‘Everyone thinks they have the prettiest wife at home.’
‘This city has two great teams – Liverpool and Liverpool reserves.’
‘My dad’s bigger than your dad.’
Every diehard fan thinks their football club is the biggest. The best, the most historic, the prettiest, and that, in turn, no one else’s team is up to much. They’ve no history, no trophies, no fans, no money or too much money, and it’s all dodgy anyway.
And so go a million pub-table debates and home-and-away-end back and forths. There’s nothing more nourishing for a football fan than knowing (deep down) that their club is bigger than someone else’s, particularly a rival. It makes the lower moments of following your team – all the cold nights, long drives, own goals and rubbish pies – worth it.
But beyond the bluster, what’s the truth? Who really is the biggest club in England, and who, at the very least, can claim bragging rights over that mob down the road?
Putting emotion to one side, Daily Mail Sport has gone scientific, burying our heads in the data to come up with a definitive ranking of the 92 teams in the top four divisions of English football. Seventeen different categories were used, from trophies won to social media followers.
Of course, this will settle everything once and for all, and the results will be accepted as gospel by all concerned. You can put the pub table down.
But of course, you can’t – because your dad’s bigger than my dad.
Manchester United and Liverpool have long been seen as the Big Two of English football – but who comes out on top?
We can finally settle old rivalries – such as between the Sheffield clubs, United and Wednesday
Nottingham Forest are the only club in the world to have won more European Cups than domestic league titles – but how far can that carry them up our rankings?
How we did it
Before the shouting about how wrong the results are can begin, let’s explain how we created this particular monster.
We chose a huge spread of data that should encompass everything about a club. Finances, fans, league titles, England players, Instagram followers and plenty more.
Some variables weren’t available. It would be nice to include, for example, every team’s average attendances all the way back to the very first Football League season of 1888-89 to provide the full picture of how big they have been.
But that level of data is not available for all 92 clubs – 42 of them didn’t exist in 1888, for a start – so we have gone with the last 10 seasons (not including the Covid one where no one was allowed to have more than a couple of thousand in the stands).
That will naturally skew the results of that category towards teams with more success and bigger stadiums in recent years, but a concerted effort has been made elsewhere to ensure a balance between past and present. Such as looking at how historic (old) a club is, or how many seasons they’ve spent in the top flight.
The 17 categories we chose are: League titles won, all-time average league position (1st in the Championship counts as 21st, 1st in League One as 45th and so on), total top-flight points, total top-flight seasons, average attendance in the last 10 seasons, European Cups won (including Champions League), UEFA Cups won (including Europa League), FA Cups won, Cup Winners’ Cups won, League Cups won, annual revenue, squad value, social media followers (on Facebook, X and Instagram), date founded, England caps won by players while playing for the club, England players capped while at the club and Club World Cups won.
Teams like Bradford City in League One don’t play for the biggest prizes every year – but their attendances would make plenty of Premier League clubs blush
Everton can call on the most top-flight seasons, the third-most top-flight points and the fifth-most league titles
Aston Villa’s Double winners of 1896-97 – efforts have been made to ensure the totality of a club’s history has been accounted for
The maths
Don’t worry, this won’t take long.
We ranked all 92 clubs in all 17 categories, and assigned them a value out of 92 for each category, based on how close to the highest score in it they were.
A quick example: Arsenal have won 13 league titles, and the highest is 20 (Liverpool and Manchester United). Thirteen is 65 per cent of 20, so Arsenal get 59.8pts (65 per cent of 92), while Liverpool and Manchester United score 92.
Then we ranked each category from most to least important. The order is as you read them above, and you may quibble if you wish.
Is producing England players a better signifier of ‘big-ness’ than how many social media followers you have? You can make the argument.
Isn’t the Club World Cup quite a big trophy and deserving of more than last place? Well, English clubs have rarely treated it that way – though expect that to change now there’s £100million for the winner. We can always do this again in 10 years’ time.
As referenced, we have tried to ensure that neither modern-day nor historic success is given outsized importance. Trophies were prioritised, as that’s generally the whole point, but we tried not to penalise huge clubs that aren’t in a position to win a big pot right now (eg. Leeds United, Nottingham Forest, Sheffield United, Bradford City), so attendances were given a high billing.
Once the categories were ranked, we multiplied the scores each team had by the importance of each category – so your score for league titles is multiplied by 17, average league position by 16 and so on – until we had a total score that we believe offers the definitive ranking of how big each of the 92 football clubs in England really are.
Cardiff City en route to beating Arsenal in the 1927 FA Cup final – their lone trophy, but enough for joint-21st in the most FA Cup wins. Arsenal’s 14 wins sealed top spot in that category
Tottenham Hotspur’s 1961 Double-winning side account for one of their two league titles, but their modern-day prominence sees them right towards the top of the rankings
Might Chelsea’s Club World Cup win this summer be being underplayed? Perhaps, but the tournament is still a minor one in the eyes of most fans
(A few points of order: Annual revenues are for the most recent public accounts, from the 2023-24 season. Where unavailable for the handful of clubs who do not publish accounts, estimates have had to be drawn from league norms, recent trends and comparable rivals. We are extremely grateful to the invaluable research and information provided by the Transfermarkt, FootballRates, EnglandStats, Companies House and Swiss Ramble websites, which supplemented our own data gathering. The data is accurate up to December 25, 2025).
Right then, time for the results. You can use the tool below to flick through the overall ranking, or click on a club to see where they rank in each of the 17 categories. You can also search for a particular club, and rank (using the Sort by: function) all 92 teams in any category you wish. Happy grazing – and let us know what you think in the comments.
Findings
It wasn’t particularly close in the end, then. Reigning champions Liverpool, with their records held in league titles, league position, top-flight points, European Cups, UEFA Cups, League Cups and a helping of other high finishes claimed it by a distance from Manchester United.
There were a number of surprises. Winning the league lots of times was obviously key, but not crucial – Tottenham’s well-timed vault into the 21st-century ‘Big Six’ has seen them overtake two 20th-century giants in Everton and Aston Villa, while West Ham, who have never been crowned champions of England, made it into 11th, largely on the coat tails of a big stadium and the associated riches.
As for the rivalries, Newcastle edged out Sunderland, Sheffield belongs to Wednesday, the south coast to Southampton and Arsenal are kings of London. Blackburn and Derby survived their recent struggles to finish in the top 20, while Bolton, Huddersfield and Notts County all punched above their modern-day weight thanks to historic success.
At the other end, the bottom five were all fairly well insulated from the rest, in particular Harrogate Town who took the ignominy of the wooden spoon – though at least if results continue the way they have this season at the bottom of League Two, they won’t be able to win it again next year.
Liverpool are top of the tree again, dominating the rankings and finishing top in six of the 17 categories
It’s the wooden spoon for Harrogate Town, however, who were a distant 92nd of 92
Northampton Town (75th) were the lowest-ranked side to have experienced the top flight, and 1969 League Cup winners Swindon Town (62nd) the lowest to have lifted a major trophy.
An important point to make – especially if you’re a Harrogate fan – is that this is all just today’s scoreboard. Come back in 10, 20 or 100 years time and everything may have turned on its head.
Turn back 100 years to Christmas 1925 and Huddersfield were the team to beat, soon to win a third consecutive league title. Bolton won their second FA Cup in four seasons, Bury finished fourth in the top flight and Watford lost 8-1 at Aberdare Athletic in the fourth tier.
So it’s all still to play for.
