The 7 most miserable EFL Championship grounds named and ranked by AI | OneFootball

Some Championship grounds are happier places to visit than others, so FLW have asked ChatGPT to rank the most miserable in the second tier.

With 24 clubs in the EFL Championship, there's a range of different experiences to sample. But some places are unhappier than others, so we asked AI to rank the seven most miserable.

The EFL Championship is a diverse place. From former top flight clubs to former non-leaguers who've gone a come a long way, all life is here. But part of the experience of the football supporter is misery. The life of the fan can be an unhappy one at times, so we decided to ask AI to rank the seven most miserable and then dissect its opinions.

Of course, how it defines what "miserable" means is open to question. Is a ground that's full but quiet better than one that's empty? Are modern grounds happier or sadder than the plate glass and steel edifices that have sprung up over the last three decades? ChatGPT has ranked them, so let's take a look at what it said.

It's not surprising to see Stoke City on this list. Since relegation from the Premier League in 2018, the Potters have failed to finish above 14th in the Championship. ChatGPT describes the Bet365 Stadium as "noisy in the past, but now regarded as too big for the crowd".

Stoke's average home attendance for 2024-25 was 22,704 - and it's worth reflecting on more than 20,000 people turning out every week to watch a team which has been underperforming as much as Stoke have in recent years - and the Bet365 Stadium holds 30,089, so it was 74% full even last season.

Notably, crowds for Stoke's first two home games this season have been over 25,000, and fans have been rewarded with a better start than recent seasons. No mention was made of it being cold, though. Those open corners could still do with being filled in.

The CBS Arena has been a contentious home for Coventry City. Twice during the 2010s, the former owners of the club moved the Sky Blues in disputes with former owners, first to Northampton and then to Birmingham City. The stadium was then bought by the rugby club Wasps, and when they folded it was sold to Mike Ashley. All's well that end well, though, since the ground has finally been reunited with the club.

But it's not a perfect venue. Its location is suboptimal, and it has the air of being part of a retail complex about it. ChatGPT describes it as being "modern but corporate", which does sound fair. But it is at least home, and there was a time when there were real concerns over Coventry would have one in their home city for a while. Still, Frank Lampard's team are doing well, so AI may be basing its ranking on old data, here.

Talking of imperfect new-build grounds... It's tempting to think that there might be a curse on Oxford United's Kassam Stadium. Only six months into the start of its construction in 1996, work stopped because contractors weren't getting paid, and the ground ended up opening - eventually, in 2001 - without one stand built. It remains three-sided to this day.

And no-one likes it. It's a long way from Oxford city centre, and having a fence and car park at one end doesn't help with the atmosphere. It's named for and still owned by a hated former owner of the club to whom they have to pay rent, and planning permission was granted last month for the club to leave for a new home elsewhere in the city.

ChatGPT describes it as "isolated, poorly laid out, low-energy unless for a derby". You'd disagree on the last of those three points, but the first two are difficult to argue with.

The first "traditional" ground to make the list, Ewood Park loses points with ChatGPT for being too big for its purpose. AI describes it as a "historic ground with diminishing crowds; atmosphere often cold and dominated by away fans". It's wrong about crowds there "diminishing". In fact, Blackburn's crowds increased year-on-year every season since crowds were allowed back in following the pandemic, though it does remain the case that the average is only just over half-full.

There have certainly been times when Ewood Park has been unhappy in recent years. Relations between Blackburn fans and the owners have long been strained and are currently in a state of uneasy détente. And it should be remembered that the population of Blackburn with Darwen is only 160,000, so even attracting home crowds of 16,000 is an achievement.

3 Bristol City - Ashton Gate

ChatGPT has a bit of a turn-over Ashton Gate, describing it as having "decent support but aging amenities", which again seems a little out of date. There was a time when not a great deal of work had been carried out at Ashton Gate, but two new stands were built there between 2014 and 2016, while another was extended. Ashton Gate may be many things, but it certainly isn't "aging".

Furthermore, there's little reason for Bristol City fans to be particularly miserable at the moment. Their team has improved its final league position year-on-year over each of the last five years and reached the play-offs last season. For a club that doesn't receive parachute payments from the Premier League, that's a notable achievement.

2 Sheffield United - Bramall Lane

There might be a little recency bias at play, here. Bramall Lane is one of the traditional homes of football. It's been fairly tastefully rebuilt for the all-seater era, and attendances are decent. But Sheffield United have had a dismal start to the new season, and ChatGPT's description of an "unhappy home support" isn't wide of the mark when it comes to the consecutive defeats with which they've started the 2025-26 season.

Bramall Lane is a decent venue, but there's probably a thesis to be written on the psychological effects upon supporters of following a yo-yo club, which Sheffield United briefly became, but no matter how poor their start to the season has been, the atmosphere around the club still isn't as bad as it is at...

1 Sheffield Wednesday - Hillsborough

There's never going to be much doubt who ended up in top spot here, was there? Hillsborough is a miserable place in just about every respect. ChatGPT reveals one fascinating statistic in saying: "By far the lowest fan satisfaction of all Championship grounds at just 0.91/10 in recent surveys." Hillsborough is tired and dated, shabby after literally decades of having next to no significant renovation work carried out upon it. It was touch and go, whether one of its stands would even be open for this season on safety grounds.

The fans are certainly miserable at the moment, with significant protests having already been held against club owner Dejphon Chansiri this stadium. With the Sheffield Wednesday Supporters Trust calling for further boycotts of home matches, perhaps the only question worth asking at this point is whether a football ground can be considered "miserable" if it's empty.