Carlisle United’s owners have been voted the eighth worst in English football in an annual fans’ survey.

The poll, run by Against League Three, saw the Blues’ owners criticised by the supporters who took part.

Having been voted ninth worst last year, the 2019 survey again saw United’s chiefs score poorly in various categories.

Some 134 Carlisle fans took part in the survey, the fourth-highest number of responses behind fans from Chesterfield, Oldham and Charlton.

Against League Three said more than 3,000 fans from 141 different clubs were polled on their clubs’ owners in the third annual survey.

Fans were asked to rate owners out of 10 in six areas: communications, finance, football, stadium, treatment of fans and transparency.

The Blues scored lowest in “transparency” with an average score of 1.38, and highest on “finance” with 2.46.

Chesterfield’s Dave Allen was voted the worst owner, followed by Macclesfield’s Amar Alkhadi, Newcastle’s Mike Ashley, the Glazer family at Manchester United, Oldham’s Abdallah Lemsagam, SISU at Coventry and Kidderminster’s former owner Colin Gordon.

Accrington’s Andy Holt was voted the best owner, followed by Leicester’s Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha, Paul Ballantyne / Luton 2020 at Luton Town, Carol Shanahan at Port Vale, Blackpool’s Simon Sadler, Lincoln’s Clive Nates, Brentford’s Matthew Benham, Stephen Lansdowne at Bristol City, NSWE/Nassef Sawiris/Wes Edens at Aston Villa and Tranmere’s Mark and Nicola Palios.

James Cave from Against League 3 said: “This is a supporter-led initiative and it's a really interesting tool to see how clubs compare with one another, and how the view of supporters change over time.

“We don't work with the clubs or the leagues but we'd certainly encourage them to take the results of the survey into account.

“It's a real shame to see Carlisle United stay in the "worst 10", even slipping a place from last years survey.

“Against League 3 has always had an amazing response from Carlisle supporters and I've always found them to be a great set of fans. The number of responses we had from Carlisle rose slightly this year from 128 to 134 and unfortunately not many of them had great things to say about the current owners.

“Of course everyone understands that not every club can spend millions, buy the best players and have a fancy stadium, but we ask how well a club has communicated with its supporters, we look at whether a real community is being developed and we were told these were areas where Carlisle is really struggling.”

United have been invited to comment.

The results are in stark contrast to a different survey published earlier this season which rated the Blues high for "fan engagement".

They were said to be the fourth best club in the country in that respect, scoring highly in “dialogue, governance and transparency" in the Fan Engagement Index, published by faninsights.co.uk.

They said the Cumbrians were "always looking out for opportunities to engage with fans, and looking out for new ideas about how to make fan engagement work better."