I’ve been to all 92 Football League grounds – this is the definitive list from worst to best and where YOUR club ranks, writes OLIVER HOLT

Some grounds are beautiful. Some grounds are not so beautiful. Some grounds take you to the heart of the English game. And some leave you feeling like you’re on the periphery.

But each of them holds the soul of their community and the hopes and dreams of the thousands of people who make the pilgrimage there every weekend. 

I’ve completed the journey of a lifetime and I am ranking all 92 English Football League grounds for Mail Sport. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for as long as I can remember and on April 1, 2025, I did it. I completed the 92. 

I won’t give too much away just yet, but why are grounds like AFC Wimbledon and Barrow in my top 20? What about Anfield, Old Trafford and Stamford Bridge?

Where is the best grub in the Premier League and where did Tyson Fury once threaten to have my jaw broken?

This is my love letter to English football. Read on to find out who comes out on top, where your team ranks and everything else in between – then let me know what you think of my guide to the 92 grounds of England. 

92. The Den, Millwall

Division: Championship Opened: 1993 Capacity: 19,369

I’m banned from The Den at the moment, in a professional capacity anyway. I could still go in a personal capacity but, on balance, I think I’d rather not.

The Daily Mail has been told our reporters are not welcome at the club because we had the temerity to report on the horrendous challenge by Millwall goalkeeper Liam Roberts on Crystal Palace’s Jean-Philippe Mateta during the FA Cup tie at Selhurst Park a few weeks ago.

Let’s be honest about this: there are worse places to be banned from. Being banned from The Den is the football equivalent of being banned from your local abattoir.

You don’t have to be a racist, misogynistic, homophobic bloke with anger issues and a penchant for tragedy-chanting to feel at home at The Den. But it helps.

And, yes, I know Millwall are trying to rebrand themselves a ‘family club’ now and the odd Tarquin and Tabitha stray across the county lines from Blackheath and Clapham to keep it real but that just makes The Den experience even worse.

The last time I went as a supporter was 15 years ago to watch Stockport County play there and the walk from South Bermondsey station to the away turnstiles was an eye-opener.

Not that there were any problems: even at Millwall, football has moved on since the 70s. But this still felt deeply dystopian: for their own safety, away fans walk to the ground through a long wire mesh cage that seems to have no end.

It felt like embarking on a tour of Jurassic Park: you know that if the fences fail, the dinosaurs are going to take a run at you.

Inside the ground, which is modern and neat and relatively characterless, the level of hatred for visiting supporters feels unusually visceral.

It’s loud. I’ll give it that. It’s primeval. It’s unreconstructed, which can be a good thing, too, and it breeds a sense of togetherness.

If medievalism is your thing, you’re in for a treat. If not, give it a miss.

91. Stadium MK, MK Dons

Division: League Two Opened: 2007 Capacity: 30,303

I know it’s a soft target but I really don’t care much for Stadium MK. Or for MK Dons themselves for that matter, even if they are inviting supporters to redesign their club crest and rethink their name.

The club was born under a bad sign when it was jemmied out of Wimbledon and moved to Milton Keynes in 2003 and it has never been able to shake the stigma since. The stadium fits the club.

It is a soulless, faceless, gloomy place. More than that, there is something rather forbidding about it.

Its 30,000 capacity is too big for the club it hosts and, apart from the joys of the local KFC and McDonald’s, there is little to recommend in its immediate surrounds.

Its black seats lend it a sinister air, too. It’s the kind of stadium only its mother could love. And it doesn’t have a mother.

Unless you want to do the 92, give it a miss.

90. Kassam Stadium, Oxford United

Division: Championship Opened: 2001 Capacity: 12,537 

I feel ashamed to say it, given that it is my local club, but the best experience I’ve had at the Kassam Stadium was getting my Covid jab there during the pandemic.

When they moved, around the turn of the century, abandoning the chaotic charm of the Manor Ground in Headington and swapping it for an isolated plateau outside the city, they only completed three sides, abandoning the fourth because of rising costs. 

A particularly bitter wind blows in off the car park behind one of the goals and, from the main stand – in fact, from every stand – there is a magnificent and uninterrupted view of the Frankie and Benny’s in the mini retail park that abuts the ground.

The empty end kills a lot of the atmosphere, too, although the Oxford fans are to be commended for the noise they do generate given they have endured a generation of being stuck here.

Firoz Kassam still owns the stadium but not the club. That kind of separation always spells trouble.

Oxford are hoping to move to a new stadium to the north of the city in a couple of years’ time. It can’t come soon enough.

89. London Stadium, West Ham United

Division: Premier League Opened: 2012 Capacity: 62,500

I don’t even like calling it the London Stadium. It’s the Olympic Stadium, but it suits the David Sullivan-Karren Brady rebrand of the club to give it the capital’s name.

It was a great athletics arena and home to a whole host of golden memories at London 2012 but it’s a dog’s dinner of a football ground.

It’s also a monument to much that is wrong with the top flight of the English game: a surrender of identity and tradition as collateral damage in the owners’ pursuit of profit.

Walking to it, sadly, feels a bit like walking through a wasteland and its odd configuration inside harms the atmosphere even though the fans are right up there with the best in the country.

The old stadium at Upton Park was intimate and raucous and intimidating. The London Stadium is nothing like that.

The owners spent a lot of time congratulating themselves on the deal they did to move to the new ground: they’re the archetypes of football owners who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

88. Hillsborough, Sheffield Wednesday

Division: Championship Opened: 1899 Capacity: 34,945

I used to think of Hillsborough as one of the cathedrals of the English game but since the disaster that claimed the lives of 97 Liverpool fans in 1989, it is hard to get past its association with so much death and despair and heartbreak and betrayal of supporters.

I know, obviously, that this would punish Wednesday fans who do not deserve to be punished for something that had nothing to do with them but Hillsborough, and its Leppings Lane End in particular, has such a cursed legacy that part of me thinks it should have been demolished and that the club should have moved elsewhere.

Even in the last couple of years, fans of Newcastle United and Leeds United have reported serious safety concerns in the Leppings Lane End.

I recognise the flaws in my argument about demolishing the stadium, or part of it, and the emotions it provokes on all sides so perhaps it’s just enough to say I’ll never feel the same about the stadium as I once did.

Visiting it now feels like an intrusion.

87. Sixfields, Northampton Town

Division: League One Opened: 1994 Capacity: 8,203

Sixfields is a blighted stadium.

It is a soulless ground anyway but its issues have been compounded by redevelopment delays and questions about missing money.

It has the same kind of deracinated feel as so many of the new-build stadia pushed to the peripheries of towns. Its supporters deserve a lot better.

86. Broadfield Stadium, Crawley Town

Division: League One Opened: 1997 Capacity: 6,134

Not an awful lot to relish about the Broadfield Stadium, to be honest.

Decent fans, of course, just like at every club, but Crawley Town’s home is a bit of a modern monstrosity, next to a roundabout outside town on the A23.

The place has had a bad vibe since it was acquired by Wagmi United LLC, a group of US cryptocurrency investors. Wagmi, by the way, stands for ‘We’re All Gonna Make It’.

If you visit the Broadfield Stadium, I think you might doubt even if they are in League One.

I had fun when I visited because I was in the away end with Stockport fans but I’m not in any hurry to go back.

85. Coventry Building Society Arena, Coventry City

Division: Championship Opened: 2005 Capacity: 32,609 

When it was called the Ricoh Arena, I had no interest in visiting what is now the Coventry Building Society Arena because it felt like a symbol of the callous way in which fans of the club were being treated by SISU, the hedge fund that owned it at the time.

But SISU sold up in the end and I went along last season and saw Coventry dismantle Wayne Rooney’s Birmingham City and then, in the press room beneath the stadium, watched as my colleague Neil Moxley got into a decent old-fashioned row with Rooney about his stewardship of the Blues.

The atmosphere inside the ground was lively enough, partly because the game was a derby of sorts, but it is a soulless, deracinated kind of stadium abutting the M6.

It is football in an urban wasteland but it is football, nonetheless, and Doug King, the new owner has brought with him the promise of better times ahead.

84. JobServe Community Stadium, Colchester United

Division: League Two Opened: 2008 Capacity: 10,105 

The staff at the club are great, the stewards are friendly, there’s plenty of parking, there’s a Wendy’s next door and the home fans, largely ranged in a stand behind one of the goals, make a superb fist of creating an atmosphere.

But this stadium on a roundabout on the A12 in the middle of a retail park is still rather a bleak place to watch football.

It probably didn’t help that I went on a dank March night a few weeks ago when a wispy fog lingered in the dim floodlight glare but there was something ethereally gloomy about the JobServe Community Stadium.

The empty corridors and the cavernous suites lent it a slight feel of the Overlook Hotel on the inside. On the outside, the four corners of the stadium are open, which makes for especially bitter nights in the winter.

Home is home and there was still plenty of drama and passion in Colchester’s 1-0 victory over Chesterfield – the match I saw – but it came despite the stadium, not because of it.

