Leeds named English football’s loudest away following

There are few higher compliments in football than hearing the home end admit:

“Fair play, they were loud.”

Usually through gritted teeth.

Research from Midnite’s Built Different Index asked supporters which club brings the loudest away following.

Leeds United finished top overall with 9.6% of the vote.

Millwall were close behind on 8.5%, followed by Newcastle on 6.6%, Manchester United on 5.9% and Liverpool on 5.6%.

No trophy parade required.

Although Leeds fans may organise one anyway.

Away support is different

Home atmosphere gets all the famous songs, giant stands and European-night montages.

Away support is simpler.

A few thousand people shoved into one corner of someone else’s ground, usually after an absurdly early train, trying to make themselves impossible to ignore.

No home advantage.

No stadium acoustics designed around you.

Just noise.

And the fans we surveyed think Leeds do it better than anyone.

But the answer changes depending on who you ask

This is where things get interesting.

Among Premier League supporters surveyed, Newcastle actually came first for loudest away following, on 12.2%.

Championship fans chose Millwall, with an even bigger 14.2%.

So there isn’t one universally accepted answer.

There are three.

Which feels about right for football.

Ask supporters to rank away ends and sooner or later the conversation becomes a 40-minute argument about allocation sizes, acoustics and whether a Tuesday night in Stoke should count double.

Rivalries tell the story better

Some of the club-by-club numbers are even stronger.

Manchester United fans named Liverpool their loudest visitors, with 30.1% choosing them.

Everton supporters also picked Liverpool, on 36.4%.

Liverpool fans returned the compliment to Everton, with 22.8% naming the Toffees as the loudest away following they had hosted.

Then there’s the North East.

30.4% of Sunderland fans chose Newcastle as their loudest visitors.

And 36.5% of Newcastle fans selected Sunderland.

Mutual respect.

Of a sort.

Brighton and Palace agree too

Brighton and Crystal Palace also managed the extremely rare achievement of agreeing with each other.

30.0% of Brighton fans picked Palace as the loudest away following at their ground.

Going the other way, 20.8% of Palace fans chose Brighton.

Turns out there is common ground after all.

Unfortunately, it’s that the other lot are noisy.

The away-end table

Overall, though, Leeds take it.

And unlike some survey categories, this is one fans generally want to win.

Because away support says something about a club.

Who travels.

Who keeps singing when they’re losing.

Who turns up somewhere inconvenient on a freezing Tuesday night and decides everyone else in the stadium needs to hear about it.

According to the supporters we asked, nobody does that quite like Leeds.