London football club guide

Germany were dazzling during World Cup 2014, and you can catch three of the squad at Arsenal, with Mesut Özil, Per Mertesacker and Lukas Podolski all regular starters.

Where to go: Emirates Stadium, Hornsey Rd, London N7 7AJ. Arsenal.com. Arsenal tube.

Ticket price: £27-£129.50 non-mems, available here.

Where to drink: The Gunners pub, 204 Blackstock Rd, is an eye-searing shrine to everything red and white, plastered with so much memorabilia that it looks like Arsenal has vomited all over the place.

Where to eat: Piebury Corner, 209 Holloway Rd, dishes up fine match-day pies and craft beer.

Brentford’s greatest appeal is the fact that it’s the only ground in the UK with a pub on each corner. The football might not be top class, but the drinking and the atmosphere definitely is.




Where to go: Griffin Park, Braemar Rd, Brentford, TW8 0NT. Brentford FC.com. Brentford rail.

Ticket price: £23-£27, available from Brentford FC.

Where to drink: If a ground has a pub on each corner, it’s almost immoral to not do a pub-crawl. The Griffin, The Royal Oak, The Princess Royal and The New Inn will be your four stops, and the ground’s proximity to Fuller’s brewery means there’s plenty of ale to go around.

Where to eat: The Griffin has a barbecue out back, where £4 will get you a burger stuffed with more meat, cheese and fat than is ever advisable.

At the last World Cup, Belgium was the team of choice for all right thinking hipsters who love attacking football. And now, south London’s Charlton Athletic have been bought out by Belgian business tycoon Roland Duchatelet and he is hellbent on turning them into the footballing equivalent of moules frites. Delicious, and full of potential.


Where to go: The Valley, Floyd Rd, SE7 8BL. cafc.co.uk. Charlton rail.

Ticket price: £15-£35 available from cafc.co.uk/tickets

Where to drink: If you want to feel like you’re drowning in memorabilia, and who doesn’t, your best bet is The Bugle Horn, 6 The Village. If you fancy something fancier, you aren’t far from Meantime Brewery’s Greenwich Union at 56 Royal Hill.

Where to eat: The Valley Café, 20 Charlton Church Lane, is suitably packed on matchday with punters filling up on fried breakfasts, but you’ll have to be early to get a seat.

Chelsea has more Brazilian players than any other English team, with Felipe Luis, Oscar, Ramires and Willian all on their books. So there’s basically no better place in London to watch a bunch of footballers run around for a whole season desperately trying to forget the World Cup. 

Where to go: Stamford Bridge, Fulham Rd, SW6 1HS. Chelsea.com. Fulham Broadway tube.

Ticket price: £50-£69 non-mems, £23.50-£46 restricted view, available at Chelsea.com. They also operate a ticket exchange system.

Where to drink: The White Horse or ‘Sloaney Pony’, 1-3 Parsons Green, may be home to gaggles of Rahs and Hooray Henries midweek, but come match day, it’s the perfect place for a pre-game drink. It’s popular with away fans too, so it’s never too lairy.

Where to eat: The Cock Tavern, 360 North End Rd, for fancy pantsy gastropub grub.

South London's Crystal Palace beat Austrian minnows GAK Graz a stonking 13-1 in a friendly just before the start of the 2014/15 season. Admittedly, barring a natural disaster of some kind or the opposition being struck down with a debilitating bout of food poisoning, the chances of them putting that many past a Premier League team is negligible, but at least they're starting on the right foot.

Where to go: Selhurst Park Stadium, Whitehorse Lane, SE25 6PU. cpfc.co.uk. Selhurst or Norwood Junction rail.

Ticket price: Tickets for members-only, available from cpfctickets.com. Memberships from £25.

Where to drink: Local ultras the Holmesdale Fanatics drink at The Portmanor at 104 Portland Road, where the atmosphere is obviously second to none.

Where to eat: Speroni Restaurant may not be all that close to the ground (4 Tudor Court, CR8 2LA), but it’s owned by and named after Palace’s Argentinian keeper Julian Speroni, serving up plenty of meaty Italian dishes to get you through the game.

