The figure of 26,000 has been mentioned a few times on here as if it some sort of high water mark which is not going to be reached for the foreseeable future, yet we've exceeded that figure this season and we had a gate of getting towards 29,000 as recently as April 2016. What needs to be said is that on both of these occasions there were deals for cheap or free tickets which undoubtedly played a big part in getting the crowds so high, but they do give the lie to claims that we cannot get more than the current levels of attendance because large numbers of people are not attending because of things Vincent Tan said or did - far more likely is that people either cannot afford tickets to attend games with "normal" prices (despite City's seemingly comparing well with many other Championship clubs) or they can afford the prices, but opt to pick and choose their games.

The latter would explain why we had nearly 24,000 at the Villa game in August and yet 6,000 fewer were there three days later when we played Sheffield United, despite having turned in one of our best performances at the new ground in our previous match.

If you look through our history, you will see that we've always had a core of fussy fans who are drawn to our home matches when we are playing a "big" team and then disappear again for months on end. Sometimes the lure of a Bank Holiday game draws a few of them back (I'm pretty sure we'll see a 20,000 plus gate for Fulham on Boxing Day and then we'll get a crowd about a quarter of that size less than a fortnight later when we play Mansfield in the Cup), but I'd suggest that we will have to wait until, possibly, the wurzels game in late February or Wolves' visit in early April for the next time we get as big a crowd for a normally priced match.

Those who are seemingly drawn to games because of who we are playing will watch the action with other City fans (rather than the away end) and will cheer when we score, but will they be back for what Neil Warnock would call the bread and butter game which follows next? No way!

It's been ever thus (certainly from well before Vincent Tan arrived at the club) and, in my opinion, Cardiff City has a lot more of these type of fans as a proportion of what I'll call their optimum support than most other clubs. It was a little different for our one season in the Premier League, but when we were in the old First Division, there would be wild fluctuations in attendances from one home match to another and, nearly always, the explanation would be that large numbers of people in South Wales came along to watch the opposition, then disappeared again for the following game when we were playing more mundane opponents.