Deepdale, Preston North End

Capacity: 23,404
League: Championship
Opened: 1878

Today I visited Preston North End who kindly gave me access to inside the stadium. Paul, the maintenance manager, even took time out of his day to show me around and tell me a bit about the club and what it means to him. It turned out that as well as sharing a love of football, he also loved Marseille and had visited a lot of the stadiums abroad that I’d visited too.

He clearly loves Deepdale and is incredibly proud of how clean the stadium is (it’s incredibly well maintained, all the concourses are sparkling) and is positive about the future of Preston North End. On a side note, he told me he knew Tom Finney which my husband’s grandma would be incredibly excited to find out.

One of the things that he said that stuck with me was “I don’t call it a football stadium - I call it a football ground”. I agree - when you say “stadium” it has a totally different connotation. I liked that.

Fingers crossed I can get tickets to the Manchester City game at Deepdale in the League Cup - I’d love to go back to this beautiful ground.