83. Poundland Bescot Stadium, Walsall

Division: League Two Opened: 1990 Capacity: 10,863

The Bescot Stadium was the first of the generation of identikit new-build arenas I went to and there is not, frankly, much to recommend it apart from the loyalty of the fans.

It’s close to the M6 and it’s a seven-minute walk to Walsall station, so you can get away from it quickly, which some would say is a bonus.

82. Brick Community Stadium, Wigan Athletic

Division: League One Opened: 1999 Capacity: 25,133

I stood on the terraces at Springfield Park as a Stockport fan.

Once again, it will not come as a surprise to learn I preferred it to its successor, the JJB Stadium, which later became the DW Stadium and is now the Brick Community Stadium.

The name changes are irrelevant to some but they betray a lack of care for the identity of a football club.

There were some great days and nights there when Wigan were promoted to the Premier League and I remember, in particular, the heady feeling of watching Wigan’s first home game in the top flight, against Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea in 2005.

The limelight has moved away again now and Wigan are left with a stadium that is perfectly adequate and also perfectly unremarkable.

81. The Croud Meadow, Shrewsbury Town

Division: League One Opened: 2007 Capacity: 9,875 

Gay Meadow, the former home of Shrewsbury Town, was one of the best grounds in our top four divisions.

It might have flooded now and again because of its position on the banks of the River Severn but it was a fine old ground and the tradition of a boatman taking to a coracle to fish wayward shots that cleared the roof of the stand out of the river was one of the most cherished peculiarities in our game.

The Croud Meadow is altogether more prosaic. Abutted by a McDonald’s and a TK Maxx on the outer fringes of the town, it feels like a disembodied place, separated from its community, functional but uninspired.

80. Select Car Leasing Stadium, Reading

Division: League One Opened: 1998 Capacity: 24,376 

I was persona non grata for a while at the Select Car Leasing Stadium when I took exception to Reading taking out two Chelsea goalkeepers in one match back in 2006, when Steve Coppell and Wally Downes were in charge at the Madejski Stadium. 

People called it the Mad Stad back then and I remember Neil Warnock telling me about being chased to his car outside the main entrance when he was manager of Sheffield United.

And Wally took a swing at me at a Football Writers’ Association dinner a couple of years later. 

Anyway, I’ve made up with Stephen Hunt, who was one of the players involved in the tumult against Chelsea, and with Downes since then.

Even if the Mad Stad doesn’t have an awful lot of personality, I have only respect for the Reading fans who have endured so much under the ownership of Dai Yongge and are fighting for their club.

79. Pride Park Stadium, Derby County

Division: Championship Opened: 1997 Capacity: 32,956

Pride Park is the standard-bearer, sadly, for what is lacking in many of the new generation of English football stadia.

English football grounds should be about the North Bank and the Stretford End and the Kop and the Gallowgate End and the Shelf.

They’re supposed to be about defined areas that give a stadium character and personality and even rivalry among home fans about who sings loudest.

Too many of the modern bowls have lost that character because the fans just merge into one.

This is not a criticism of Derby County fans in any way. They still make plenty of noise inside their stadium but the place is not a patch on the Baseball Ground, which witnessed so many momentous days and nights.

Pride Park is bland and featureless, a symbol of its team’s current struggle for identity as it languishes near the foot of the Championship.

78. Swansea.com Stadium, Swansea City

Division: Championship Opened: 2003 Capacity: 20,996 

My in-laws used to live in Swansea and when I wasn’t out walking to Worm’s Head at Rhossili or enjoying the delights of Mumbles and the Wales Coast Path, I’d make the occasional pilgrimage to what was left of the Vetch Field.

I stood in the away end there with Manchester United fans in the early 80s but when I visited later in my life, the Vetch was locked up and derelict. If you peered through the gates, you could see small trees and shrubs growing on the pitch.

The Swansea.com Stadium lacks the same character, obviously, but it is a tight stadium where the fans can still generate a rousing atmosphere if their team’s displays allow it.

At the moment, sadly, that isn’t very often but they have had some fine teams and fine managers in the post-Vetch era.

I did a phone interview with Mike Tyson from the press box here a couple of hours before a game. I couldn’t hear him very well because of various announcements being made over the loud-speaker system and soon, his tone became rather impatient but still, a conversation with Mike Tyson in the press box at Swansea is not easily forgotten.

77. Pirelli Stadium, Burton Albion

Division: League One Opened: 2005 Capacity: 7,088

The main entrance of the Pirelli Stadium looks a little like a car showroom. The rest of it struggles for character, too.

Burton’s a fine club with a distinguished non-League history that can boast Neil Warnock and Nigel Clough as former managers and which has nailed down its place in the Football League.

It has been a club to be admired for a long time, particularly under the former stewardship of Ben Robinson, who recently sold his majority stake to the Nordic Football Group.

They have punched above its weight for much of that time and their stadium is built for practicality, not for artistic merit.

76. Vitality Stadium, Bournemouth

Division: Premier League Opened: 1910 Capacity: 11,307

The club is one of the success stories of modern English football and the Vitality Stadium reflects its enthusiasm and, yes, vitality.

It’s a bit of a Lego arena, sure, but it’s built for its audience and its catchment area. It’s a League Two stadium that got overtaken by the success of its side.

Its character comes from its small size and the atmosphere it generates because of it. 

Abutting King’s Park and not far from the sea front, it’s a ground that almost manages to feel quaint. But not quite.

75. Eco-Power Stadium, Doncaster Rovers

Division: League Two Opened: 2007 Capacity: 15,148

It is, at least, a pleasant walk to the Eco-Power Stadium on the outskirts of Doncaster. 

I parked on the estate grouped around Lakeside Lake and strolled around its shores until I came to the stadium. Things go slightly downhill from there.

It’s a perfectly presentable stadium but there is little to distinguish it. It is a uniform modern bowl stuck on the outside of town that is rescued by the club’s excellent support.

74. St Mary’s Stadium, Southampton

Division: Premier League Opened: 2001 Capacity: 32,384

Southampton’s former ground, The Dell, was a wonderfully quirky stadium, full of odd tiers and shelves.

It doesn’t feel as though St Mary’s Stadium has any quirks, unfortunately.

Squatting at the edge of a slightly murky industrial estate, it falls squarely into the category of new builds largely devoid of character.

That does not mean that the home fans are incapable of creating atmosphere there and the renditions of When the Saints Go Marching In are a part of the cultural fabric of football in this country.

Sight lines are good and it can get loud but its design has little to recommend it.

73. King Power Stadium, Leicester City

Division: Premier League Opened: 2002 Capacity: 32,259

One of the few times I was genuinely scared at a football stadium when I was a supporter was during a visit to Leicester City’s former stadium at Filbert Street.

In the crush to get out of the away end at the final whistle, I was lifted off my feet in the surge.

So I’m aware that there are limits to how much one should mourn the passing of that generation of stadia but I still find it hard to warm to arenas like the King Power Stadium.

It is comfortable and it is functional and the Leicester fans can make plenty of noise but it’s a bland, featureless bowl that has little to distinguish it from many of the new generation of stadia.

Even then, it provided me with one of the great memories of the last decade when Andrea Bocelli stood next to Claudio Ranieri and sang Nessun Dorma the game after Leicester had pulled off the shock of the century by winning the Premier League in 2016.

72. Lamex Stadium, Stevenage

Division: League One Opened: 1961 Capacity: 7,426

Broadhall Way, now officially the Lamex Stadium, is a decent little ground with a good atmosphere.

It’s a fine club, too, that has consistently achieved more than most expected of it and has held down its place in the Football League.

The fans create more than their share of noise but it’s a friendly club with great staff and stewards.

It’s not spectacular but it’s a lovely day out watching football.

71. EV Charger Points Stadium, Cheltenham Town

Division: League Two Opened: 1927 Capacity: 6,923

It is a high bar in these days when money counts a lot more than heritage and finances are fraught at the wrong end of the EFL but the EV Charger Points Stadium may have the most chequered naming rights past of any stadium in the country.

We should just stick with Whaddon Road really but it was renamed the Abbey Business Stadium in 2009, then it became The World of Smile Stadium, then the LCI Rail Stadium in 2016–17, then the Jonny-Rocks Stadium in 2018–19, and the Completely-Suzuki Stadium in 2022 and now its current glorious and evocative name. 

I hope they got a lot of money for those sponsorships because they make the club look stupid and cheap and rip chunks of its identity away from it.

Again, I know it’s probably not financially viable to do away with them but I hate stadium naming rights. I’d ban them if I could. Football survived for a century without them so why not now?

It’s a shame because it’s a fine little ground that provides a different focus in a town dominated by horse racing.

70. Priestfield Stadium, Gillingham

Division: League Two Opened: 1893 Capacity: 11,582

I remember the journey as much as anything.