Ok, so the newly relegated riverside team’s stadium may not be as grand or modern as their competitors', but what it lacks in glamour it makes up for by having a delightful cottage in the corner of the ground.

Where to go: Craven Cottage, Stevenage Rd, SW6 6HH. fulhamfc.com. Putney Bridge tube.

Ticket price: £20-£35 non-mems, available from fulhamfc.com.

Where to drink: The Bricklayers Arms, 32 Waterman St, calls itself ‘London’s permanent beer festival’ which may sound like a recipe for crippling cirrhosis, but it’s still a great match day pub.

Where to eat: Perched majestically on the river, The Crabtree is everything you’d expect from a Fulham pub: beer and food pairings, life drawing classes and a cracking barbecue. It’s not quite greasy fried chicken, but hey, this is west London.

If nothing gets you on your feet quite like a nice dramatic round of penalties, head out east to Leyton Orient. The League One scrappers were locked in a desperate battle for promotion to the Championship last season, which ended, badly, at Wembley with an epic penalty shootout. There could be more of that nail-biting on the cards this season.


Where to go: Matchroom Stadium, Brisbane Road, E10 5NF. LeytonOrient.com. Leyton tube.

Ticket price: £21-£40, available from the Leyton Orient Shop.

Where to drink: The Leyton Orient Supporters’ Club is located in the West Stand of the stadium itself and has got more CAMRA awards than most pubs have pork scratchings. Every ground could do with one of these.

Where to eat:
Gym’s Kitchen, a ‘protein-based’ restaurant on Leyton High Road that’s popular with players and fans alike, and serves up enough meat to put cows on the endangered species list.

Got a thing for bad boys? South London’s famous Millwall (the subject of countless hooliganism films, books and documentaries) are the ones for you. As one of their own songs goes, 'no one likes us, and we don’t care’.

Where to go: The Den, Zampa Road, SE16 3LN. millwallfc.co.uk. South Bermondsey rail.

Ticket price: £20-£30 available from millwallfc.co.uk.

Where to drink: There aren’t too many pubs around the ground, and those that are there aren’t the nicest, so a lot of fans drink around London Bridge before heading to the ground. If you’re intent on a local though, The Blue Anchor is the best bet at 251 Southwark Park Rd.

Where to eat: The Victory Fish Bar at 199 Rotherhithe New Rd is all batter and banter thanks to its fried food and congenial owner. Perfect match day fodder.

The big signing of QPR’s 2014/15 season is TV pundit and former England international Rio Ferdinand. So after a match of solid clearances and top-notch scowling, head to his Twitter page (@RioFerdy5) for his ever-entertaining post-match waffle.


Where to go: Loftus Road Stadium, South Africa Rd, W12 7PJ. qpr.co.uk. White City tube.

Ticket price: £25-£50 available from qpr.co.uk/tickets or via ticket exchange through viagogo.co.uk

Where to drink: Head to the Crown and Sceptre, 57 Melina Road, for a good middle ground between traditional pre-match boozer and sniffy gastropub.

Where to eat: Can you ever have too much pie and mash? There’s only one way to find out, and that’s by gorging yourself on the stuff at somewhere like Cooke’s Pie and Mash, 48 Goldhawk Rd. Go soon, it’s threatened with redevelopment.

If you’re a glutton for punishment, few teams will satisfy your greed in quite the same way as Spurs. Just like England, the potential is all there – beautiful football, glorious history, crisp white uniforms that gleam in the sunlight. But still they stumble. For those who love them, the love runs deep, but be warned, the life of a Spurs fan is littered with heartbreak.

Where to go: White Hart Lane, 748 High Rd, Tottenham, N17 0AP. tottenhamhotspur.com. White Hart Lane rail.

Ticket price: £32-£81 available from tottenhamhotspur.com and via ticket exchange from stubhub.co.uk.

Where to drink: The development vultures were circling The Antwerp Arms, 168-170 Church Rd, but a crowdfunding campaign was backed by local MPs and celebs, and it’s now set to be north London’s first community-owned pub, and it’s a corker.

Where to eat: Tottenham is home to a big Turkish community, which means you can skip the roast beef, eel pies and fish and chips here in exchange for perfect kebabs from Istanbul Empire (665 Tottenham High Road) for probably the best pre-match meal in London.