Enda McEvoy: When you're arguing over the biggest club in football, don't forget the intangibles - like aura

The Athletic came up with a corker the other day. What is the biggest club in English football?

Liverpool's Mohamed Salah and Manchester United's Harry Maguire battle for the ball at Anfield last January. Photo: Martin Rickett/PA Wire. 

For human beings it’s straightforward. In case of emergency, break glass.

For sports editors and sportwriters it’s equally uncomplicated. In case of space to fill, concoct a list.

People love lists. They fulfil the human need to quantify and classify and clarify. They constitute harmless fun designed with only one objective in mind. Well, two objectives. Filling space and starting rows.

The Athletic came up with one such corker the other day. What is the biggest club in English football?

To help answer their own question they devised a complicated formula that included categories such as Crowds, Global Fanbase, Major Trophies, Trophies Won in Last 20 Years, Commercial Revenues and so on. It’s the kind of thing you’d have dreamed up yourself. When you were about nine.

There were no surprises about the clubs in first and second.

Manchester United and Liverpool. Couldn’t have been anyone else.

After that it got trickier. Chelsea in third, one place above Arsenal? Really? Marble halls and a century of stateliness undone by 15 years of pump-priming by some Russian?

Manchester City in fifth, one place above Spurs? Granted, I may be ever so slightly compromised on this one but a decade of oil-sponsored success does not equate to Himalayan achievement.

Newcastle in seventh, above Everton? Surely not.

Leicester City eleventh, above Leeds United, Sunderland and West Ham, in part because they apparently possess a bigger global fanbase? Ah here.

Here’s one category The Athletic missed out on. It may sound nebulous but it’s very real. Aura.

Aura. Some clubs have it, other don’t and shouldn’t be expected to. For a slew of obvious reasons Leeds have it.

For a slew of similarly obvious reasons Leicester don’t.

Compliments to the guys at The Athletic nonetheless. They got me arguing. Job done.