“As someone who occasionally has to search for stadiums to find directions and the like, I always enjoy that people take the time to rate their experience of visiting a football ground,” begins our very own Will Unwin. “Hull City, for example, have 4.3 stars from 3,655 reviews. I therefore ponder … which ground has the highest and lowest Google rating?”
Pete Tomlin comes up clutch with this answer and one of the most impressive tables in Knowledge history. “I have literally searched every home football ground in the Football League via Google and I have recorded the rating and number of votes for every one,” he starts. “The range is not particularly large – the highest recorded rating is 4.7 and the lowest is 4.0. Therefore, where the scores are tied, I have used the higher number of votes as the decider with the largest number of votes being the winner. Not surprisingly, the bigger and more successful clubs tend to have the higher ratings. The nine highest-rated grounds are all Premier League clubs.
“The highest overall is Anfield (Liverpool) with a rating of 4.7 from 54,546 votes. Only two other clubs have achieved a 4.7 rating: Tottenham Hotspur (26,545 votes) and Nottingham Forest’s City Ground (2,245 votes). Just behind with a 4.6 rating are Old Trafford/Manchester United (54,535 votes), Emirates Stadium/Arsenal (34,778 votes), City of Manchester Stadium/Manchester City (32,246 votes), Stamford Bridge/Chelsea (25,434 votes), St James’ Park/Newcastle United (12,116 votes) and Elland Road/Leeds United (10,066 votes).
“The highest ranked ground from the Championship is Wolverhampton Wanderers’ Molineux in 11th position with a rating of 4.6 from 7,408 votes. However, League One fares better with Leicester City/King Power Stadium in 10th position (4.6 from 7,573 votes). League Two’s highest rated ground is Exeter City’s St James’ Park – ranked 31st with a score of 4.5 from 246 votes.
The lowest ranked Premier League ground is Hull City’s MKM Stadium (4.3 from 3,676 votes) and the lowest Championship ground is QPR (Loftus Road), down in 85th position with a rating of 4.1 from 3,458 votes. Only two grounds in the Football League have been rated at 4.0: Oxford United’s Kassam Stadium (2,506 votes) and the ground in 92nd position (my club!), Stevenage’s SPORTA Arena (350 votes).
Here is the complete English list, colour-coded by division:
Firing blanks
“There still hasn’t been a 0-0 draw in Serie A this season, after four five rounds of matches,” writes Stephen Hogg. “Is this getting near a record yet?”
Chris Roe, as he so often kindly does, chimes in, writing: “I only have just over 30 years’ worth of Italian league data so, within that small sample, this is equal to the longest wait for a goalless draw (between Napoli and Carpi), which came in the fifth round of matches in Serie A in the 2015-16 season.
“In the Premier League, we had to wait until the fifth round of matches on 17 September 2023 for a goalless draw (Bournemouth and Chelsea). But, you’d not be surprised to find the 21 divisions in which a longer wait was needed for a goalless draw all happened a long time ago.
“The longest top-flight wait came in just the second ever season in 1889-90 when the first goalless draw came in the 17th round of matches. This was only beaten by the 1894-95 season in tier two, where the first (of only two goalless draws in the season) came on 23 March 1895 between Arsenal and Crewe Alexandra, which was the 25th match of the season for Crewe (and the 26th for Arsenal).
“Equalling this is a much more recent example from the Scottish third tier in 2013-14, which also had its first goalless draw in the 25th round of matches (between Airdrie United and East Fife on 22 February 2014).”
Fans wearing replica kits (part II)
Last week we led with the question: “When did fans first start wearing replica kits?” and came up with the answer of Leeds United in 1973, with the caveat that there were earlier examples of other clubs, players, managers, outlets that sold or endorsed unofficial merchandise (or at least strips that weren’t an official replica of kits issued to the players). But you have been back in touch – with dozens of responses so apologies if your email didn’t make it – with some pre-1973 examples.
“I had an Umbro Brazil strip in 1970 – I was eight – and a Celtic one before that,” add Janette and Brian Kidd. “Even earlier – five or six years old – my brother and I were given football socks to wear when we played football. Strips didn’t seem to exist then. They weren’t sold by clubs. But they did have badges and sometimes numbers of the great players. Nor were they worn anywhere but on a football pitch!”
