Most Miserable Football Fans: Which Premier League Team Frustrates Fans the Most?

By Bookies.com Staff

Mar 10th, 2026 12:53 PM EDT

Supporting a Premier League club is supposed to be fun. For some fanbases, it very rarely is.

The team at Bookies.com has built a Misery Index to settle the argument once and for all -- a composite score drawing on online fan sentiment, years since the club's most recent league title, and the gap between where bookmakers expected each side to be in August and where they actually sat on March 5. Twenty clubs ranked. One clear winner.

Tottenham Hotspur: Nobody Else Is Close

A score of 100. Maximum misery. Spurs fans, you have earned this.

Tottenham went into this season still carrying 17 years without a domestic trophy -- last lifting the Carling Cup in 2008 -- and sitting 16th in the Premier League, miles below where the August odds suggested they would be. Online sentiment from their fanbase was among the most negative in the division. The numbers lined up and pointed in one direction.

Since our data was captured, Ange Postecoglou did deliver the Europa League title last May in Bilbao -- only to be sacked weeks later. Thomas Frank came in, lasted eight months, and was replaced by Igor Tudor. A European trophy, two managers and a relegation battle later, Spurs fans could be forgiven for wondering what exactly it takes to get a settled, successful football club. The 17-year wait is technically over. The misery, very much, is not.

Newcastle United: Carabao Cup Winners, But Only Just in Time

Newcastle score 77 on the index -- and for most of the period our data covers, the case for them ranking even higher was genuinely strong.

The Toon Army spent the best part of seven decades without a major domestic trophy, waiting through relegations, Kevin Keegan's near-misses and years of Mike Ashley's ownership. When the Saudi-led consortium took over in 2021, expectations shifted dramatically -- which is precisely why a league position that fell short of those ambitions pushed the misery score so high. Newcastle did end the drought in March 2025, beating Liverpool in the Carabao Cup final through goals from Dan Burn and Alexander Isak. But ask any Newcastle fan and they'll tell you the wait was long enough.

Burnley, West Ham and Wolves: Miserable in Their Own Ways

Burnley (71), West Ham (62) and Wolverhampton Wanderers (60) complete the top five, each with a different story to tell.

Burnley's supporters have watched their club yo-yo between divisions for years, with the trophy cabinet doing nothing to ease the pain. West Ham's frustrations go beyond the table. The move from Upton Park to the London Stadium in 2016 still rankles with large sections of the support -- a sense that the club's identity was sacrificed for commercial scale, and one that a mid-table league position has done little to address. Wolves fans, meanwhile, have had a taste of European football in recent years, which makes the subsequent drop back down the table feel sharper than it might otherwise.

Who Has It Best? The Happiest Fanbases in the Division

Manchester City score 0 -- the only club in the index with nothing to moan about. Fifteen years of winning virtually everything will do that.

Liverpool (11) are close behind, with a fanbase whose recent haul of silverware keeps the misery well at bay despite the weight of expectation. Leeds (20) complete the bottom three -- back in the Premier League after years in the Championship, which puts a different perspective on things compared to the clubs at the top of our table.

METHODOLOGY

To build the Misery Index, Bookies.com scored each of the 20 Premier League clubs across three measures: online fan sentiment from Hootsuite data, years since the club's last major trophy, and the difference between their preseason odds to win the Premier League title (sourced from BetMGM) and their actual table position as of March 5. The three scores were combined and normalised to produce a final figure out of 100.

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