The north-west side have spent 78 seasons in the lowest tier of the football league, putting them at the top of the Long Suffering Fans Index. But it's still harder to be a Leeds United fan, argues Dominic Smith , who has watched his side tumble down the divisions since he was at teenager

My fellow Leeds United fans, don't despair. So what if we support a club that have just been taken over by a man recently found guilty of tax evasion, and have suffered two relegations, two play-off final defeats (plus one semi-final), administration and a 15 point deduction, all in the last ten years?

We may regularly sell our best players to Norwich City, of all sides, and we might have sacked manager Brian McDermott in January only to reinstate him a day later. But it turns out we're the seventh least miserable set of fans in the Football League.

If after all that we're so merry, spare a thought for how fans of poor old Rochdale must feel. According to the brand new “Long-Suffering Fan Index”, it is supporters of the Dale who have most to feel down about. Even counting singer Lisa Stansfield among their celebrity fans isn't enough to cheer them up.

Since the club was founded in 1907, they have spent 78 seasons in the lowest tier of the Football League. During their 36-year unbroken residence in football’s basement from 1974-2010, fans of other clubs began to refer to League Two as ‘the Rochdale division’. After finally managing to escape, they lasted just two years in League One before succumbing to relegation.

The great Bill Shankly famously once said: “Of course, I didn’t take my wife to see Rochdale as an anniversary present. It was her birthday. Would I have got married in the football season? Anyway, it was Rochdale reserves.”

The index was compiled by makers of a new animated football TV show Warren United, which focuses on the ailing, but entirely fictional, Brainsford United. Statisticians crunched data from 220,000 match results since the inception of the Football League in 1888-9 to rank clubs by their lack of success, factoring in amount of games and trophies won in that time, as well as size of crowds. So it's easy to understand why Rochdale polled where they did, having won no silverware since they were admitted to the league in 1921. At least they have now won a trophy of sorts.

But this methodology seems flawed. Forgive me, Rochdale fans, but football related misery is all relative. Try telling fans of Manchester United that they're the cheeriest bunch in the land, as this study suggests, as they inundate phone-in shows with reasons why finishing seventh in the Premier League would be an unthinkable disaster for their team.

The great Leeds United side of the 1960s and 70s won two league titles, two domestic cups and the European Fairs Cup twice. But the joy that accompanied that era was never experienced by me. I was only three years old when Leeds won the last First Division championship in 1992, and 12 during the halcyon days of the Peter Ridsdale era that propelled us to the semi-finals of the Champions League. I took all that glory for granted.

My teenage years were spent watching us tumble down the divisions, but only after the fleeting possibility that we might return to the top flight after just two years. That was all wiped out when we lost to Watford 3-0 in the Championship play-off final in 2006. I might have been 16, but I wept like an infant after that game, and I'm not sure I'll ever forgive manager Kevin Blackwell for choosing to play my favourite player Matthew Kilgallon out of position at left-back.

It's the hope that gets you. I could never have imagined that it would take us three seasons to get out of League One when we bottomed out there in 2007, but two unsuccessful play-off attempts soon saw confidence turn into gloom.

So now we're back among the glut of also-ran teams that make-up the Championship, chugging along through another mediocre season which has seen us go on a losing streak since McDermott was reinstated. Expectation has been replaced by grim resignation. Maybe this is how Rochdale fans feel.

In January, Leeds were thumped 2-0 in the third-round of the FA Cup to a League Two side, who were experiencing their best cup run in eleven years. That team? Rochdale. Their long-suffering fans seemed pretty joyous that day. Imagine how bad we felt.

The 10 clubs with the longest-suffering fans

Rochdale AFC scores 66.12 on the Long Suffering Fans Index

Hartlepool United 64.72

Exeter City 64.08

Newport County 65.53

Colchester United (top in League One) 63.39

Southend United 63.12

Torquay United 62.96

Mansfield Town 62.90

Leyton Orient (top in London) 62.83

AFC Wimbledon 62.45



The 10 clubs whose fans have suffered the least

Manchester United 21.31

Liverpool 21.97

Arsenal 30.22

Chelsea 31.46

Tottenham Hotspur 32.44

Aston Villa 37.11

Leeds United 37.75

Everton 39.28

Manchester City 40.57

Newcastle United 41.27



Longest-suffering fans in each division

Premiership

Stoke City (Fan Suffering Index: 54.72; national rank: 43)



Championship

Bournemouth FC (Fan Suffering Index: 60.26; national rank: 23)



League One

Colchester FC (Fan Suffering Index: 63.39; national rank: 5)



League Two