Great times though. I never thought I would see us competing with big money teams like Birmingham and Wrexham at the top of a league one table and us having spent over one million pounds on players.
I really appreciate all the time and money ML is putting into our club and want to simply go along for the ride.
Chelsea might be a stretch but there must be other ‘West London’ sports grounds that might be more attractive. Good point about the training ground(s) and where they are located. Our crowds are pretty poor for a club that’s been vying for promotion for the majority of the season and am so sure that will be an action point on their agenda.
We need to make up our minds...if we are to be an Academy with a moderately successful team attached, I doubt ML cares about the crowds, as in theory the sale of young players will fund the club rather than success on the field, moany old subscribers or putting up prices to £66 a seat. If we think he wants Prem success and vast TV friendly crowds, it would be easier to buy a bigger club than try to transplant our dwindling fan base to an area which already has teams fighting for attention. (See Mr Winkelman's 'How I made a terrible miscalculation about potential fanbase...')
We will never know what our attendances might have been in the lost Championship season.
Obviously bigger clubs in the Championship means bigger away gates.
But personally I’m sceptical that the home gate would increase that much if we get back to the second tier.
I just feel like for the random floating punter, anything less than the EPL is not that appealing and is just bucketed as “lower league football”.
I have no basis for this other than pure supposition, but still.
Even for the less glamorous EPL teams, I remember (being London-based) the old ads in the Evening Standard for the likes of Charlton or Fulham, bigging up upcoming games against Arsenal, Liverpool or whoever.
Yes, a toddler could understand that Chelsea didn’t exactly collapse into ruin when Abromovich left, and only left because he was forced to, so what’s your point?
I would suggest even if we only got a slight rise in home attendance and bigger away attendances, it might do us quite nicely @PBo depending on the ambition of our owner and our fanbase. If we cannot dream of bigger crowds and hope for progression...there seems little point to the whole exercise.
The home crowd will definitely go up, but it's that huge unknown of by how much. You'd have thought our home crowds would have been higher with how well we've done the first half of this season - top 2 for most of it.
Hopefully they won't have to entertain simply giving another 500-1000 to the away club most weeks, if we can't fill it.
What is certain, is that we'll need a lot more incentives than a couple of busses in from the station and parking for 80-100 cars at that school.
Sadly your second para hits on the only way to get out attendances from the low 5s to the mid 7s.
The fanbase is there, I was amazed that we sold out for Villa in the League Cup, but for some reason getting more people to come week in week out is impossible.
Must be, if people come once and it's a nightmare they won't come back.
Promotion was expected to pretty much guarantee 23 sold out games last time if allowed. Almost every team in the championship has a huge following and regularly take a few thousand away, and the home games against the bigger names also get more attractive for our fans. You'd get the odd Oxford but with it being more winnable and local it would have it's own charm , and we could even get people who can't get in other weeks. The publicity and press coverage multiplies up too.
The Chelsea comparison is ridiculous though, they with their recent history and placement would be worth several billion to the Americans regardless of status. If ML was to leave us with contracts we couldn't finance and another billionaire didn't fall from a tree it could become very sticky very quickly.
ML is a multi billionaire , I think once the academy is up and running he’ll turn attention to AP and its surroundings, he’ll buy the land around AP including much of the industrial estate, he’ll give notice of the termination of the leases of the businesses situated on the estate and in partnership with the council he’ll find alternative office / factory space in the area ( must be lots of empty offices in the area) . Once the businesses are gone it’ll be straight forward to build the second access road, car parks , bus termini , shops restaurants, bowling alley , health club, luxury flats, and rebuilding Adams Park to modern standards with increased capacity.
Before anyone shouts me down and accuses me of wanting to destroy local businesses and jobs, the above is what I think a multi billionaire owner of a football club will do, rather than my own opinion.
I do agree that all of that area of investment comes later in a plan but it's difficult not to worry what happens if the plan stalls. Football is full of grand plans that don't always come off.
I don't see them being tied to AP though, and I think most people agree it wasn't a great place for a stadium anyway. Unlimited money would rather open some other options though.
To expand a bit (and I know our circumstances are all different) now that I’ve given up my ST due to the sheer lack of Saturday games, I now see the horror of a £31 ticket that was previously hidden from me (even though it was actually costing me more).
At the same time, someone is offering me the chance to watch the game with a great commentary team for a tenner and I can literally think about tuning in five minutes before it starts. I don’t have to pay £5 + to park my car and a halftime coffee costs me 10p.
Of course, if there were more Saturday games I’d never have discovered this other option. But now I have, it’s trickier.
For me, the gap between our matchday experience and the price of it is totally out of whack with the club’s excellent streaming option. But it appears that the club is unconcerned by this.