Kent might be the county I’ve been to least and so it felt slightly exotic driving down the M2 and seeing the Priestfield Stadium not far from the River Medway.

Some may damn Priestfield but Gillingham have played here for more than 100 years and that weight of history counts as much as anything when you visit a stadium. 

However hard clubs may try to replicate tradition with forced rituals, you can’t cheat history.

69. Hayes Lane, Bromley

Division: League Two Opened: 1938 Capacity: 5,000 

Hayes Lane is one of those stadiums that feels wide open to the elements. It’s the opposite of a tight, enclosed ground like Loftus Road but it’s still a pleasure to visit.

I went with Stockport when Bromley were in the National League and stood on the open terrace, which was reserved for away fans.

It was a wild evening in February 2022 and it felt as if the wind was blowing horizontal but County won 3-1 and a steward went out of his way to bring me a programme from where they were being sold in the home end, so it felt like a golden night all round.

68. Peninsula Stadium, Salford City

Division: League Two Opened: 1978 Capacity: 5,032

The players who comprise the Class of 92 were the players at the heart of one of the greatest stories I ever covered – the Manchester United Treble of 1998-99 – so perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that I enjoyed my visit to Moor Lane, now rebranded as the Peninsula Stadium.

Many dislike and distrust the way Gary Neville, Ryan Giggs and the rest took over a non-League club and oversaw its rise to the Football League but I like what they’ve done at Salford.

It’s a neat little ground and it’s been nicely modernised without losing all its character. 

I went to a League Two play-off semi-final there a couple of years ago when Salford played Stockport and the atmosphere was excellent.

Stockport lost the first leg but made the final. So that helped.

67. Field Mill, Mansfield Town

Division: League One Opened: 1861 Capacity: 9,376

My only visit to Field Mill was on Saturday, November 20, 1982.

I know this because I have always been a football stadium nerd and my 16-year-old self logged all the matches I went to in a King’s School Macclesfield exercise book.

I didn’t know then that Field Mill was, and is, the oldest continually used stadium in the league but I stood on an open terrace behind one of the goals that housed the away fans and watched Stockport lose 3-2 in an FA Cup first-round tie.

Maybe that was why I’ve never been back. The atmosphere was a little bit lost because it seemed so open but there is a stand now where that open terrace was. So maybe things have improved.

66. Vicarage Road, Watford

Division: Championship Opened: 1921 Capacity: 22,200

I’m going to show my age again: the first time I went to Vicarage Road, Graham Taylor was the manager, in his first spell at the club, and Ross Jenkins was playing up front in a match against Manchester United.

Maybe I’ve misremembered this but I seem to recall the train dropping us away fans right outside the stadium.

I’ve always associated Vicarage Road with drama for some reason. Even though it’s not tight and compact, it’s a place that can still generate a terrific atmosphere and I’ve seen a slew of upsets there.

The last one was when Liverpool visited in the middle of their runaway title-winning season in 2019-20.

They were still unbeaten in mid-February and on a long winning run and Watford took them apart and beat them 3-0. It was the kind of occasion that Vicarage Road excels at.

65. Riverside Stadium, Middlesbrough

Division: Championship Opened: 1997 Capacity: 33,931

The location of the Riverside Stadium on the banks of the Tees, set against the backdrop of the region’s industrial heritage in steel and chemicals, makes it feel as if the stadium is at the heart of its community.

Everton’s new ground is the latest to use its city’s waterway as a backdrop but the drawback to Middlesbrough’s home is its featureless interior.

It is a friendly, passionate place to watch a game but its design is unimaginative and bland.

The bitter wind blowing in from the North Sea can make the walk to the stadium a challenge for the efficacy of your winter clothes, too.

64. bet365 Stadium, Stoke City

Division: Championship Opened: 1997 Capacity: 30,089

There was a time, when Tony Pulis was manager of Stoke City, that a visit to the bet365 Stadium was regarded as the ultimate test of fortitude.

That was when the Sky pundit Andy Gray suggested Lionel Messi ‘would struggle on a cold night at the Britannia Stadium,’ the ground’s former name.

A visit to the stadium is a test for fans, too. It generates a decent atmosphere but the design of the stadium means the wind blows through the gaps between the stands and chills supporters to the bone on cold days and nights.

A little way away, on the other side of the dual carriageway that runs down towards the M6, you used to be able to see the contours of the Victoria Ground, the club’s former home, etched into the patch of wasteland where it once stood but they have built a housing estate on it now.

Even if their new ground lacks character in its architecture, the fans have breathed life into it with their raucous vitality.

63. Blundell Park, Grimsby Town

Division: League Two Opened: 1899 Capacity: 9,031

I’m not saying that Steel’s Cornerhouse fish and chip restaurant is the best thing about Cleethorpes but eating fish fresh from the North Sea certainly made my visit to Blundell Park more memorable.

Ground experiences are about a lot more than the game. They’re about going with your mates, they’re about getting a sense of the local community, they’re about embedding yourself in tradition and they’re about the game, too.

I loved Blundell Park for all those reasons.

62. Cardiff City Stadium, Cardiff City

Division: Championship Opened: 2009 Capacity: 33,280

I was a journalism student in Cardiff so Ninian Park was the first ground where I ever sat in a press box. From that day to this, it’s never lost the thrill.

Rob Phillips, Cardiff’s South Wales Echo reporter at the time, was still commentating for the BBC until this season. He was the first example I came across of a journalist who was courageous enough to tell the truth even if it meant being banned by his local club.

That fate befell him for a spell during my year in Wales.

Anyway, Ninian Park was a force of nature stadium and its successor was always going to struggle to replicate its intensity.

It’s still a good place to watch football because they are such a passionate group of supporters but the stadium is unappealing from the outside – actually it’s downright ugly – and unremarkable on the inside.

Unless, of course, it’s a South Wales derby or Bristol City are in town and then the atmosphere takes your breath away.

61. MKM Stadium, Hull City 

Division: Championship Opened: 2002 Capacity: 25,586

I’ve got a soft spot for Hull City but not for their stadium.

The fans are brilliant, some of the best and most devoted in the country in a city where they have to fight against the power of rugby league, but the stadium has too often become a battleground between the supporters and owners who have too often adopted a heavy-handed approach to their fans.

It is a handsome stadium on the inside but there have been times when I have visited when sections of it were shut down because of ticketing issues.

It is an arena that has been made ugly by division.

60. Carrow Road, Norwich City

Division: Championship Opened: 1935 Capacity: 27,359

There’s something special about clubs that do not share their cities with rivals. It strengthens their regional character, in particular, and it is that way with the culture at Carrow Road.

It is a gem of a stadium, a place full of passion and with plenty of enmity for Ipswich Town but a fraction removed from some of the uglinesss that can blight the modern game.

The loving stewardship of Delia Smith and Michael Wynn-Jones pervades the atmosphere at the ground. They will be missed now that they have stepped down from the board.

59. Ashton Gate, Bristol City

Division: Championship Opened: 1887 Capacity: 26,459

Ashton Gate is one of the stadiums that has slipped through the gaps for me.

I’ve only been once and that was for work but it’s a handsome stadium in a beautiful city with a rich history.

Richard Scudamore, the former chief executive of the Premier League, is a fan, which always struck me as slightly strange given the damage the top flight did to the lower leagues during his time at the helm.

58. Memorial Ground, Bristol Rovers

Division: League One Opened: 1921 Capacity: 9,834

A quirky mish-mash of a ground whose architecture betrays its origins as a rugby stadium, the Memorial Ground is still a decent place to watch football.

Rather the kind of visual chaos you get at this place with the Popular Insulation Stand isolated like a widow stand on part of the one touchline and the West Stand looking more like a cricket pavilion than the monotonous uniformity you get at so many new-builds.

Owners are always threatening to move to a new site but the Memorial Ground, successor to Eastville, still survives.

57. Brisbane Road, Leyton Orient

Division: League One Opened: 1937 Capacity: 9,253

From the outside, the modern Brisbane Road looks as if it can’t make up its mind whether it’s a high-rise housing estate, a conference centre or a football ground. 

Maybe that’s the point. Maybe the future for some clubs is to be all three.

In Orient’s case, they have still managed to retain the character and the pride of the famous old ground.

The East Stand, with the lovely old gable bearing the club’s name, is one of the best stands in the four divisions and, despite all the changes, the place oozes with the local character that makes the best football clubs so distinctive.

I took my son to watch his first Stockport County game here when he was three. He didn’t catch the bug.

56. Sincil Bank, Lincoln City

Division: League One Opened: 1895 Capacity: 10,780

I haven’t been to Sincil Bank for more than 30 years but it remains one of my favourite grounds.

The reason is that it’s the home of one of English football’s more eccentric traditions, the sounding of an air-raid siren every time Lincoln get a corner.

It was abandoned for a while upon the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war but I’m told it’s been restored now.

The English game is full of odd histories. It’s what makes it so precious.

