‘Which Player Do You Fancy Then?’ Locating the Female Ethnographer in the Field of the Sociology of Sport. This article examines the gendered nature of sport fan ethnographies and addresses the often-overlooked relationship between a researcher’s gender identity and their research environment. It seeks to critically explore the debates that surround female researchers in masculine settings, and argues that the position of a female researcher is both enabling and limiting within the scope of data collection on football fans. Drawing on a qualitative data set that examines football fans of Everton Football Club, observational data collected over the 2012/13 Premier League seasons are used to illustrate how the researcher reflexively celebrated, negotiated, subverted and at times froze her femininity. The silencing of the female ethnographer in sport research is attributed to the prominent position that both male sports fans and male scholars occupy in the field. This paper advocates for an alternative approach to the study of sports fans that encourages more reflexively on behalf of the researcher. Keywords: Football, qualitative methodology, gender, reflexivity, female academic, performativity. Introduction I turn to speak to the guy next to me about the goal just scored…He looks me up and down and remarks, ‘which player do you fancy then?’…I don’t answer…I am never going to be one of the lads. Fieldwork Note: 28/9/2012 This article discusses the unique problems female researchers face carrying out ethnographic research in the hyper-masculine field of football fandom. Such methodological and gender-related issues surfaced during the collection of fieldwork data on Everton Football Club, for a wider study that explores the match day experience and spatial configuration of sports fans on game day. As the above reflects, my status as a female researcher studying football fans often resulted in members of the Everton football community identifying my position in terms of my gender identity and sexuality. 1 As research progressed and more time was spent in the field, I found myself adopting a more self-aware approach to the field and to my work, because of the expectations that were placed on me as a young female. 2 Female researchers from a variety of fields have reflected on being forced to tolerate, or at least not openly object to sexist remarks and behaviour in order to maintain rapport with research participants. 3 For example, in her study on the ‘boy racer’ culture, Lumsden highlighted the tendency to be treated as a sexual object and the subject of sexual advances from those in her research community. 4 Additionally, Horn reflected on the problematic situations that occurred when she experienced a clash between her expectations and values, as a feminist researcher, and the expectations and values of the police research community she was studying. 5 However, female scholars in the field of football studies have tended 1