Photo: Collected
Liverpool’s Anfield is at the very top among England’s football stadiums in Google ratings. The ground has a rating of 4.7 on the basis of 54,546 votes. Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and Nottingham Forest’s City Ground have also received the same rating, but Anfield has taken its place at the top of the list for getting the most votes.
The list has been prepared by collecting the Google ratings of the home ground of every team in the Football League. In it, the highest rating is 4.7 and the lowest 4.0. Where ratings are equal, the stadium with more votes has been placed ahead.
Right after Anfield is Tottenham Hotspur Stadium with a rating of 4.7, where 26,545 votes were cast. Nottingham Forest’s City Ground got a 4.7 rating from 2,245 votes.
In the next row with a rating of 4.6 are Manchester United’s Old Trafford, Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium, Manchester City’s City of Manchester Stadium, Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge, Newcastle United’s St James’ Park and Leeds United’s Elland Road.
In the Championship, Wolverhampton Wanderers’ Molineux received the highest rating: 4.6 from 7,408 votes. Leicester City’s King Power Stadium is top of all in League One (4.6), and Exeter City’s St James Park is top in League Two (4.5).
In the Premier League, Hull City’s MKM Stadium received the lowest rating: 4.3 from 3,676 votes. In the Championship, the rating of Queens Park Rangers’ Loftus Road is 4.1. In the entire Football League only two grounds got a 4.0 rating: Oxford United’s Kassam Stadium and Stevenage’s Sporta Arena.
Some more interesting football statistics have come up in the report. Although five rounds have passed in Serie A this season, no match has yet ended 0-0. Counting the last 30 years, this equals the 2015-16 season, when the first goalless draw came in the fifth round.
However, English football has precedents of an even longer wait for a goalless draw. In the 1889-90 season, the first 0-0 draw in England’s top tier came in the 17th round. In the 1894-95 season, the first goalless match in the second tier came in the 25th match. In Scotland’s third tier too, the first 0-0 draw was seen in the 25th round in the 2013-14 season.
The history of supporters wearing replica shirts has also been highlighted in the report. Although the 1973 Leeds United shirt is regarded as an early official replica kit for supporters, some earlier examples from the 1960s and 1970s have been found in information sent by readers.
There is also information on the English champions who owned the smallest ground at the time of winning the league. In the Premier League era, the capacity of Blackburn Rovers’ Ewood Park in 1995 was a little over 31,000. In 2004, the capacity of Arsenal’s Highbury was 38,419. And at the time of winning the league in 2016, the spectator capacity of Leicester City’s King Power Stadium was 32,259.
Before that, Portman Road of Ipswich Town, champions in the 1961-62 season, has been mentioned as the smallest ground of a league title-winning team in the post-war period. The ground’s capacity was then about 29,000.
