There will be just one city represented in the Premier League next season - Manchester. Apologies for the joke.
Currently, the biggest city in the Premier League is London, and there's no competition - it's five times larger than Birmingham, who scrape in thanks to Aston Villa. Many seasons ago, however, Birmingham went unrepresented, and the First Division often had many unexpected places (to us) participate. Where's Darwen? Really, Grimsby were there? Et cetera.
The smallest place to ever be represented in the First Division is Glossop, with a population of just 30,000. Glossop North End's stadium has a capacity of just 1,000, and they only got to the First Division due to wealthy owners, who themselves later took over Arsenal. They finished last in their only season in the league, back in 1899-00, and they now play in the North West Counties League Premier Division, finishing 16th this season.
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| The great Glossop side of 1899-00 |
The biggest city that won't be represented in the Premier League next season is Bristol, not that it hasn't been before. Bristol City had a largely uneventful spell in the late 1970s, and their crash down to the Fourth Division is more remembered. Sheffield, Leeds, Coventry and Bradford are similar, along with countless other areas. In fact, there are only twelve regional districts represented in the Premier League next season, largely due to London having seven teams. Twenty years ago, there were eleven, though that comes down to how you'd define where West Bromwich is. In part, this is due to the South becoming far more dominant in football over time. In 1888-89, the most southern club was in Birmingham; now, about half the clubs are south of that.
It's often said that Plymouth is the most populous city to have never been in the top flight, and Plymouth Argyle certainly have never been that high up. Similarly, Rotherham, similar in population to Plymouth, has never reached the top flight. Scrolling through the list of top flight clubs that have played, these are the most populated districts to have never been represented in the First Division, if we got a Premier League out of them - and any respective teams:
- Birkenhead
- Newport
- Southend
- Plymouth
- Farnborough
- Milton Keynes
- Gillingham
- Crawley
- Peterborough
- Slough
- Cambridge
- Mansfield
- Warrington
- Gloucester
- Telford
- Doncaster
- York
- Basildon
- Colchester
- High Wycombe
Of those districts, Warrington and Basildon all have clubs playing lower than Step 6 of the football pyramid; to keep this league semi-competitive, I'll replace them with the next lowest two districts which have higher league clubs:
One very obvious thing to notice is that this hypothetical league is very skewed towards the south. Sure, there are some northern places here and there, but I can spot far more southern seaside resorts than I'd otherwise expect. Eleven of these districts currently have a team in the Football League, the rest make up the beginnings of non-league.
A tidy explanation as to why large towns don't make an impact in football
Personally, I found inclusion of Warrington to be curious...but that one's very easy to explain: Castleford, Leigh, St Helens and Warrington are all towns that have teams in the RFL Super League, but are nowhere near as big in football. Some weren't included in the previous classification due to me using districts. In fact, barring the London Broncos down in Wimbledon, and the strange inclusion of Catalans in southern France (who are closer to Algeria than they are to Leeds), rugby league is a very northern sport. It's similar with Wakefield, a town with no football presence but who are quite good at rugby league as well. Rugby union is more spread out, and in Premiership Rugby, you'll find Bath, Exeter and Gloucester who are nowhere near the Premier League. So perhaps this divide is just because football is far more popular in the south.
As for the biggest club never to play in the Premier League right now? If you're a pedant, that's Preston North End, who haven't been in the top flight since 1992. But yes, Plymouth Argyle had the highest finish out of all the non-premier league clubs last season.
The Premier League, though, continues to be as unexciting as lower league football. Obviously Liverpool won the title, obviously the clubs we all thought would go down went down. And oh look, some even came back straight away! So I wouldn't tell Southend United fans to get all eager at the faint prospect of Premier League football.
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