55. Oakwell, Barnsley

Division: League One Opened: 1888 Capacity: 23,287

They were heady days for Yorkshire football in the late 90s. Leeds United were in the Champions League and Barnsley spent a season in the Premier League.

It was a treat to visit Oakwell in those days and watch Barnsley’s underdog story play out. But there’s another reason why a visit to Oakwell is still special.

The West Stand is one of few remaining examples in our league of a stand designed by the famous football architect Archibald Leitch and it is a thing of beauty.

There was something beautiful about Leitch’s designs. Most have been demolished now but I have sat in the stand designed by him at Raith Rovers’ Starks Park stadium and it’s the best part of any ground I’ve been to in Scottish football.

Oakwell is precious because of that and because of other nods to the heritage of the club like the original changing rooms.

Barnsley’s Premier League status came and went but the club have never lost their sense of history.

54. Ewood Park, Blackburn Rovers

Division: Championship Opened: 1882 Capacity: 31,363

The first time I went to Ewood Park was October 1991 when I reported on the return of Kenny Dalglish to football management for Liverpool’s Daily Post.

I went a lot over the next 10 years as the good times rolled and it was a lovely opportunity to explore some of the Lancashire countryside around the town.

I loved it at Ewood Park. I liked being able to look out from the main stand at the gap between the stands opposite and see people standing on the hillside behind them, staring down into the stadium as the match unfolded.

I don’t know if that vantage point still exists. It does sound as if the supporter experience has worsened under the current owners.

The days when Dalglish led them to a league title seem an awfully long time ago now.

53. New York Stadium, Rotherham United

Division: League One Opened: 2012 Capacity: 12,088

There’s something bold about the New York Stadium that elevates it above the standard new-builds.

The glamour of the name – a suburb of Rotherham, not just one of the greatest cities in the world – helps, as does the charisma and the vision of the chairman and owner, Tony Stewart. It’s bold as brass and it carries it off.

52. Emirates Stadium, Arsenal

Division: Premier League Opened: 2006 Capacity: 60,704

If Arsenal were still at Highbury, it would be in my top five grounds.

One of my best mates owns a flat in the Highbury apartment development, in the spot closest to where his season ticket was.

It sends a shiver down my spine every time I go and visit. The respect Arsenal have shown to their old ground is a template for the way other stadiums should be preserved.

There’s still a lot of class at Arsenal. Right from Lynne on the front desk at the Emirates to the people who work in the media department and the upper echelons of the club so, in that regard, it’s always a pleasure to visit.

But the atmosphere turns poisonous here more quickly than any other stadium I know and it’s hard for me to disassociate coming here with the memory of the vitriol that rained down on Arsene Wenger in his final years at the club.

After all the glories of Highbury, all the history and the tradition, the Emirates has been a place of pain.

The stadium is not as bland as some of the new generation but it still lacks real character and there is such a sense of entitlement and bitterness among the supporters that I have one friend, who is a season ticket holder, who only goes to away games.

51. London Road, Peterborough United

Division: League One Opened: 1913 Capacity: 13,513

I love London Road. A well-run club with a terrific owner in Darragh MacAnthony and a stadium that’s a fine mix of old and new, tradition and modernity.

This is a place with a proper identity and fans that make a lot of noise and turn London Road into a cauldron for big games.

It’s the kind of stadium where you can feel respect for the past as well as an embrace of the future.

50. Bloomfield Road, Blackpool

Division: League One Opened: 1899 Capacity: 16,616

Bloomfield Road is in need of a little love these days but any stadium where stands bear the name of Stanley Matthews and Stan Mortensen and where those two legends of the English game once graced the turf should be a pilgrimage for any football fan.

The first time I went was to watch Stockport in April 1983 so I remember the way the place used to look in the days when the greats ran out at Bloomfield Road.

I was there in 2011, too, when Blackpool were back in the top flight, to see players like Charlie Adam and Marlon Harewood taking on Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United on a bitter January afternoon by the Irish Sea.

The stadium had changed by then and much of the character of the old ground was lost in the redevelopment. Those days in the top flight seem like a long time ago now but while they still play at Bloomfield Road, the echoes of history will make it a magical place.

49. John Smith’s Stadium, Huddersfield Town

Division: League One Opened: 1994 Capacity: 24,329

One of the best of the lower-division new-builds, the John Smith’s Stadium is a classic of new football architecture.

Nestled in the lee of a hillside, its elegant, striking architecture with its curved trusses makes it a worthy successor to the old Leeds Road ground.

Last year, the Twentieth Century Society called for the stadium to be listed and named it one of the best new buildings in the country in the last 30 years.

They’re absolutely right. More stadiums should be listed. More should have been protected. Too many have been lost but it’s not too late to safeguard the best of the ones that remain.

48. Adams Park, Wycombe Wanderers

Division: League One Opened: 1990 Capacity: 9,558

I know a lot of fans have Adams Park much lower on their list of stadiums to visit but I’ve always liked it.

Maybe it’s the bucolic setting, in the lee of a wooded hill on the edge of the Chilterns, that does it for me.

The stadium might be modest but the team has a habit of punching above its weight. It’s a great place to go and feel the underdog spirit that is part of the force that drives English football.

47. Meadow Lane, Notts County

Division: League Two Opened: 1910 Capacity: 19,841

The first time I went to Meadow Lane, it was to see Manchester United play a top-flight game there.

The away section was uncovered and the stadium had quirks and character. It’s still a wonderful ground to visit and it has evolved into an impressive modern arena that has plenty of nods to its rich history and its status as one of the founder members of the Football League.

Its location, on the other side of the River Trent to the City Ground, is not quite as spectacular as Forest’s, but it’s still a venue that blows the breath of football history across your face.

46. Highbury Stadium, Fleetwood Town

Division: League Two Opened: 1939 Capacity: 5,137

Like Leeds, Morecambe and Grimsby Town, going to watch Fleetwood is enhanced by local fish and chips.

If you can’t get good fish and chips in Fleetwood, you’re not trying hard enough and I dined royally in the Granada Fish Bar before heading to the Highbury Stadium.

The ground may not be quite as august as Arsenal’s old stadium but it has an elegant, modern main stand and a fierce local identity.

The club’s nickname is The Fishermen and the fans chant a lot about the Cod Army. It’s a great day out by the seaside.

45. University of Bradford Stadium, Bradford City 

Division: League Two Opened: 1886 Capacity: 24,433

It is impossible to think of Valley Parade without thinking of the tragedy that befell Bradford City in 1985 when its main stand was engulfed by flames and 56 people lost their lives.

I try hard to think of happy memories there instead and the University of Bradford Stadium holds the distinction, in my football supporting life, of being the only stadium where I got chased by home fans.

I was there with Stockport in the early 80s and I could still actually run at faster than waddling pace then so I got away.

Valley Parade still has its character, it is still a fine stadium to visit. Every trip there is a chance to remember those who were lost.

44. Brunton Park, Carlisle United

Division: League Two Opened: 1909 Capacity: 17,030

Brunton Park holds the distinction of being the only ground I’ve ever been kicked out of. And banned from.

An over-officious press officer refused to allow me into the tunnel to speak to players after an FA Cup third-round tie against Arsenal and then objected to my objections and gave me my marching orders.

That was 24 years ago. I haven’t been back since but I hope the ban’s over now. 

Apart from that, I’ve got a lot of affection for the ground. It’s old school. It’ll be a sad day if they fall out of the league this season but the odds are against them surviving.

43. The Valley, Charlton Athletic

Division: League One Opened: 1919 Capacity: 27,111

The Valley has changed out of all recognition from the glory days when more than 75,000 crammed into it in the 1930s.

But there is still something magical about the home of Charlton Athletic. Perhaps, for those of us who are old enough, it is the memory of the old East Terrace rising up towards the South London sky.

Even when it was crumbling and condemned, there was something majestic about it, something that recalled great days.

Perhaps, too, there is something about the knowledge of how hard the fans fought, for seven years in the late 80s and early 90s, to return to the stadium when it seemed it had been ripped away from them.

And even if only that memory of the old East Terrace remains now, the walk down into the valley where the revamped stadium nestles still feels like a journey to the heart of the English game.

42. Mornflake Stadium, Crewe Alexandra

Division: League Two Opened: 1906 Capacity: 10,109

I have got a lot of affection for Gresty Road. On a Friday night at the end of September 1983, it was where I saw Micky Quinn score a hat-trick for Stockport County at the home of our bitter rivals.

It was one of my best football experiences, seeing Quinn leaping on to the railings at the Gresty Road End after scoring his third, shaking his fists at us in triumph as we leapt about on the terracing.

If there was footage of the fans’ wild celebrations now, the caption might say ‘limbs’. 

Gresty Road is a better stadium now than it was then, which isn’t a high bar, and it has a better owner than it did then. But it can’t be easy living in the shadow of such mighty neighbours.

41. SMH Group Stadium, Chesterfield

Division: League Two Opened: 2010 Capacity: 10,400 

I used to have a bit of a vendetta against the SMH Group Stadium. Perhaps not a vendetta, but certainly a prejudice.

