Completing the 92

A while ago, I saw an Instagram post of a football fan who had made it his mission to visit all the stadiums in the English football leagues - that is, the 92 clubs playing in the professional English leagues. And that made me curious - how close was I to the 92 myself?

Now, it should be noted that arguably the purest way to complete this challenge would be to visit all the stadiums as a matchgoer. Some people mentioned this in the original post. But this is incredibly difficult since most clubs don't manage to play every league club within a short enough window for a fan to realistically be able to attend all possible away games. And considering I started going to Millwall matches nearly a decade ago, and they've not changed leagues once, yeah even if I was an ardent matchgoer - I'm not - it would be impossible for me to get anywhere near.

Yeah I've been to a few of these

Yet you've seen me visit loads of stadiums on this blog before. And I've also been to away games without blogging about them. So in a way, I'm probably not that far off. Let's see...

Yeah, it's not great. Here's the full list:

• Emirates Stadium (Arsenal)
• Stamford Bridge (Chelsea)
• Selhurst Park (Crystal Palace)
• Craven Cottage (Fulham)
• Elland Road (Leeds United) 
• Ashton Gate (Bristol City)
• The Den (Millwall)
• Carrow Road (Norwich City) 
• Vicarage Road (Watford)
• Plough Lane (AFC Wimbledon)
• Cardiff City Stadium
• Hayes Lane (Bromley)
• Broadfield Stadium (Crawley Town)

I'd also like to add I've been to a match at Wembley before - League One playoff final, I know - which I think deserves to be mentioned. 

You may remember me blogging about some of these before. On the whole, I don't think 13/92 is that bad...albeit I'm pretty certain I could do a lot better. I've only been to 8 of them for matches, too. 

I will admit one stadium will be added to this list soon, I'll leave you guessing because I'll also get another "Distant Day Out" post written and I know you love reading about boring towns on the outskirts of England. You could even turn it into a little game! (^-^)

To complete the 92, I'd like to imagine you need both a lot of money and free time to even get close. You'd also need to have the urge to go to Mansfield as well. And I'm not sure many do. And if you're just a regular fan, I also doubt it's that easy to achieve, unless your club is doing particularly poorly.

And yes, I have checked how many stadiums I could have visited from the 92 if I was a Portsmouth fan from 2009 to 2014 - for those who don't know, this is when Portsmouth FC had financial difficulties and fell down the leagues rapidly, going from the top to the bottom. I believe it's about 84, by the way.