I read a piece this week on one of our sister sites taking a not too serious look at the bigger club debate in the Championship.
Historically in football, the second tier in the campaign of 2018/19 is full of names and at least in my mind growing up, Leeds United would easily be joined in the ‘name’ category by Sheffield United, Sheffield Wednesday, West Bromwich Albion, Derby County, Nottingham Forest and Aston Villa.
Each fan will have their own thoughts on whether the above clubs deserve their inclusion, and certainly in what order they may come. Whether that be the historical success in domestic competitions, crowd size, European adventures – whatever and some may feel that list is inaccurate and others would be more worthy of inclusion.
For the purposes of this piece, I’ll focus on Aston Villa, namely because the article I read was on the network’s Vital Villa site.
It led from a Birmingham Mail report looking at average attendance figures for the season of 2018/19.
Villa pipped us to top spot with an average 35,051 following the opening 38 games. Leeds were second with 33,676 but both clubs were the only sides in the division to break the 30k mark.
Biggest single attendance was similar, with the Midland’s side top with 41,411 and Leeds second with 37,004. In this table though, Sheffield Wednesday, Derby County, Middlesbrough and Sheffield United completed the top six.
As the original article says, it meant nothing in reality.
To make a real judgement on that score all things would have to be equal and they aren’t. Villa Park has a higher capacity for a start so that skews an average attendance and certainly biggest single attendance.
But given he had fun with the headline and leant on the average difference to propose that there were 1,375 reasons as to why they were bigger, I’ll return the favour with a couple of my own that despite smaller in size, count for far more in the grand scheme of things.
21 – their points gap to top spot.
16 – the difference in points tally between both sides in the Championship table.
5 – our points gap to top spot.
4 – how many places they are away from the automatic positions.
3 – the difference between our respective places in the table.
3 – the points we’ve already taken off them this season.
2 – two Dean Smith’s aren’t worth one Marcelo Bielsa.
1 – how many places we are away from the automatic positions.
Size doesn’t matter, it’s what you do with it that counts, after all. Although granted, shame the timing wasn’t better and I could’ve done this when we were top and they were down in mid-table, it would’ve been more satisfying!