I loved the old ground at Saltergate but when the club moved to the new stadium and called it the b2net Stadium, it felt as if it had sold its soul.

Since 2009, it has also been called the Proact Stadium and the Technique Stadium. 

But getting to know a club sometimes changes your view of a place. I spent a bit of time there earlier this season when I went to watch Kieron Dyer, who is a coach at the club, and Paul Cook, the manager, at work.

I met the owners, who are local businessmen and clearly have the club’s best interests at heart, and took in a game and suddenly the SMH Group Stadium had new life and character and soul breathed into it for me.

It’s a club on the up and it’s a club that cares about its fans, and so my prejudice against the SMH Group Stadium is no more.

40. Mazuma Mobile Stadium, Morecambe

Division: League Two Opened: 2010 Capacity: 6,241

Sometimes, the best football stadium experiences are about much more than the stadium.

I drove up to the Mazuma Mobile Stadium with my eldest daughter in December 2023 to watch Stockport play there.

It was a bitterly cold day on the Lancashire coast but we buttoned up and walked down the seafront, ate fish and chips in the car and then ran to the stadium through a torrential downpour.

The away end was a bit like a cowshed but it was packed with County fans who never stopped singing and there was a roof that kept us dry.

The wind blew so hard off the Irish Sea that there were times when the corner flags in front of the neat, modern main stand were almost horizontal to the pitch.

I admired every single fan who showed up to watch that League Two game in that weather at that outpost of football. I loved that day. 

39. Vale Park, Port Vale

Division: League Two Opened: 1950 Capacity: 15,036 

I’ve got a soft spot for Vale Park.

It was the first away ground I ever went to and I still remember the excitement of planning the train journey from Stockport, making it to Burslem and getting a thrill out of the entirely different experience – the extra camaraderie – that being an away fan at another club’s ground brings.

Vale Park felt raw and real to me back then and it got even better on my next visit when, in Stockport’s final year in the Football League before relegation to the National League, Anthony Elding got the winner for County in the 87th minute in front of the away end.

It was beautiful mayhem. County were relegated a few weeks later but I’ll never forget those days at Vale Park.

38. Toughsheet Community Stadium, Bolton Wanderers

Division: League One Opened: 1997 Capacity: 28,018

When it was the Macron Stadium, one of its several previous incarnations, I interviewed Tyson Fury in a room at the hotel that was part of the Toughsheet Community Stadium in the build-up to his world title fight with Wladimir Klitschko. 

After he’d claimed the Klitschkos were part of a devil-worshipping ring, Fury made some rather unpleasant comments about his views on links between homosexuality and paedophilia.

When the interview was printed, he did not seem best pleased with the results.

He said his brother, Big Shane, was going to break my jaw ‘completely’ with a straight right hand.

‘See big Shane there?’ Fury said. ‘Have a look at big Shane. He’s 6ft 6in and 25 stone. He’s going to break (your) jaw completely with one straight right hand.

‘I ain’t going to do it, ‘cos I’ll get in trouble. But the big fella, there – he’ll annihilate (you), won’t he? So Oliver, take a good look at him, ‘cos that’s the face you’re going to see before you hit the deck.’

Fun times. I’ve never found quite the same level of excitement in watching Bolton Wanderers there, although it had some great days when it was called the Reebok and Sam Allardyce was the manager.

It is one of the earliest, and best, of the new generation of stadiums, and even if it is on the outskirts of the town, its bold design makes it a local landmark.

37. Fratton Park, Portsmouth

Division: Championship Opened: 1899 Capacity: 20,899

Since their brief sojourn in the Premier League, everyone has become aware of the entrances to Luton Town’s Kenilworth Road ground that are accessed on what appears to be the ground floor of a terraced house.

But the old way in to Fratton Park, beneath a half-timbered gable, is even more charming.

One of the old institutions of English football, the stadium has been renovated but has not lost the intensity and the raucousness that makes it such a hostile place to visit for opposing teams.

36. Portman Road, Ipswich Town

Division: Premier League Opened: 1884 Capacity: 29,813

The matchday hospitality of the Cobbolds, the former owners of Ipswich Town, was legendary amongst journalists. I missed out on those days but a visit to Portman Road is still a treat.

It is still a wonderful ground, a ground at the centre of its community, a ground where you can breathe in the legends of Sir Alf Ramsey and Sir Bobby Robson, great football men who did great things in their time in charge of the club.

A few years ago, I went to the the launch of Kieron Dyer’s autobiography in a suite at the stadium and it was a night that underlined how important the club is to the city.

It is a joy to see that the current hierarchy value the importance of the stadium and have lavished care and money on it. It is one of the great outposts of the English game.

35. Molineux, Wolverhampton Wanderers

Division: Premier League Opened: 1889 Capacity: 31,750

When I first started going to Molineux, it was dominated by a peculiarity.

One of the stands, the John Ireland Stand as it was then, was about 100ft from the touchline, a matter of much mirth for visiting fans.

It has been renamed the Steve Bull Stand now and the pitch has been repositioned so that the modern Molineux is a stadium that makes sense.

It is an arena to be proud of again for Wolves fans, a stadium whose four stands are named after club legends and previous owner and benefactor Sir Jack Hayward and which takes care to respect its glorious past.

34. Turf Moor, Burnley

Division: Championship Opened: 1883 Capacity: 21,744

Turf Moor is a wonderful place to watch football.

Sit in the North Stand, opposite the Bob Lord Stand, and you can gaze out over the town and its mills, which do not look quite as dark and satanic any more, and remember that you are in the traditional northern heartlands of our game here.

I have a friend from Burnley who insists that more people per head of population wear the jersey of their hometown club in Burnley than in any other football centre in England.

This is a club, after all, that may be in the Championship now but which won the league title in 1921 and 1960 and was once a giant of the game here.

Stoke seems to have been put on a pedestal for its ability to provide a hostile environment for visiting teams but Turf Moor can serve up the weather and the atmosphere to run it close.

33. The Hawthorns, West Bromwich Albion

Division: Championship Opened: 1900 Capacity: 26,688

I have seen a few crackers at The Hawthorns.

The 5-5 draw between West Brom and Manchester United in May 2013 that was Sir Alex Ferguson’s last game as a manager is probably top of the list.

I was in the press room there in May 2017 when Chelsea sealed the title under Antonio Conte and the players invaded his press conference to shower him in champagne and generally rough him up. Conte did not look best pleased.

The highest league ground in England, sitting on its perch above the M5, it is also one of football’s great theatres, a ground where the support exudes a love for the game and a warmth that survives the vicissitudes of the club’s fortunes on the pitch.

32. Abbey Stadium, Cambridge United 

Division: League One Opened: 1932 Capacity: 8,024

I made it to the Abbey Stadium for the first time on Boxing Day last year for the game against Reading.

I walked to the ground down Cut Throat Lane and stood on the terraces at the Newmarket Road End where the singing is at its loudest and where the names and shirts of the celebrated early 1990s team of John Beck that included Dion Dublin are painted on the wall at the back of the stand.

Cambridge might be fighting relegation to League Two but the noise inside would have put plenty of Premier League grounds to shame.

31. Deepdale, Preston North End   

Division: Championship Opened: 1878 Capacity: 23,404

I love going to Deepdale just for the history of the place.

Just to gaze down from the stands and know that this was the place where Tom Finney once played is enough to make it a memorable experience.

And the sense of it being a pilgrimage is only enhanced by the fact that one of the best statues in football sits outside the ground.

Taking its inspiration from the 1956 sports photo of the year, which showed Finney aquaplaning through a huge puddle at Stamford Bridge, the sculpture, known as The Splash, immortalises Finney outside his home town club.

It’s a wonderful tribute outside an arena redolent with memories of one of England’s greatest players.

30. Kenilworth Road, Luton Town

Division: Championship Opened: 1905 Capacity: 10,265

The first time I went to Kenilworth Road was 42 years ago. I stood on the open terrace that hosted the away fans for an FA Cup fourth round tie that Manchester United won 2-0.

The most recent time I went was in November 2021, to see Neil Warnock break the record for the most games managed in English football but unable to stop his Middlesbrough team falling to a 3-1 defeat.

Across those decades, the atmosphere at the old stadium has endured. The Main Stand, which is more than a hundred years old, shook that night Luton took Boro down and the stadium became a bear pit.

It attained a kind of fame all over again when the club’s return to the top flight recently focused attention on the quirky Oak Road End entrance that goes straight through the middle of a row of terraced houses.

Luton will move to a new stadium at Power Court in the city centre in a few years but Kenilworth Road will be missed.

29. Etihad Stadium, Manchester City

Division: Premier League Opened: 2002 Capacity: 52,900

I’d probably have Maine Road in the top three in this list if Manchester City still played there. I loved that ground.

I loved the benches in the Platt Lane, I loved standing on the Kippax, I loved the cantilever Main Stand and the alleyways around the ground and walking across Platt Fields to the game.

