Why do people still insist Chelsea is not a big club?

daisy lowe

How big is London compared to Newcastle though? clown. Had a bigger attendance than you when we were in the championship **** fans.

Is it really any different from people living in London not supporting their closest football club? You should see the number of Arsenal shirts in Peckham. I thought I was in Islington once. I mean, if someone supported Chelsea but grew up in Tottenham people would wonder why that person chose Chelsea ahead of Spurs.

What you say is true but remember that in London people move around in the city all the time. Many in South London will be from North London, many in West London will be from East London. Or at least their parentage etc etc.

It's extremely common. Even when Chelsea were terrible there were absolutely tons of Chelsea fans in Croydon where I grew up. Tons of Arsenal and Spurs too.

But it really is just two or three months since I have seen City shirts down here.

It's not the same

How big is London compared to Newcastle though? clown. Had a bigger attendance than you when we were in the championship **** fans.

To be fair, United (my team) fill an 85k stadium with millions of Asian fans, and it's actually a majority of tourists who fill it

Prices are too high for locals to go to every game and pay separately, and the amount of season tickets on offer is pretty slim, thousands are left on a waitlist.

True, but:

Newcastle's population is 1.1m with 1 club.
London's population is 7.8m with 14 clubs.

This means that Newcastle have twice as many people per club than London.

Don't Derby get more attendances each match than Nottingham Forest? I do believe attendances should count but it would be a bit unfair not to have a look at every club's attendances. And this doesn't include other demographics such as other sports teams and population density close to the stadiums even if it is a minimal change, it should still be looked at too.

879,996 (Tyneside) - Is population of Newcastle. If you are going to post 1.1m (tyne and wearside region),

Just so you know, theres no season ticket waiting list. Its the price/glazers that stop manchester reds going, not the fact they cant get a ticket

Well, he stated 8m or so so I assumed he would think Tyne and Wear region as being Newcastle. The London equivalent to Tyneside would probably be the County of London. Gateshead FC are not a professional club so I did not include them.

Wrong - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateshead_F.C.

It's a fanbase and brand name issue. It takes 10-15 years of continued success and a smart, aggressive business strategy internationally. Clubs such as United, Liverpool, FC Bayern, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Ajax, Milan AC and Internazionale all have much wider global name recognition and support than the modern upcoming clubs like Chelsea. They finished 6th in the league this year despite winning the Champions League.

I think they will get there eventually, but these things take time. If they're still in and around the mix at the top domestically (which they havent been this season) for the next decade or so then we'll start to see them accepted as one of those european superpowers like the clubs mentioned above.

I agree that Chelsea is far from reaching the echelons of clubs such as those. However, I think that Chelsea can at the very least be considered "big".

Yeah, I think Chelsea are a big team but not up amongst the world's most recognised clubs. They're certainly one of the biggest teams in England now and pretty well established as a big club in Europe, but it'll take a while to build that reputation up internationally.

Winning the Champions League goes some way to cementing Chelsea's place as a big European team. I don't think its entirely fair to shoehorn the club into the sugardaddy money club like City either tbh. Some people conveniently tend to ignore the fact that they were playing in Europe semi-regularly and getting respectable positions in the league before Abramovich took over.

879,996 (Tyneside) - Is population of Newcastle. If you are going to post 1.1m (tyne and wearside region), then there's two clubs atleast - Newcastle and Sunderland. Also the likes of Gateshead, etc.

The London clubs have a much bigger catchment area than just London.

This is just London - 'The Greater London Urban Area is the second-largest in the EU with a population of 8,278,251,[25] while London's metropolitan area is the largest in the EU with an estimated total population of between 12 million[26] and 14 million.' You have considerably downplayed the figures.

Add to the fact, not all fans are evenly distributed. Considering Chelsea are one of the few London clubs in the premier league, they will attract more fans than say Barnet. The ones who support the likes of Barnet FC, usually support a team in the premier league as well, so there's an overlap.

As a result, your argument doesn't hold much weight and you have significantly manipulated the figures.

No, I don't speak street.

However, United's last two CL's were won by luck. A win is a win, I don't really care.

If Old Trafford was still like it was in the 90s atmosphere wise a lot of those local fans who've stopped going to home games would have no issue with paying £37 every two weeks. I know some lads legitimately can't afford it but in a lot of cases it's the fact that it's not worth it anymore that puts them off.

The pricing structure is the Glazer's fault but I can't blame them for the decline in atmosphere really. That's come about because of the marketing to foreign fans trying to get them involved in the whole "Man U Experience" garbage that Edwards and his band of idiots started peddling across Asia around 1994.

But anyway, that rant is totally off-topic!

Every big club, including Utd, Arsenal and Liverpool have had money injections to make them big, it's just that CFC had theirs more recently