Which town, district or city is this season’s richest contributor of Premier League talent?
The answer might surprise you.
Football website Ticket-Compare.com has completed a full analysis of the home towns of every English footballer currently on the books of a Premier League club, in a bid to find out which region of the country has produced the most home-grown stars.
And unsurprisingly, there’s a number of players that come from England’s biggest cities.
But we’ve done the calculations and worked out the biggest contributor to the Premier League by population is in fact Leyton, with four top-flight players hailing from the east London district.
Bournemouth stars Benik Afobe and Adam Smith, along with Crystal Palace winger Andros Townsend and Hull City centre-back Curtis Davies were all born in Leyton, which has a population of just 14,184 (according to the 2011 census).
That’s a tasty return in top-flight talent from a relatively small population pool, don’t you think?
In comparison, four players claim the London borough of Enfield as their hometown, which has a population of over 300,000.
What’s more, Hull in the East Riding of Yorkshire can also boast four players in the Premier League, with a population of around 259,000.
The obvious big cities such as Birmingham (6), Liverpool (9), Manchester (7) and Sheffield (5) top the player hometown stats, but it’s the towns with small populations that interest us.
Rivalling Leyton are the likes of Hemel Hempstead, with Sheyi Ojo, Lee Grant and Tottenham’s Harry Winks each originating from the Hertfordshire town, which has a population of 94,932.
And then there’s the North East town of Durham, with a modest population of 50,000 that Sunderland hard man Lee Cattermole and Hull’s Greg Olley come from.
Interestingly, Southamtpon, whose club has one of the league’s most exciting and expansive youth networks, only has a single local player in the entire league with young defender Sam McQueen.
We do enjoy a good number crunch here at the DreamTeamFC HQ.
Ticket-Compare.com completed a full analysis of the home towns of every English footballer currently on the books of a Premier League club.