But the Etihad isn’t Maine Road. It’s this high on the list because it’s in Manchester and it’s witnessed one of the best teams in English football history playing on its turf, marshalled by one of the game’s great managers.

City have done their best to breathe personality into it but it’s hard to disguise the fact it’s a characterless, identikit modern stadium.

The corporate denizens of the Tunnel Club, traipsing back to their seats well after the whistle has blown for the start of the second half, don’t help, either.

28. Rodney Parade, Newport County

Division: League Two Opened: 1877 Capacity: 8,722

A Cardiff taxi driver once told me that the best fights in Wales happen outside Newport railway station late on Saturday nights. He said he sometimes took a break just to go and watch the action.

Rodney Parade’s a fine place to watch sport, too. Not far from the banks of the River Usk, it’s a modern stadium with remnants of character that come into its own when the giants come to play for the FA Cup.

I was there a few years ago when Manchester City visited in the fifth round and after the game, the way out for fans took them past the open windows of the small changing rooms behind one of the goals where you could hear the celebrations of Pep Guardiola’s team booming out into the South Wales night.

Like the railway station, it’s not a place for the faint-hearted.

27. County Ground, Swindon Town

Division: League Two Opened: 1892 Capacity: 15,547

There were more than 20 years between my first visit to the County Ground and my most recent, a 0-0 draw with Accrington Stanley towards the end of March. It wasn’t the best game but I had the best time.

I’d had a week of being abused on social media by Newcastle fans (which is part of the job and, yes, I agree, I don’t have to read it) and going to Swindon felt like a wonderful breeze blowing on my face.

For a start, there were more than 7,000 supporters there, for a fourth-tier game which meant nothing to both teams in terms of promotion or relegation. The atmosphere was lively and passionate and the ground has character and warmth, even if one of the ends was closed.

At half-time, I watched a DS Active match between lads with Down Syndrome representing Swindon and Bristol City and it was a joy. It was a joy to see their uncomplicated joy in the beauty of football and the way they celebrated their goals and their skill and the way they looked for their parents in the stands when they scored and the way they supported their team-mates.

The match was a reminder of what it means for a football club to be at the heart of its community. A stadium is about more than just a game.

26. Amex Stadium, Brighton & Hove Albion

Division: Premier League Opened: 2011 Capacity: 31,876

Maybe it is the knowledge of where Brighton & Hove Albion came from to get here that makes a visit to the Amex Stadium such an uplifting thing.

I remember seeing them at the Goldstone Ground, which I loved, but also at the Withdean Stadium, which is a glorified parks pitch inside a small athletics stadium. 

When you have commuted to ‘home’ games at Gillingham’s Priestfield Stadium for two years as well, it is little wonder the Amex still feels like the promised land.

Neat on the inside, bold on the outside, it is a fitting home for an exceptionally well-run club and a fanbase that never gave up on its team.

25. Gtech Community Stadium, Brentford

Division: Premier League Opened: 2020 Capacity: 17,250

It is not often one of the new-build generation of English football stadiums has more character than a club’s former ground but the Gtech Community Stadium is a happy exception.

Griffin Park was much beloved, of course, and its peculiar feature of boasting a pub at each of the four corners of the ground was part of the game’s folklore.

But Brentford pulled off an architectural wonder with the Gtech, squeezing it into a parcel of land in the shadow of the raised section of the M4 in west London.

The club has one of the best home records in the Premier League this season, which is testimony not just to the excellence of the players and manager Thomas Frank but to the tight confines of the ground and the atmosphere it creates.

It is no surprise it is attracting supporters who previously considered themselves without an affiliation. It is the type of stadium, and club, that makes fans feel they belong.

24. Racecourse Ground, Wrexham

Division: League One Opened: 1801 Capacity: 10,500

I went to a lot of games in Wrexham in the late 70s and early 80s. My best mate, Bryn, was from the town so when his mum and dad took him to visit family there, I went along and we headed for the Racecourse Ground.

I’m not one of those who regards the Ryan Reynolds/Rob McElhenney takeover of the club with distaste, although I am aware that my friend and colleague Ian Herbert, a Wrexham fan and a club scholar, is starting to have some misgivings about the direction things are taking.

Nothing in football is ever quite as wholesome as it seems but so far, it feels as if it has been good for the club and for the town.

I don’t know what their long-term motives are but they have poured a lot of money into the team and into the infrastructure, and the club is rising and rising through the leagues. It’s bringing more light into a community that has had its share of hard times. 

I was at the Racecourse, by the way, when Mark Hughes scored his spectacular overhead kick against Spain in 1985. It’s still one of the top five goals I’ve ever seen live.

The others: Angel di Maria for Argentina at the Lusail Stadium at the 2022 World Cup final, Zlatan Ibrahimovic for Sweden against England at the Friends Arena in 2012, Dennis Bergkamp for the Netherlands against Argentina at the Stade Velodrome at France ’98 and Norman Whiteside for Manchester United against Everton at Wembley in the 1985 FA Cup final.

23. St Andrew’s, Birmingham City

Division: League One Opened: 1906 Capacity: 29,409

Down the winding stairs from the press box, though the main reception area where staff are trying to sort ticket requests, through the foyer, down another set of steps and into a tunnel below the Main Stand where four garden forks hang on the wall outside the groundsman’s room – St Andrew’s is still a beautiful stadium that mixes old school elements and modern stands.

It’s a great place to watch a game. If it gets overshadowed by Aston Villa and West Brom, it still feels as if the soul of the Second City is alive in this place.

There are new owners now, of course, and big plans, but St Andrew’s is still at the heart of everything.

22. Stadium of Light, Sunderland

Division: Championship Opened: 1997 Capacity: 48,095

I loved Roker Park. Like Maine Road, I’d have it in my top 10 grounds if Sunderland were still playing there now and I feel lucky to have stood in the away end there and been treated to the full force of the Roker Roar.

I’ve never been quite sure what to make of its successor, the Stadium of Light. I’m not even sure about the name, which is dramatic, certainly, but is also an obvious copy of the original Benfica ground in Lisbon – which opened in 1954 and held 120,000 at its peak.

The design is rather uninspiring for such an evocative name, too. It’s uncomfortably close to identikit new-build, but I have friends who say it’s their favourite anywhere. 

The stadium does sit proudly atop the bluffs of the River Wear and it’s wonderful to see the team on the up again and dreaming of a return to the Premier League.

These are some of the best supporters in the country and the noise the fans make when the biggest occasions present themselves is up there with anyone.

21. Bramall Lane, Sheffield United

Division: Championship Opened: 1855 Capacity: 32,050

Bramall Lane is still the only ground where I’ve sat in the dugout during a league game.

Neil Warnock is a friend of mine and when he was in charge at Sheffield United, he let me sit next to him in an end-of-season Championship game against Ipswich Town.

I got a front row seat for Rob Kozluk, one of the game’s great sledgers, doing his best to wind up then-Ipswich boss Joe Royle.

I can’t think of many better grounds to have had the privilege. Bramall Lane is a cauldron of noise, full of history and passion, in the heart of the city.

Its Kop singing the Greasy Chip Butty song is one of the iconic experiences in English football.

20. Stamford Bridge, Chelsea

Division: Premier League Opened: 1877 Capacity: 40,173

All stadiums change and modernise with the years but there are few stadiums which have changed as dramatically as Stamford Bridge.

It was once an intimidating place, dominated by the Shed, a sprawling, boisterous semi-circular terrace behind one of the goals that was synonymous with the crowd problems of the 1970s and early 80s.

Going to watch a Chelsea game now is an entirely different experience. The transformation was begun by Ken Bates, one of a group of visionary businessmen who changed the way we watch football, and then continued under Roman Abramovich.

And now, for many, going to Chelsea, with its towering West Stand and opulent corporate boxes, is a boutique experience not out of place with the hugely affluent area in which it stands.

You can still feel the history of the place when you visit, though. To its credit, the club preserved the original wall that stood at the back of the Shed and it remains in place, used to display pictures of Chelsea legends.

Maybe I should declare a certain bias here, too: the food in the press room at the Bridge is the best in the Premier League.

19. Exercise Stadium, Harrogate Town

Division: League Two Opened: 1920 Capacity: 5,021

Maybe there’s a bit of recency bias in putting Harrogate in the top 20.

Wetherby Road, now known as the Exercise Stadium, was the ground that completed my 92 when I went to watch them beat Tranmere Rovers there last Tuesday night and so I’m always going to feel nostalgic about being here.

It’s a charming, quirky ground, cobbled together in a way that might not satisfy an aesthete but I had a brilliant night here.

My friends and I stood on the raucous, seething Kop behind one of the goals in the first half. It was only six or seven rows deep but there were enough surges to make it feel like being back in the 80s.

We moved to a more sedate spot in seats behind the other goal after the interval. There were only just over 3,000 fans there but it felt like 10 times that.

