A journalist has ranked all 92 stadiums in the top four divisions of English football after visiting them all in a single season.
Daniel Storey, of the i Paper, set a target to visit every stadium at the beginning of the season, ending his quest with a trip to Nottingham Forest’s City Ground on the final day of the Premier League campaign.
Stadium rankings are always polarising, given that fans of each team will think their ground deserves to be near the very top of the list.
And Storey’s list began with a touch of controversy by ranking West Ham’s London Stadium in 91st, describing that it ‘doesn’t feel like a football stadium’.
Deepdale, the home of Preston North End and believed to be English football’s oldest stadium to still be hosting matches, is in 51st place.
Manchester United‘s Old Trafford gets a fairly high ranking of 32nd, with Storey noting that ‘it is desperately sad that the slow strangulation of Manchester United by the Glazer family through their leveraged buyout and the continued accumulation of debt has led to the facilities at Old Trafford being degraded over time’.
Old Trafford is sandwiched between Sunderland’s Stadium of Light (33rd) and Wrexham’s Racecourse Ground – with Red Dragons owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney described as ‘having built something very special’.
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Six Premier League clubs make the top 10, with Leeds’ Elland Road stadium sitting in 10th place.
The City Ground – Storey is a Forest fan – makes the top three, with the journalist writing that the view from the north of Trent Bridge is ‘unbeatable’.
Three sports grounds – the City Ground, Notts County’s Meadow Lane and Nottinghamshire’s Trent Bridge cricket ground – are around 200 metres away from each.
The distance between the City Ground and Trent Bridge is just 0.2 miles (Image: Google Maps)
In second place was AFC Wimbledon’s Cherry Red Records Stadium – which is built just 200 yards away from Wimbledon’s former Plough Lane ground.
But first place belongs to League Two side Grimsby Town, who play at Blundell Park.
Storey writes: “You can sit and watch a football match and see tankers slowly drifting past your eye line – in what way isn’t that perfect?”
As part of his series, ‘Doing the 92’, Storey wrote a long-read piece on each of the 92 clubs in the top four divisions, alongside his ranking. You can read all of them – via the rankings – from here.
