Villa and Wolves languishing in Premier League mid-table of Instagram followings

Unsurprisingly Manchester United led the league with 63.3 million followers on Instagram, with Aston Villa eighth with 3.7 million and Wolves in 11th with 2.46 million.

Japanese gaming site 6takarakuji also analysed how many Instagram users interacted with the accounts - the average Wolves post had 28,300 "likes" by fans and Villa had 25,400 "likes".

Wolves fans performed better than most other fans for engaging with their club's social media accounts, with 1.2 per cent interacting with posts, whereas 0.72 per cent of Aston Villa fans liked or commented on their club's posts.

The Midlands football giants lagged behind the global brands of football. Manchester United had 276,600 "likes". Manchester City had the second highest number of followers with 50.2 million, and 141,200 likes.

Liverpool had the third most followers with 43.9 million with an average of 217,600 likes per Instagram post, 76,400 more than Manchester City's average likes per post.

Content manager of 6takarakuji, Sayaka Yamamoto, said: "The Premier League is the biggest league in the world, so it's interesting to see which teams have the biggest following on Instagram, as football fans are renowned for being very loyal and passionate to their club.

"It’s amazing to see that the 20 teams in the league have more than 200 million followers combined, which reflects how popular the Premier League is."

He added: "It's also fascinating to note that although Burnley ranked as having the lowest number of followers, for a town of a population of 94,700, it is still an incredibly well-supported club."

Burnley were the subject of a fly-on-the-wall documentary last season, which could be an option for Villa and Wolves if they want to reach more followers, as would winning a trophy.

Both Villa and Wolves also have popular X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook pages, as well as many accounts run by fans which have thousands of followers.