Tranmere brought 500 of those supporters from Merseyside for a midweek bottom-of-the-table game in League Two, which was a tremendous effort.

And it was a fine match, a 3-2 win for the home side that almost certainly guaranteed their safety from the threat of relegation.

A couple of old friends came with me to make the occasion even better and even though there were no fish and chips, I had breakfast at Betty’s the next morning, and an eclair for dessert, to make the experience complete.

18. Selhurst Park, Crystal Palace

Division: Premier League Opened: 1924 Capacity: 25,194

I used to be put off by what I saw, pathetically, as the difficulty of getting to Selhurst Park in south London. Difficult to drive to, hard to find a parking space, not on the Tube. Et cetera, et cetera.

I got over that some time ago. A trip to Palace is one of the best experiences in the English game.

The atmosphere generated by the Holmesdale Road stand, in particular, makes Selhurst Park one of the best grounds in England to watch football.

Other clubs have seen the volume of their support dim as the demographic of their fans has changed but that has not happened at Selhurst Park. It is one of the few places left that has the power to intimidate and it is all the better for that.

17. MATRADE Loftus Road, Queens Park Rangers

Division: Championship Opened: 1904 Capacity: 18,193

One of the great surviving community grounds, a beautiful, steep-sided gem of a boutique stadium in Shepherd’s Bush, Loftus Road is a place to cherish.

When Bernie Ecclestone was a part-owner of the club, I sat in the directors’ box with him a few times and got shushed by Flavio Briatore for talking too much when my neighbour kept asking me questions. That may have been the first time anybody has ever been accused of talking more than Flavio.

The football wasn’t the best during their time there but the hospitality was: they had Mayfair restaurant Cipriani doing the catering.

They are long gone now but the stadium still remains, a wonderful anachronism in a changing world.

16. City Ground, Nottingham Forest

Division: Premier League Opened: 1898 Capacity: 30,404

Sometimes, just the walk to a stadium is part of what makes it special.

My favourite was always the walk through Queens Gardens in Perth to the WACA. The stroll down from the city centre to the Adelaide Oval is beautiful, too, and the walk along the Thames to Craven Cottage is part of what makes that ground special. 

It’s the same with the City Ground. I always park in the same spot, near the River Trent, and walk along the river path until you can see the Forest fans streaming down towards the entrances at the Trent End.

When you get closer, you see the majesty of Trent Bridge next to the City Ground, too, and you feel you’re right at the heart of British sport.

There’s so much history at the City Ground, so much achievement, so much tradition and such a stunning location. It’s a wonderful place to watch a game.

15. Home Park, Plymouth Argyle

Division: Championship Opened: 1901 Capacity: 17,904

My affection for Home Park was well entrenched even before I took my seat in the lovely Mayflower Grandstand and watched one of the greatest FA Cup shocks of recent years unfold there at the beginning of February when the Pilgrims beat Liverpool.

That was a day to cherish everything about Home Park and the Green Army and the proud local identity enshrined there.

The Mayflower Grandstand, which was renovated recently, remains a beautiful piece of stadium architecture, the staff and stewards are uniformly friendly and welcoming, and the ground occupies a handsome spot in a park on a hill not too far from Plymouth Hoe. It’s one of the best football experiences in the league.

14. Prenton Park, Tranmere Rovers

Division: League Two Opened: 1912 Capacity: 15,012

Prenton Park became a beloved second home for me for a while.

Like Stockport, they used to play their home games on a Friday night at one time and that offered a chance to go and watch them under the lights.

I loved Prenton Park and its sense of community and its noble old stands from the start and when I started work as a trainee on the Daily Post and the Liverpool Echo in the early 90s, I got to cover Tranmere in the glory days under Jonny King when John Aldridge, who had returned from Real Sociedad, was scoring for fun.

The atmosphere inside the ground on some of those nights on the Wirral was electric. When I was a news reporter at the Echo, I even had to go round to the house of Tranmere’s midfielder Kenny Irons in Norris Green to check out a story.

Kenny had been playing football in his front garden and kicked a ball over a hedge into next door’s garden. His neighbour was an old lady and she wouldn’t give Kenny his ball back.

When I pitched up on his doorstep, he saw the funny side.

13. Craven Cottage, Fulham

Division: Premier League Opened: 1896 Capacity: 24,500

Craven Cottage is one of the jewels of English football heritage, and Fulham’s stadium on the banks of the Thames has achieved the difficult task of modernising the ground without losing its character.

The presence of the Cottage, the most glorious eccentricity remaining in our 92 stadiums, in one corner of the ground, is central to that, of course, and helps to make watching a match there so special.

This is a club that has taken care to preserve its history and value a stadium that is different. Even the walk to the ground through Bishop’s Park and along the path by the river, adds to the pleasure of the experience. It is a joy to visit.

12. Wham Stadium, Accrington Stanley

Division: League Two Opened: 1968 Capacity: 5,278

For once, I can turn a blind eye to the renaming of the ground as the Wham Stadium. 

That’s because I know how much love and commitment and time and money the Stanley owner, Andy Holt, has put into the resurrection of his local team since he cleared its debts in 2015 when it was on the brink of folding.

Andy doesn’t get much thanks for it and is planning to leave the running of the club at the end of the season but he will bequeath a lasting legacy in this part of Lancashire. 

The ground has improved out of all recognition since he became involved and any visit to it is a visit to the heart of the difference one man can make to a football club and a community.

Visionaries like Andy are few and far between in football and the game will be poorer for his absence.

11. Villa Park, Aston Villa

Division: Premier League Opened: 1897 Capacity: 42,918

Once one of the great architectural jewels of the English game, Villa Park lost the beauty of Archibald Leitch’s magnificent original Trinity Road Stand in 2000 when it was demolished.

Its loss was a sign of how shabbily we treat the idea of protecting our football heritage in this country.

Despite that, Villa Park remains one of the great arenas in the English game. I stood on the old Holte End in 1983 to see Villa, then European Cup holders, play the mighty Juventus and last year, I was there again when Unai Emery’s side beat Bayern Munich, the team they conquered in the 1982 European Cup final, in their home return to the Champions League.

The atmosphere that night last October, with the Holte End in full voice, was a wonderful reminder of the great occasions of the past at a ground that feels like stadium aristocracy.

10. Old Trafford, Manchester United

Division: Premier League Opened: 1910 Capacity: 74,197

Yes, the roof leaks and, yes, Old Trafford could do with a bit of love and attention but there is a magic about this stadium that can never fade. (At least not until Sir Jim Ratcliffe knocks it down and builds the tourist attraction that is his vision of the football of the future).

Much of that comes from the glories it has witnessed. Sit in the Stretford End and gaze down at a pitch where Duncan Edwards once strode across the turf, George Best danced through the mud and where Bobby Charlton and Denis Law and Bryan Robson and Roy Keane and Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney have played.

It is still a magnificent stadium, redolent of so many triumphs. Outside, on the forecourt, the Holy Trinity statue, a tribute to Best, Charlton and Law, is a place of pilgrimage. As is the Munich Clock, a poignant reminder of the loss of so many of the Busby Babes in 1958.

I was standing on the terraces there when United beat Diego Maradona’s Barcelona 3-0 in the Cup Winners’ Cup in March 1984 and it was one of the best atmospheres I’ve ever felt at an English league ground.

It’s a wonderful place, one of the stadiums that can lay claim to nurturing a chunk of the heart of the English game. They just need a team to be worthy of it again.

9. Goodison Park, Everton

Division: Premier League Opened: 1892 Capacity: 39,414

I’ve always loved Goodison Park and its lovely Main Stand and its fierce, fierce intensity.

Some might say it has fallen into disrepair and, yes, it is not as shiny and bright as some of the new generation of stadia but it feels like just about the most authentic stadium and passionate crowd there is in the top flight.

I’ve been going to sit in its cramped press box amid the wooden seats of that Main Stand for more than 30 years. And I think of it as a blessing that what might have been my final visit came in February to see what turned out to be one of the most tumultuous endings to a match even in Goodison’s long, long history.

There was something beautiful about Everton’s players and fans that night and their utter refusal to let the last Merseyside derby at Goodison end in a Liverpool win.

Even before James Tarkowski’s last-gasp equaliser, deep into stoppage time, the atmosphere was so passionate, so filled with abandonment, that it was almost feral. And I definitely mean that as a compliment.

It was a throwback to the kind of atmosphere you used to get at English grounds before the introduction of all-seater stadia and the advance of corporate culture. 

Long after Everton have moved on to their magnificent new home at Bramley-Moore Dock, the memory of that match against Liverpool will live on as a tribute to one of English football’s greatest grounds.

8. Elland Road, Leeds United

Division: Championship Opened: 1897 Capacity: 37,608

I love Elland Road. Even before I get into the ground, I love Elland Road.

The statue of Billy Bremner, which is usually festooned with scarves and surrounded by tributes to Leeds fans who have passed away, should be a starting point for any visit.

