Originally Posted by
the other bob wilson
City were the fifth best supported club in the Football League in their first season in the top flight (1921/22) with an average gate of 33,340 and, although crowds dropped by an average of almost six thousand the following season, their figure of 27.620 was still enough to get them the eighth best supporting team rating. In 23/24 (the season when a missed penalty cost us the league title), our average gate again dropped, but only by a few hundred to 26,950 and this was enough for us to climb a place to seventh in the best supported team rankings.
After that though, in what I would argue was typical Cardiff City style, crowds dropped steadily until we were twenty ninth best supported club, with an average of just 15,424, in our FA Cup winning season.
Since then, we've made it into the top ten just the once - in 52/53 (our first season in Division One in almost a quarter of a century), our average crowd of 37,933 was, I believe, our highest ever and it was enough to make us the eighth best supported club in the country.
On the evidence of nearly a century in the Football League, I don't think I can agree with your contention that we would get 30,000 plus gates more often than not if we became an established Premier League club - yes, we'd fill the ground for the "big" clubs and maybe we would do now and again for the smaller Premier League ones as well if we were doing well, but all of the precedents say that the novelty would soon wear off and I'd be surprised if we were ever a realistic candidate to be a top ten club in terms of average gate again.