Why fans flock to Championship - more people watch Sunderland than Juventus!

High winds and flooding made travelling by road perilous in some parts. It is nigh on impossible to know if your train will even turn up, let alone reach its destination.

But there is no VAR and a desperate need to prove there is life outside the Premier League.

On New Year’s Day, fans reminded the footballing public that although the Championship is second tier by name, it is by no means second rate in terms of its support.

Instead, the average attendance across the day’s 12 matches topped a remarkable 25,000, highlighting the passion of fans in a league that has become the 10th-best attended in the world.

Average attendances are up more than 21 per cent on last season, proving that even without Match of the Day-style gloss and a bumper broadcast deal, there is still a product worth investing in.

A staggering 42,714 turned out to watch Sunderland’s game against Preston on Monday. In fact, the average attendance at the Stadium of Light this season eclipses that of Italian giants Juventus. On the same day, more people watched Leeds hammer the final nail in Wayne Rooney’s Birmingham coffin at Elland Road than Spanish giants Barcelona’s clash with Atletico Madrid in December.

Not since the early 1950s, when the post-war high led thousands to football grounds to make the most of the freedoms they had been robbed of, has football been this popular. So the key question is, why?

No doubt fans being locked out of stadiums for nearly a year and a half due to the Covid pandemic has played its part.

Fans desperate to be back in the thick of it on the terraces, the smell of Bovril in their nostrils, have returned in their droves and stayed.

The figures also come despite the backdrop of rising inflation. Take your children to a game, buy