At the other end of the emotional spectrum, fish and chip shops are a decent component of a matchday experience and Graveley’s, on Elland Road itself, which has a long queue snaking up to its door from two hours before kick-off, is one of the best football chippies in the country.

The stadium is a proper cathedral of our game, too. One-club cities sometimes generate that kind of passion and it’s evident at Elland Road.

I like the fact the stands are named after Don Revie, Norman Hunter, Jack Charlton and John Charles, not an IT company or an airline or a waste management service. 

And I love the singing of Marching On Together, a club anthem that dates back more than 50 years, not one of the manufactured club songs you hear at some stadiums these days that mark a cosmetic attempt at authenticity.

You feel the heat of English football at Elland Road, you feel the intensity of it and what it means. At a lot of big clubs, that feeling has been lost. But it’s alive here.

7. St James’ Park, Newcastle United

Division: Premier League Opened: 1892 Capacity: 52,258

Lots of stadiums are referred to as cathedrals but St James’ Park is the one that fits the description best.

Every time I arrive in the city and see St James’ Park staring down from its vantage point above it, it sends shivers down my spine.

Its position is a symbol of its importance to the city. Inside, it generates one of the best atmospheres in the country, its fans are amongst the most loyal and the Gallowgate End is one of the most revered sections in our football history.

Newcastle are leaning towards building a new stadium adjacent to the current site and moving to that. Please don’t.

6. Holker Street, Barrow

Division: League Two Opened: 1909 Capacity: 6,500

There’s a frontier feel about Barrow and about its Holker Street ground that makes it special to visit.

It’s not for everyone. I know away fans complain, with some justification, about restricted views but I’d rather take restricted views and a ground with character and love and passion than one of the identikit tin bowls that are closer to the norm in the lower leagues.

Holker Street was my 90th ground out of the 92 and I loved everything about it from the friendliness of the club staff and the fans and the steak pie I bought from the Farm Shop inside the ground.

I was there in late February for the Cumbrian derby against Carlisle United and the atmosphere was magnificent.

It was raw and loud and industrial and real. It felt like a throwback to the way football used to be before the invasion of tourists and corporates and it was all the better for that.

5. Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Tottenham Hotspur

Division: Premier League Opened: 2019 Capacity: 62,850

The best of the new generation of English football stadiums.

My favourite new stadium anywhere is RB Leipzig’s Red Bull Stadion because of the way it was constructed inside the bowl of the old Zentralstadion but in England, the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium stands out.

There is an ambition about it that so many other new-builds lack, particularly the steepling end behind one of the goals that is said to be modelled on the Yellow Wall at the Westfalenstadion in Dortmund.

I love the nods to the club’s history, particularly the replica of the cockerel that sits above the South Stand and the black and white photos that line the corridors outside the press room.

Spurs chairman Daniel Levy gets plenty of criticism for the failures of the club on the pitch but the new stadium is still a stunning legacy.

4. Cherry Red Records Stadium, AFC Wimbledon

Division: League Two Opened: 2020 Capacity: 9,150

I never made it to the old ground at Plough Lane, which is a regret, but I had one of the best of football days when I finally made it to the Cherry Red Records Stadium, near to the site of the old ground, when they played the team that nearly drove them into oblivion, MK Dons, in September last year.

Just setting foot in this stadium is to feel what it is like to support a team that is at the heart of its community and to be among a fanbase whose team means more to it than just wins and losses.

Love for the game and the team and reverence for the history of the club, the club that was stolen from them and the club they rebuilt, is everywhere, from the kitsch statue of Dave Beasant at the front of the stadium to the illustration on the walls.

It feels like a stadium where everybody knows each other, like neighbours in a street, like a giant, loving, proud family that refuses to be torn apart.

The beauty of the architecture here is not in the stadium buildings. It is in the knowledge that this is something built by fans.

If I lived in London, and Stockport weren’t playing, this is where I’d watch my football.

3. St James Park, Exeter City

Division: League One Opened: 1904 Capacity: 8,714

It was the summer of 2010 when Exeter City forward Adam Stansfield died of cancer at the age of 31.

‘Stanno’, the father of current Birmingham striker Jay Stansfield, was a hero at the beautiful St James Park stadium, nestled in a nook at the foot of a steep hill and bordered by neat, densely packed terraced streets and a railway cutting.

I drove down there with my elder daughter to look at the tributes to Stansfield and we wandered among the bouquets of flowers and the keepsakes left by heartbroken young fans and the emotional messages that had been left in their thousands on the Big Bank.

It was impossible not to be moved by the profound emotional connection between a city and its club and as the years have passed, St James Park has come to embody for me everything that a football ground should be: full of character and care and camaraderie and community and passion and pride in what it stands for.

I was there again at the weekend to see Stockport County play and there was a note next to the away turnstile – a turnstile made in another age at the Albion Works in Patricroft – saying: ‘Hatters Fans: Thank you for travelling 474 miles to support your club today.’

Every away fan also got a voucher offering a free cup of tea. The club has been owned by its supporters for more than two decades and it is a model of how successful it can be.

The Big Bank has been extended and is now the biggest terrace in English football. So the locals tell me, anyway. There is a club museum, a stall selling farm produce and a supporters’ club bar with big screens.

They built a new stand a few years back, too. It’s called the Adam Stansfield Stand.

2. Anfield, Liverpool

Division: Premier League Opened: 1884 Capacity: 61,726

Growing up in Manchester, Anfield was a place I grew up fearing.

The tales of The Kop and what they would do to you if they heard your accent were fearsome and when I finally plucked up the courage to go and watch Manchester United play there, I bought a ticket among the home fans and did not speak a word for more than two hours.

But that didn’t stop me being in awe of the place when I first visited. I have never been anywhere like it for the passion and the noise it has generated.

Yes, maybe its atmosphere has been slightly diluted by the owners’ attempts to attract a new, high-yield breed of casual fan but the ferocity of the emotion the place can still muster can be incredibly moving.

The 2005 Champions League semi-final second leg against Chelsea was probably the noisiest and the most spine-tingling I’ve ever witnessed it although the tie against Barcelona, at the same stage of the competition in 2019, is seared on my brain for similar reasons.

A love for a stadium is about memories, too. My first jobs in journalism were on the Daily Post and the Liverpool Echo and I spent many wide-eyed afternoons in the old press box at Anfield and in the press conferences afterwards, listening to Kenny Dalglish and, later, Graeme Souness, two of the best British footballers who have ever lived.

Once, on my first visit to the press box, I made the mistake of sitting in Tommy Smith’s seat and was suddenly aware of the hulking presence of the Anfield Iron looming silently above me and a colleague telling me to get up sharpish. I never sat in that seat again.

Some rival fans say the Anfield atmosphere is a myth. It wasn’t and it isn’t. Corporate incursions have altered it but it still has the power to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end.

1. Edgeley Park, Stockport County

Division: League One Opened: 1891 Capacity: 10,800

My family didn’t have any history with Stockport County.

I can’t boast a grandfather or an uncle who once played for them. My dad was never much of a football fan and was more likely to ask me ‘how did United get on’.

But he was from Heaton Chapel and his grandfather made, and lost, a fortune in the hatting industry in the town in the late 19th century, and he was fiercely proud of Stockport Viaduct and its history and he took me to my first game at Edgeley Park on Monday, April 9, 1979.

We sat in Block A of the Main Stand, now the Danny Bergara Stand, and I breathed in the smell of cigar smoke that drifted up from the man in the sheepskin jacket sitting a couple of rows in front of us and thrilled at the noise coming from the terraces opposite and gazed up to my left at the men working away on their typewriters in the press box, men whose faces I recognised because I had seen their photo bylines in the Manchester Evening News.

I have mentioned elsewhere the curious wonder I felt when people who were strangers to me greeted my dad by name as we walked up the steps to our seats.

I didn’t think my dad had ever been to Edgeley Park before but these people knew him anyway because they were from Stockport and he was from Stockport and those moments made me realise for the first time that football grounds are places that hold the soul of a community. Not for everyone, but for some of us.

And so even if he wasn’t a fan, I still feel connected to my dad every time I use one of my season tickets, that I bought in a row next to the press box, and gaze over at the place we sat that first time.

I am not a proper fan like the supporters who go week in and week out but I love that ground.

I am not a member of any London clubs but Edgeley Park is my club and now, just like my dad, I know people when I go.

I feel fortunate, too, that after the club kissed its fair share of frogs, it has one of the best owners across the whole 92.

Mark Stott has not just invested in the first team and dragged County back up into the Football League but he has bought a new training ground and lavished a lot of love on upgrading facilities for fans in the Cheadle End.

The Danny Bergara Stand still oozes character, it is still similar to the way I remember it from that first game in 1979 and much of the rest of the stadium has been renovated and improved.

I haven’t been yet this season because I spent my spare weekends trying to complete my 92.

I’m longing to get back. Every fan will know that feeling, the feeling of going home.