5 Worst Stadiums of English Football League's 92 Ranked by Journalist

· GiveMeSport

West Ham United's London Stadium was included by the journalist, who has visited all 92 stadiums in the English Football League.

Groundhoppers are some of the most determined subcategories of football supporters. Typically lasting a lifetime, fans travel up and down the country to visit all 92 grounds in the English football league pyramid – and often rank them in the process.

Football stadiums provide clubs with an identity, a common ground for all of their supporters to visit and support 11 men week in week out. Oliver Holt of the Daily Mail who, for better or worse, has visited all 92 grounds – and, in return, has ranked his five worst .

Hillsborough

Holt insisted that Hillsborough, which has been the home of Sheffield Wednesday since 1899, was labelled as one of ‘the cathedrals of the English game’ – but since the disaster, which claimed the lives of 97 Liverpool fans, it’s cast a dark cloud over the ground. As such, the Daily Mail journalist said:

> "Hillsborough, and its Lepping Lane End in particular, has such a cursed legacy that part of me thinks it should have been demolished and that the club should have moved elsewhere.

Since its inception, it has been substantially added to – but Holt still concluded that the renovations have not helped its case. Instead, visiting Hillsborough is much more like an intrusion rather than an exciting day out. “It is hard to get past its association with so much death and despair and heartbreak and betrayal of supporters," he wrote.

- Team: Sheffield Wednesday - Capacity: 39,732 - Opened: September 2, 1899

London Stadium

Long before the days of West Ham United playing their football at the new and shiny London Stadium, they had the pleasure of playing at the much-beloved Upton Park – which is, rightfully, widely regarded as one of the greatest stadiums in Premier League history thanks to its storied history and untamed atmosphere. Holt wrote:

> "The old stadium at Upton Park was intimate and raucous and intimidating. The London Stadium is nothing like that.

Glitz and glamour aside, the east Londoners may have been able to boost their attendance figures with a state-of-the-art, and much bigger, ground – but it’s not unfair to say that it has far less character than their previous stomping ground, which is something the West Ham faithful have made clear to their owners, who Holt somewhat blamed.

"The owners spent a lot of time congratulating themselves on the deal they did to move to the new ground: they’re the archetypes of football owners who know the price of everything and the value of nothing," he wrote.

- Team: West Ham United - Capacity: 62,500 - Opened: May 5, 2012

Kassam Stadium

Home of Oxford United , the Kassam Stadium is actually Holt’s local ground – but that hasn’t prevented him from signing some hard truths. Providing a stinging review in the process, he wrote: “The best experience I’ve had at the Kassam Stadium was getting my Covid jab there during the pandemic.”

Oxford United, who currently ply their trade in League One, jumped ship to the 12,500-seater venue at the turn of the century – but that’s a decision that Holt believes was the incorrect one. The fans are not the issue, he insists, but instead the fact that they are missing a stand because of rising costs. The club have plans to move – and it ‘can’t come soon enough’, Holt claimed.

- Team: Oxford United - Capacity: 12,500 - Opened: 2001

Stadium MK

Holt kicked off his Stadium MK spiel by suggesting that he doesn’t ‘really care much’ about the 30,500-seater, before insisting the same level of indifference towards the club itself. “The stadium fits the club. It is a soulless, faceless, gloomy place,” he wrote.

“More than that, there is something rather forbidding about it. The club was born under a bad sign when it was jemmied out of Wimbledon and moved to Milton Keynes in 2003 and it has never been able to shake the stigma since.”

Given that MK Dons are plying their trade in the third tier of English football, League Two , Holt claimed that their north of 30,000 capacity is merely over the top for a club of their ambition and position. And, well, it’s difficult to disagree given they, on average, welcomed 8,563 fans on matchdays during the 2025/26 campaign.

- Team: MK Dons - Capacity: 30,500 - Opened: November 29, 2007

The Den

For years, Millwall ’s home of The Den has been given a bad wrap – perhaps thanks to the rise in filmography in football hooliganism – but Holt believes that the 20,146-seater in south London may be ‘modern and neat’ but it’s also ‘relatively characterless’.

On its nightmarish feeling, Holt wrote: “Not that there were any problems: even at Millwall, football has moved on since the 70s. But this still felt deeply dystopian: for their own safety, away fans walk to the ground through a long wire mesh cage that seems to have no end.”

He also added that he is currently banned from visiting The Den after his coverage of Liam Roberts’ challenge on Jean-Philippe Mateta in the FA Cup – but that hasn’t clouded his judgment. His 92nd-ranked rating is based merely on his experience as a neutral.

- Team: Millwall - Capacity: 20,146 - Opened: August 4, 1993

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