HOW IT WORKS

The question

Every fixture asks the same thing: since the Premier League began in 1992–93, which of these two clubs has finished higher on average, across the whole English football pyramid — not just whichever division they happen to play in today?

To even appear in this game, a club must have played at least one season in the Premier League, Championship, League One, or League Two since 1992–93. The National League only ever counts towards a club's average once they've qualified that way — a club that has spent its whole history in the National League or below, without ever reaching League Two, won't show up here, however long they've been around.

What "average pyramid rank" means

Most league tables only rank clubs against the others in their own division. That's not much use for comparing a Premier League club against a League Two one. So instead, every club's season is converted onto one continuous scale spanning the Premier League, Championship, League One, League Two, and the National League.

Each season uses the actual number of clubs in each division that year, not today's format. The Premier League's first three seasons (1992–93 to 1994–95) had 22 clubs rather than today's 20, and one lower division briefly had 23 rather than 24 — both are accounted for exactly as they were at the time, not assumed to match the modern structure.

A club's score in this game is simply the average of that number across every season since 1992–93 they played in the top five English tiers. Lower is better — it means a higher average finish.

When the game reveals a club's rank as, say, "5th in the Championship", that's a separate step: converting their average onto today's league sizes (20 / 24 / 24 / 24 / 24) purely so it's a relatable, current comparison point. The underlying average that actually decides who's correct always uses the real historical sizes described above — the "5th in the Championship" label is just a friendlier way of showing that same number.

What's not counted

You'll see a † next to a handful of club names in the game. That marks clubs that no longer exist in the form being scored here — usually because the club folded and a new one formed in its place, sometimes under a different name. It's easy to assume a club like this is just quietly playing on somewhere in non-league, when actually the data simply stops because that specific club doesn't exist anymore.

Seasons spent below the National League — in National League North/South or lower — aren't included, since reliable data for those levels isn't available for most clubs. Everything from the Premier League down to the National League itself (the top five tiers) is fully counted. A handful of clubs also have small gaps in their record for the same reason — usually a season where their results were formally expunged after financial trouble, or before they were promoted into a tracked division at all.

Chester City is a clear example. They finished 23rd in League Two in 2008–09, were relegated to the National League, and then entered administration during the 2009–10 season — their results that year were formally expunged rather than just relegated-and-recorded, so that season doesn't appear in the data at all. The club folded shortly after; the Chester FC that exists today is a separate, newly-formed club that has never reached back up to League Two, so Chester City's record simply stops after 2008–09.

Other marked clubs followed a similar path: Scarborough, Halifax Town, Darlington, Rushden & Diamonds, Hereford United, Bury and Macclesfield Town all folded at various points and were replaced by newly-formed successor clubs (FC Halifax Town, Bury AFC, and so on) that aren't tracked here, since none of them have fought back up to the National League or higher — yet.

A tricky case: Wimbledon and AFC Wimbledon

One example worth explaining, since it shows how much judgement goes into a dataset like this. Wimbledon F.C. played in the Premier League throughout the 1990s. In 2002, the club's league share was controversially relocated to become Milton Keynes Dons, while a separate club — AFC Wimbledon — was formed by supporters to continue playing in south-west London, starting from the bottom of the non-league pyramid.

Whether AFC Wimbledon should be treated as a continuation of the original club, or as an entirely new one, is genuinely disputed among fans and isn't something we've tried to settle here. For this game, they're kept as two separate entries: Wimbledon covers the original club up to its final Premier League/Championship season in 2003–04, and AFC Wimbledon starts fresh from their own promotion into the National League in 2010–11, covering their entire climb back up through League Two and League One since. Milton Keynes Dons, who hold the old club's Football League membership, are tracked as their own separate entry throughout.

This is one of several judgement calls in the underlying data — clubs occasionally merge, relocate, fold, or reform under a new name, and there isn't always a single "correct" way to treat them. Where a call like this affects a club you follow, we're happy to hear about it.

How can two clubs show the same "Nth in Division"?

Occasionally, especially in the tightest rounds, both clubs' reveals will say something like "19th in League One" for both of them — even though the game correctly declared one of them the winner. That's not a bug, and it's not a genuine tie. It's rounding.

The "Nth in Division" label is built by rounding a club's average pyramid rank to the nearest whole number. Two clubs with, say, average ranks of 19.08 and 19.09 — a gap of just 0.01 — both round to "19th," even though one is still, by a hair, ranked above the other. The game itself never rounds when deciding who's correct; only the friendly on-screen label does.

To make this visible rather than confusing, every reveal also shows a genuine overall rank out of all clubs in the game (e.g. "58th overall"). That number is virtually never ambiguous — across all 117 clubs, there's exactly one pair with a truly identical average (Queens Park Rangers and Burnley, both 31.35), so if two clubs' overall ranks differ at all, however slightly, that's the real difference the rounded label was hiding.

We also considered replacing "Nth in Division" with the overall rank entirely — it's more precise, and it's genuinely how Manchester United can be simultaneously "3rd in the Premier League" (relative to today's 20 clubs) and still rank 1st out of all 117 tracked clubs overall, since their average finish has been so consistently strong. We kept both numbers rather than picking one: the division label is the more relatable, familiar framing for most players, while the overall rank is the precise, disambiguating one underneath it.

Classic Mode

Each run is 10 fixtures. The first is a blowout — an obvious gap in average rank. Each round after that draws from a progressively tighter gap, so fixture 10 comes down to a razor-thin margin: often a difference of less than half a rank point between the two clubs.

One wrong answer ends the run. Your best-ever run is remembered on your device, so you can try to beat it next time.

Survival Mode

Same difficulty curve as Classic Mode for the first 6 rounds — but instead of climbing all the way to the single hardest band and staying there, the difficulty holds steady from round 7 onward at a blend of round 7 and round 8's bands (roughly a 1.5–5 rank-point gap). Genuinely hard, and it stays that way indefinitely — but deliberately short of the closest, most coin-flip-like margins Classic Mode's final round draws from, so a long streak still reflects real knowledge rather than a run of lucky guesses.

You only get 5 seconds to answer each fixture, with no extra time as rounds go on, and there's no pause to catch your breath between fixtures either — a correct answer shows the reveal for a second and then moves straight on by itself. One wrong answer, or running out of time, ends your streak. Your score is how many fixtures you called correctly in a row before that happened — and just like Classic Mode, your best-ever score is remembered on your device.

Data sources

Standings are sourced from the Fjelstul English Football Database, englishfootballleaguetables.co.uk, and the Football Club History Database. Spotted something that looks off? Visit our contact page — the underlying data is public and the maths above is exactly how every number is calculated, so there's no hidden weighting or manual adjustment to untangle.