Goal.com

With Liverpool new-boy Daniel Sturridge claiming he has moved to the best team in the English top flight, Goal.com examines the facts to see exactly who are top dogs

By Matt Scott

Daniel Sturridge claimed this week that he had joined the “biggest club” in the Premier League, after sealing a switch from Chelsea to Liverpool.

The winger-cum-striker-cum-greedy-so-and-so’s comments made for thought-provoking reading: Just exactly who is actually the biggest and the best club in all of England?

Where better to start than with the Reds themselves?

Liverpool Football Club, established 1892. One of the English game’s greatest institutions. Oh the history! The memories!

	BACKING IT UP Liverpool facts and figures
145m	Amount of pounds sterling spent on 'exciting' British talent since June 2008
23	Years since Liverpool won the English top flight, also the last time they looked likely to do so
0	Total Premier League goals Stewart Downing managed to contribute towards last season
11	Roughly the amount of minutes the Reds spent the 2005 Champions League final actually playing well

Five, count them FIVE, European Cups – more than any other side from these shores has managed. Dalglish! Keegan! Barnes! Grobbelaar! Paisley! Shankly! Names forever etched into the psyche of a football fan who pays for things with pounds and loves a good queue.

But that’s exactly it isn’t it? Look at how wonderful it was, and then think how comparatively dismal it is now.

Carroll. Adam. Downing. Cole. Comolli. Failures forever used by opposing fans used to humiliate the crippled, withering old wreck of a once mighty force – like a football version of Arnold Schwarzenegger, now he’s gone all flabby and jelly-falling-off-a-plate-like.

Surely they can’t be the biggest club in England, they’re not even the biggest club on Merseyside at the moment!

That honour goes to David Moyes' rag-tag bunch of Belgian thugs and indie bass guitarists at Everton – but the biggest club in the Premier League does NOT play a game with Tony Hibbert in their side, regardless of how committed and useful he may be. It’s just not allowed. So it isn’t the Toffees either.

So with the Merseyside Reds ruled out, was Sturridge wrong to move? Should he have stayed at Chelsea, where the millions have bankrolled almost 10 years of non-stop success?

	BACKING IT UP Chelsea facts and figures
9	Amount of managers to have served under Roman Abramovich in his tenure at the club
1	Youngsters sacked for setting off a smoke bomb, while Ashley Cole remains despite shooting someone
100	Percentage of Chelsea fans who wish to see Frank Lampard's contract at the club extended
0	Number of barn doors Fernando Torres has been able to hit with a banjo while at Chelsea

The Blues are the champions of Europe! Surely that transcends the Premier League rankings, right?

Well… no. Liverpool required a Football Association law change in order to defend their barely-deserved 2005 crown so chuck that argument on the scrapheap, along with your ‘they’ve established themselves in Asia’ (who actually cares?) and ‘they hold the British transfer record’ (they spent it on Fernando Torres).

Frankly, before Roman Abramovich rocked up at the Premier League all-decade creche for bored billionaires, Chelsea were… what’s the word… rubbish.

They had three FA Cups, two League Cups and one half-century old top-flight title to their name, leaving them four, three and six behind Aston Villa – who are really, really, really rubbish.

With no tradition, no roots and no direction – Blues fans have demanded that their Chelsea be returned to them instantly.

And be fair to Abramovich. He hired a manager who isn’t great at winning leagues, but is pretty good at winning cups, job done.

	BACKING IT UP Man City facts and figures
4	Number off colleagues Mario Balotelli has had physical altercations with while at the club
10	Amount of home goals scored in 2006-07, a Premier League record low total
0	Total number of times City have managed to make it past the Champions League group phase
842* *approx	Number of times they attempted to sabotage their own Premier League title bid last season

The Blues clearly haven’t done enough to deserve the honour of the biggest club in England, but Sturridge’s other former employers, Manchester City, might want to throw their hats into the ring.

It would be easy to repeat many of the arguments for Chelsea, when discussing the current Premier League holders, but is there more to City’s story?

It turns out there is. They used to be even more rubbish than Chelsea – City paid Jon Macken to play ‘football’ in the Premier League for goodness sake, it can’t be them.

