Quote Originally Posted by Eric the Half a Bee View Post
Out of interest, do you really think that if we went down to League 1 we'd get sub 10,000 crowds again, or even worse, crowds of less than 5,000?

I don't. Not at all. Things have changed quite a bit since then.

Our crowds have fluctuated over the years - success = more through the turnstiles. At our current stadium we've had 4 seasons where our average crowd has been below 20k. This is our best run of home attendances since relegation from Division 1 in 1962.

As for Sunderland, in the 80s their crowd virtually halved after promotion to Division 1 and then relegation to Division 3. Their crowds doubled after they left Roker Park. Ours increased after we left Ninian Park and we haven't looked back.

The 80s and 90s were shit, but they ain't coming back.
If we were getting crowds of about 17 k when struggling this season I have no doubt whatsoever our crowds would be 12 k or so in the first season in league 1 and if we stayed there then crowds of around 10000 would be the norm

I travelled several times to watch us against Coventry in the new stadium up there and 15000 , with 1000 of us looked bloody awful

We may think we are a bigger club than Coventry but we ain't