getting 20's averages....one of the biggest clubs in the world.

 

This is why I really don't buy into the whole "we get more supporters so we're bigger"  if the club is selling most of their stadium pretty well then fair fucks, but they're limited by capacity at the end of the day.

Nottingham Forest are a fair bit bigger than West Ham, yet they average just 29,000 compared to West Ham's 62,000.

Pompey average 18,000, whilst Brighton average 31,000. Pompey are infinitely bigger than Brighton.

Just the same with us. Brighton, Southampton, Fulham, Palace, Bristol City, Middlesbrough all average more than us this season, yet we've won more major trophies than all of them put together.

Crowd sizes are a factor of course, but only 1 of several. 

Edited March 21, 20242 yr by Lostock Whites

Wouldn’t say Forest are anywhere near as big as West Ham, personally. Their support is fairly localised whereas West Ham seem to have a free run on a huge portion of the country.  

I think West Ham are a big club. Not just because they won the World Cup singlehandedly either.

1 hour ago, gonzo said:

Fulham?

Miles bigger, they're a fucking nonentity of a club.
Neutral areas? Get to fuck.

11 minutes ago, Leyther_Matt said:

Wouldn’t say Forest are anywhere near as big as West Ham, personally. Their support is fairly localised whereas West Ham seem to have a free run on a huge portion of the country.  

West Ham's support has changed markedly, a few years back, they were largely from rough, east end areas of London but now they seem to mostly be Essex gobshites..........& that wanky crossed arms thing they do now, the old school lot didn't do that.

59 minutes ago, bolton va va said:

West Ham's support has changed markedly, a few years back, they were largely from rough, east end areas of London but now they seem to mostly be Essex gobshites..........& that wanky crossed arms thing they do now, the old school lot didn't do that.

that's because they all moved out the east end into essex and all the ethnic minorities moved into the east end to replace them

got to say though, I think Forest are argubaly bigger than West Ham - certainly in honours - top flight presence is about the same, whislt West Ham do them on crowds, but only since they moved to the new ground