London football clubs hierachy

[Mistadobalina]

Brentford are probably the best run club in English football. Watching them last week against Swansea was quite painful, they played incredible football and are seemingly able to pick up gems at will. Their owner is absolutely exceptional and if they go up, suspect they'll stick for a while. Having grown up with them being effectively a west London equivalent to us, except even more of a basket case, it's sad. But then you think about all those teams who we used to play on a regular basis in League 2 (Bournemouth, Swansea, Cardiff, Brentford, Wigan, Brighton, even Hull) who've completely left us behind, and it's hard not to lament the long Hearn era's absolute lack of vision or ambition. Bechetti is an obvious villain but had Hearn stayed, still don't think we'd have gone anywhere meaningful.

[RientO]

... it's hard not to lament the long Hearn era's absolute lack of vision or ambition. Bechetti is an obvious villain but had Hearn stayed, still don't think we'd have gone anywhere meaningful.

Since Orient dropped out of Division 2 in back in 1982, it has been a long drawn out decline punctuated by a couple of promotions back to the third level via play offs which ended up with a couple of seasons outside the league. Hearn’s plan in the end was to get a free ground in the Olympic Park, and develop more flats but once that wasn’t happening he sold up. I suspect that he was doing that even if Orient had got promoted. I think Hearn only ever saw himself a a caretaker owner until someone came along who really wanted to run a football club.

[RientO]

A fair amount of recency bias in some of these assessments. OK, it's reasonable to weight current status more highly than eg where clubs were in the 1950s, but club "size" must take account of long-term historical status, which includes not just trophies won, cup runs, and divisions played in, but average attendances.

For these reasons, I think Brentford are getting a bit too high in these tables, just because they've had a good last few years. Historically, they're no more successful than we are - and by many measures, somewhat less so. The last six seasons have seen us go on massively divergent paths, but that is only six seasons.

Agree. Historically, Brentford are not as successful as Orient, but right now they are on the verge of achieving top flight which hasn’t happened in my lifetime for Orient.

Outside the top 4, Charlton would probably be 5th in all time list. Used to pull in 30-40,000 in the 1940s were League Runners Up and won the Cup. QPR are comparable with their league cup in 1967 and League runners up in 1976.

Palace seem a bit highly ranked to me. Never been in top half of the top league, won nothing and only a couple of cup finals. Fulham have a better record than that.

So for me, my all time ranking (ignoring the old Wimbledon)

Arsenal
Chelsea
Tottenham
West Ham
Charlton
QPR
Fulham
Crystal Palace
Millwall
Brentford
Orient
AFC Wimbledon

[OyinbO]

A fair amount of recency bias in some of these assessments. OK, it's reasonable to weight current status more highly than eg where clubs were in the 1950s, but club "size" must take account of long-term historical status, which includes not just trophies won, cup runs, and divisions played in, but average attendances.

For these reasons, I think Brentford are getting a bit too high in these tables, just because they've had a good last few years. Historically, they're no more successful than we are - and by many measures, somewhat less so. The last six seasons have seen us go on massively divergent paths, but that is only six seasons.

Agree. Historically, Brentford are not as successful as Orient, but right now they are on the verge of achieving top flight which hasn’t happened in my lifetime for Orient.

Outside the top 4, Charlton would probably be 5th in all time list. Used to pull in 30-40,000 in the 1940s were League Runners Up and won the Cup. QPR are comparable with their league cup in 1967 and League runners up in 1976.

Palace seem a bit highly ranked to me. Never been in top half of the top league, won nothing and only a couple of cup finals. Fulham have a better record than that.

I think I agree with all that - though the pedant in me couldn't resist pointing out that Palace finished third in 1991. But I think their longest ever spell in the top flight is right now, which may explain why some are placing them a bit higher in the rankings than they should.

[OyinbO]

Interesting point here that - if Brentford do go up - Orient will be the London league club that been outside the top flight for the longest. And I fear that is much more likely to change if Dagenham or Barnet come up than by us getting into the Premier League.

[RientO]

I think I agree with all that - though the pedant in me couldn't resist pointing out that Palace finished third in 1991. But I think their longest ever spell in the top flight is right now, which may explain why some are placing them a bit higher in the rankings than they should.

Crikey, I never realised that! Actually that is pretty impressive given it wasn’t even the Venables/Allison the team of the eighties...

Palace have big support in and around Croydon, but their status as a big London club is somewhat diminished by having Brighton as their main rivals!

[RientO]

Interesting point here that - if Brentford do go up - Orient will be the London league club that been outside the top flight for the longest. And I fear that is much more likely to change if Dagenham or Barnet come up than by us getting into the Premier League.

I don’t think Orient will be in the top division in my lifetime. Missed it by about 9 months...

...though I guess they probably have another 30 years for me to see it. Fingers crossed.