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An investigation of clubs' Twitter followers throws up some surprising results, with pockets of Toon Army, Sunderland and Boro fans in far flung lands with little obvious link to the region.

Newcastle United have the largest Twitter following with 257,900 fans subscribing to the club’s feed @nufcofficial. Almost half of those are in the UK but there are also substantial followings in the United States (10.8% of the total), Indonesia (3.6%) and Japan (also 3.6%).

In terms of cities, the biggest number of United followers are unsurprisingly in Newcastle (10.9%) followed by Liverpool, Manchester and London. But the Indonesian capital of Jakarta and Bogota, capital of Columbia, come next in the list for Toon Army followers.

Sunderland have the next biggest Twitter following, with 143,500 subscribers to their feed. Bizarrely, more than half of those are in the United States, with more people in New York than in Sunderland following the club.

Its top five cities for Twitter followers are made up of London, Philadelphia and Los Angeles.

Middlesbrough have a more modest 25,300 followers, but they still come from 44 countries and 151 cities.

After the UK and the US, the biggest enclave of Boro followers are in the home of beautiful football, Brazil, suggesting samba hero Juninho’s time at the Riverside helped boost the club’s popularity.

Hartlepool United FC’s 9,700 followers are from 29 countries and 163 cities, while even struggling Darlington have 6,000 followers from 27 countries and 211 cities. Blyth Spartans have 3,700 people following them on Twitter from 22 countries and 259 cities.

The study also highlights which Tweet from our clubs was most repeated by fans - again with differing results.

While Newcastle fans highlighted the May 13 win over QPR that guaranteed the club its Premier League survival and Boro fans celebrated their win over the Black Cats in the Capital One Cup, Sunderland’s most re-tweeted message was about tickets going on sale for a 2014 concert at the Stadium of Light by boyband One Direction.