crikey, you must have some memory. fwiw, i was arguing about the song because it had put off a friend of mine from attending anymore matches, which one would imagine is not something that would generally be aspired to when trying to build the club's fanbase.

now, we see a number of fans' opinions and thoughts about the strategy and the approach that the club appears to be set upon being dismissed repeatedly as somehow invalid because one person simply keeps telling them that they talking nonsense. a blind faith in what's going on isn't going to wash it, attendances have declined, match days have become quite moribund (of course the results don'r help), and a large part of that is to do with the dynamics of where the crowd are able to sit.

we got almost 5,000 average attendance in 2006, we're currently 1,500 down on that figure with one match to go, as I remember it, we need to be averaging gates of ~5,500 to both operate profitably and to satisfy future franchise requirements. There are good signs of british players being developed by the club, the manager is well-regarded by many (although he does have his detractors, as do all in his position), the early part of the season showed us what we can aspire to. But where are the crowds? where is the marketing that we were promised? – the only time I can remember us both receiving correspondence from the club is when s/t’s are up for renewal.

I don’t think the question is can we afford to open both stands, I think the question is whether we can afford not to imo.

ok, so what are the real problems and how should we go about solving them?

For reasons gone over many times on here, I would much prefer to be in the West stand. I'd pay more for the option, but the club aren't offering that. I think they may be making a mistake there, though without any real understanding of why they've made the decision, I can't be sure.

But the deal that they are offering is IMO great value for money. I had decided that I'd upgrade next season to the seats they're now classing as Silver, but no point in that, I'm going to go for Bronze. I can sit wherever I want in the allocated blocks, move if I don't like anybody nearby (a true boon for a grumpy old anti-social), take someone with me and sit next to them, sit out of the sun by arriving early which I always do, and stay home for the odd evening game on Sky where sun-in-eyes would be a real problem for me. Even at normal prices, Bronze is great value for money, but at geriatric/student special rates it's almost a giveaway.

Now, PLEASE dear management give us a team that's competitive and entertaining.

I'd say Lack of crowd numbers for first team fixtures
[2] Lack of action to address this.
[3] Lack of awareness in the local and wider community
[4] Competitiveness of first team (although this wasn't so much of an issue at the beginning of the season). 4 home wins isn't good enough.



Much harder to answer.

Getting enough people along to fill a stand !

Genius If only the club had had that idea