Hang on, though. The above is all surely moot? We were close with Manchester City, it’s got to be Manchester United, hasn’t it?

More top-flight crowns than anyone else, a bucket-load of FA Cups, three times the champions of Europe, the biggest stadium of any club in the country as many supporters as any club on the planet, the legends of Sir Alex Ferguson, George Best, Bobby Charlton, Eric Cantona, Ryan Giggs and the creation of Cristiano Ronaldo.

The Red Devils are the one true constant through top-flight successes – we have a winner, do we not?

Hang on, hang on. Hold your horses. Back it on up there. Not quite. Because, while United have always been winning stuff, they’ve spent the entire time playing catch-up.

	BACKING IT UP Man Utd facts and figures
360m	The total that United are in debt, recently getting it below £400m for the first time in seven years
1	Number of football clubs set up in protest against the Glazer Family's ownership of the club
38	Age of Paul Scholes, still the Red Devils best midfield player by a country mile
87	Rough percentage of any given Old Trafford crowd that are merely tourists visiting for the weekend

For years those at Old Trafford were chasing and striving to match the achievements and accolades that those at Anfield were racking up, desperately clawing at the imaginary “perch”, wanting to knock those atop it off it.

Even in United’s domination of the Premier League era, Sir Alex has found himself taking two steps forward and one step back.

Blackburn came along, Sir Alex had no answer and eventually bullied them out the way. Arsenal came along, Sir Alex had no answer and eventually bullied them out the way. Chelsea came along, Sir Alex had no answer and bullied them slightly to the side, although they’re still managing to hang around.

Manchester City came along last season, Sir Alex had no answer and has been trying to bully them out the way this term. It may well work, but surely the biggest and best club would have no time for jumped-up little pip-squeaks like these?

United are one of the best, but they’re not the best.

Maybe we’ve lost sight of what it truly means to be the biggest club in England. Maybe it’s not all about how many trophies you’ve won, maybe it’s more cerebral than that.

Maybe, just maybe, it’s Arsenal.

	BACKING IT UP Arsenal facts and figures
7	Number of full years since the Gunners managed to win a trophy - the 2005 FA Cup
15	Consecutive years Arsenal have won a trophy - using Arsene Wenger's 'Top-four spot = trophy' method
8	Number of years, out of eight, Cesc Fabregas spent at Arsenal wishing he'd never left Barcelona
49	English league record number of games without defeat - they used to be good, didn't they?!

The Gunners were at the forefront of the revolution of the Premier League thanks to Arsene Wenger, changing the way footballers behaved and played.

The class of 1998 were a warning, the class of 2002 were a confirmation of greatness, but the class of 2004 – those ‘Invincibles’ were surely the greatest side to have ever graced the division.

The most aesthetically-pleasing stadium in the land, a fierce commitment to financial security and Jack Wilshere – does it get much better than this?

Of course it does. Arsenal fans are generally a miserable lot, and they’ve good reason to be.

Recent transactions with their ‘biggest club in England’ rivals have been soul-destroying for Gooners everywhere.

Departing north London for other top clubs have been Ashley Cole, Kolo Toure, Emmanuel Adebayor, Samir Nasri, Gael Clichy and Robin van Persie – basically the perfect six-a-side team, with everyone taking a turn in nets after every two goals scored, of course.

In return, the Gunners have received the ageing and mistake-prone William Gallas and the even more ancient and completely-useless-after-losing-every-yard-of-pace-in-his-legs Mikael Silvestre.

Also, the biggest club in the Premier League does NOT play a game with Carl Jenkinson in their side, regardless of how committed and useful he may be. It’s just not allowed.

They’re not even the biggest side in north London, but Tottenham signed Gallas from Arsenal, so we’ll just leave that one there.

It turns out that, in actual fact, nobody is the biggest club in England.

Teams will come and go. The petro-dollars of Manchester City and Chelsea ensure they’ll be around for long enough to keep Manchester United honest, while Liverpool can always look back on a time when they really were the undisputed top-dogs and Arsenal can always hope that Financial Fair Play actually happens.

After all, it doesn’t matter who the definitive biggest and best club is – we can always just laugh at Newcastle anyway.

Well have YOU ever seen a Geordie win a cup?

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