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Is there now a bigger club in the league than us.
First time in 20 years I have looked at fixtures and regarded us as the biggest team and nailed on favourites for promotion.
I miss the I will get my coat emoji!
There are loads of bigger clubs than us in the league ffs. Forest, Wednesday, Leeds, Derby etc
I think we have a decent chance of being somewhere in the top 6 though hopefully.
Here we go with the same old chestnut about what represents a 'big' club....
What I did notice is we have a nice run of games to start off with and if we can get a good return of points even if we don’t play well it’ll give us some extra time to evaluate squad and tactics before the transfer window.
Here you go have a chew on that!
https://www.european-football-statis...andcontent.htm
Last 30 years (rough average) & I know the line could be drawn anywhere.
Based on crowds 13 teams have bigger average crowds than City. Yes I know it's only one of the criteria of a big club & that most of those above City have spent a big chunk of those seasons in the PL but it does give a bit of perspective.
Leeds, 32,000
Derby 26,000
Middlesboro 24,000
Wednesday, 23,000
Forest, 22,000
West Brom 22,000
Birmingham 19,000
Blackburn 19,000
Stoke 19,000
Charlton 16,000
Fulham 15,000
QPR 15,000
Reading 14,000
City 13,000
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Wurzles 12,000
Jacks 10,000
As I said you can draw the line anywhere. However, if you look at the majority of those teams I've listed they were in similar positions with regards to crowds (I accept that few have a 8x increase like City). I didn't realise how much crowds had generally increased in since the 90's, in many cases you can see the effect of the new stadiums.
Don't agree with your analysis.. They've all gto potential to be 'big' again for sure but.. Forest were a big club for a bit a long time ago, shit before their time in the limelight and shit afterwards.. Derby.. wat? Why? Wednesday definitely nope, not these days.. Leeds, yes maybe.
Sludge will be along to back you up in a bit though, claiming that we are but minnows compared to the big fish such as Bradford.. probably.
Frankly, who cares.. we're a biggish club in a great city, (far better city than any of those you mentioned), with a decent recent history and bags of potential.
The fixtures are brilliant. Tough finish with long aways but hey ho it should be sewn up by early March.
But I don't think anyone is looking at us as a big club over the past 30 years and anyone making that claim doing so over much shorter, potentially more relevant, time period. Could you not do the same just with the past 10 years? I don't think last years crowd was reflective of our stature so would argue that can be removed from calculation.
My instant reaction was that a team like Boro may be an incredibly difficult game in the run in of the season or they may be mid-table or even fighting off relegation - a very inexperienced manager but one unlikely to be sacked quickly - so until you're about 15 games in it's very difficult to know who is a contender. At this point I'm looking out for who we play in the sun and who we're likely to be watching on a wet, midweek game in the middle of winter only.
I think by every testable metric they are bigger clubs; fan base, trophies, interest generated by neutrals.
The only thing you won’t get is recent time in the top flight and unless you want to say Swansea and Watford are bigger than Cardiff I don’t think you can use that
I don’t care that’s why I can admit it, I honestly don’t think it’s important at all.
People always go on about us being a bigger club than so and so, but the whole thing has no permanence to it - there was a time when teams like Bury, Blackpool, Coventry, Oxford, Oldham, Swindon and Notts County would have been considered "bigger" than us.
What can be said is that with two years worth of parachute payments to go on top of a seasons worth of television money from the Premier League, more or less the same squad that were promoted to the top flight just over a year ago, a greatly reduced debt thanks to a debt to equity conversion by our owner, an average gate of over 31,000 (the eleventh largest in last season's Premier League) and a manager whose record in this division is very good, we are, rightly in my view, considered one of the favourites to win the Championship next season. Therefore, I think it's reasonable to state that we are one the biggest teams in the Championship for the coming season, but that status will soon start to change if we adopt a "bargain basement" approach to our recruiting this summer and will definitely do so if we are still in the Championship when the parachute payments run out.