The official Brazil kit was not sold commercially during the 1970 World Cup, so it is likely the Umbro garment differed slightly from the one issued to players. As an interesting aside, the Brazil 1970 team wore two different shirts, made by two different companies during that tournament. Torn between staying loyal to a domestic supplier and keeping up with the latest technology and trend, Brazil used shirts made by Athleta – a Brazilian company – and a almost-identical Umbro kit. The only noticeable difference between them was the manufacturers’ tag in the collar and a slight variation in the shape of the numbering. Throughout the tournament, Pelé, Jairzinho and co would wear the Athleta shirt in the first half, then swap to Umbro in the second half – that is except during the final, where they wore the Umbro shirt from the start, all the way to the final whistle.
“While I can’t nail down the exact year, it was around 1970 when I had a full (kid’s) Nottingham Forest replica kit for Christmas. This predates Leeds in 1973,” declares Andy Wainwright.
“Please find pictures of my Umbro Manchester United child football kit, circa 1967, complete with grass stains,” parades Simon Crompton. “It may not have had any official branding but when I wore it I was, of course, George Best. I passed it to my daughter explaining its significance, but hastily reclaimed it when she outgrew it.”
“It wasn’t at a match but Alan Hull famously appeared on the Old Grey Whistle Test in 1971 wearing a Newcastle shirt,” notes John Morrow (and others).
“I bought a replica Chelsea 1965 shirt from Frank Blunstone’s sports shop in Lavender Hill, Battersea, that same year. He was, of course, a former Chelsea player [and aged 91, the current longest-surviving England senior international].”
“I had my first Liverpool kit in 1969,” writes Keith Foster. “John Bennett’s on the Old Kent Road had all the top teams’ kits, home and away. All probably unofficial. But kids have always wanted these. All my friends at school had replica kits of their favourite teams, but no one wore them to games. Firstly, it’s usually too cold to watch a game in just a shirt, and in the hooligan days, you’d be putting a target on your back. I used to go to Liverpool games in London with just an easily foldable silk scarf in my pocket. Better to be incognito!”
“In the 1969 film Kes, Brian Glover is wearing his ‘Bobby Charlton kit’ and one of the kids has a Burnley shirt on,” notices Roger Kirkby. “Being a kid myself back then I can remember several eight or nine-year-olds wearing the West Ham away shirt when playing football. They were definitely about it the mid-60s.”
“In 1959 as a 14-year-old in Wilmslow, my summer holiday job was packing Manchester United kit into boxes as potential Christmas presents for children,” adds Frank Close. “Until today, I hadn’t realised I was part of history.”
“I’m reminded of an anecdote recounted by Michael Parkinson (I think in his book, Football Daft), in which he tells of a Barnsley FC supporter in the 1950s who faithfully turned up to matches with a full kit of the time under his outdoor clothes,” writes David Crowe. “He dreamed of the day when Barnsley would be a man short and would appeal to the crowd to find someone to step in. Sadly for him – but probably not for Barnsley – his day never came.”
Knowledge archive
“Which English top-flight champions had the smallest ground at the time when they won the league?” pondered Roland Tye in 2014. “Might be worth dividing into pre- and post-war, dunno. I’m guessing Blackburn in the modern era.”
You guessed quite correctly for the Premier League era, Roland, as Ewood Park was in more or less the same state as in 1995, and with a capacity of just over 31,000. Highbury was next on the list, which could fit 38,419 in when Arsenal last won the league in 2004 [2026 update: Leicester had a capacity of 32,259 when they won the league in 2016]. Before that is trickier, obviously because of the changing nature of every ground and their capacities, and it’s probably best to stick to postwar, if only because it serves as a useful (if a little arbitrary) cut-off point for when records were reliable, each team had a settled home, etc. The best guess we could give you was Portman Road, home of the 1961-62 champions Ipswich, which was the smallest ground to call a postwar league title winner home, with a capacity of around 29,000.
Can you help?
“Andy Burnham and Mark Carney were in attendance at the recent Everton v Wolves Carabao Cup match,” mails Greg Hunt. “Have two national leaders attended a club match in the UK before, apart from European finals?”
“Antoine Semenyo (wearing No 42 for Manchester City) scored his second goal against Sunderland to make the score 4–2,” notes David Gregory. “While No 11s must make it 1–1 fairly regularly, what is the highest scoreline ever created by a player whose squad number matched the resulting score?”
“Manchester United and Spurs are not in Europe, and both knocked out of the League Cup,” begins Matt Walker. “They are also well off the pace in the Premier League (which neither were likely to win anyway). This means the only realistic chance for either to win a trophy this season is the FA Cup. What is the earliest point in a season a team in the top flight has been confirmed as having a trophy-less season?”
“In the Oxford United v Cambridge United League One fixture last Saturday, the goalkeepers in both starting lineups were called ‘Eastwood’,” notes Mat Hope. “Are there any other occurrences of keepers with the same surname starting opposing each other?”
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