Our average home attandence is just over 5000 in this league . I am pretty confident it would be between 6000-6500 in the championship.With the away end selling out for most matches it seems likely to me we would have between 7000-8000 total crowd for the bulk of matches . Against QPR and Watford I would expect a sell out . If we got to the Prem we would sell out most most matches and need to extend and put a new road in . The arm chair /glory supporters would come in their droves if we made it to the prem . If Bournmouth can survive with a capacity of 11000 then we could with 7000-8000 in the championship and with similar in the prem . The point is we are following the same model Bournmouth has . Developing the best talent and selling players for ££££££££££ . That is where the money is coming from . Before anyone panics about us spending approx £2m in this window . We have an asset in Kone for more like £10m and all of the payers we have bought have either got potential to be sold for far more in the future or at least for what we have paid for them . I would far rather we were doing what we are , and going on the journey we are , than languishing in the bottom two divisions living on crumbs .
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Great times though. I never thought I would see us competing with big money teams like Birmingham and Wrexham at the top of a league one table and us having spent over one million pounds on players.
I really appreciate all the time and money ML is putting into our club and want to simply go along for the ride.
Armageddon or a sudden accidental fall from a window...
Chelsea might be a stretch but there must be other ‘West London’ sports grounds that might be more attractive. Good point about the training ground(s) and where they are located. Our crowds are pretty poor for a club that’s been vying for promotion for the majority of the season and am so sure that will be an action point on their agenda.
Crowd sizes were raised at the Trust meeting but apparently the club are comfortable with current attendances.
Make of that what you will.
We need to make up our minds...if we are to be an Academy with a moderately successful team attached, I doubt ML cares about the crowds, as in theory the sale of young players will fund the club rather than success on the field, moany old subscribers or putting up prices to £66 a seat. If we think he wants Prem success and vast TV friendly crowds, it would be easier to buy a bigger club than try to transplant our dwindling fan base to an area which already has teams fighting for attention. (See Mr Winkelman's 'How I made a terrible miscalculation about potential fanbase...')
Crowds will go up when the team goes up. Simple as that really.
We will never know what our attendances might have been in the lost Championship season.
Obviously bigger clubs in the Championship means bigger away gates.
But personally I’m sceptical that the home gate would increase that much if we get back to the second tier.
I just feel like for the random floating punter, anything less than the EPL is not that appealing and is just bucketed as “lower league football”.
I have no basis for this other than pure supposition, but still.
Even for the less glamorous EPL teams, I remember (being London-based) the old ads in the Evening Standard for the likes of Charlton or Fulham, bigging up upcoming games against Arsenal, Liverpool or whoever.
Anyway, I hope I’m wrong.
Yes, a toddler could understand that Chelsea didn’t exactly collapse into ruin when Abromovich left, and only left because he was forced to, so what’s your point?
Talking of external factors, you said you couldn’t remember a time when our entire being was so fragile but what about the famous day at Torquay?
I would suggest even if we only got a slight rise in home attendance and bigger away attendances, it might do us quite nicely @PBo depending on the ambition of our owner and our fanbase. If we cannot dream of bigger crowds and hope for progression...there seems little point to the whole exercise.
The home crowd will definitely go up, but it's that huge unknown of by how much. You'd have thought our home crowds would have been higher with how well we've done the first half of this season - top 2 for most of it.
Hopefully they won't have to entertain simply giving another 500-1000 to the away club most weeks, if we can't fill it.
What is certain, is that we'll need a lot more incentives than a couple of busses in from the station and parking for 80-100 cars at that school.
Forgot that it’s going up by the minute!
Sadly your second para hits on the only way to get out attendances from the low 5s to the mid 7s.
The fanbase is there, I was amazed that we sold out for Villa in the League Cup, but for some reason getting more people to come week in week out is impossible.
It's because parking and access are an absolute nightmare. The football needs to be at a certain level to offset that inconvenience.
Then again, that's only going to get considerably worse as crowds grow.
The only way to increase attendances is to get back into the community.
I have posted s many times.
invest in the primary age group, they will stay into the teens and further.
That’s definitely part of it. I feel like our attendances would be at least 10% higher if AP was where LP WAS.
That's probably the only way to do it at this level, but I don't expect us to be here much longer.
Must be, if people come once and it's a nightmare they won't come back.
Promotion was expected to pretty much guarantee 23 sold out games last time if allowed. Almost every team in the championship has a huge following and regularly take a few thousand away, and the home games against the bigger names also get more attractive for our fans. You'd get the odd Oxford but with it being more winnable and local it would have it's own charm , and we could even get people who can't get in other weeks. The publicity and press coverage multiplies up too.
The Chelsea comparison is ridiculous though, they with their recent history and placement would be worth several billion to the Americans regardless of status. If ML was to leave us with contracts we couldn't finance and another billionaire didn't fall from a tree it could become very sticky very quickly.
For people who know their way round a VPN, cost must be a factor too.
Freezing cold day, pay £31 to get dripped on all game in the Frank Adams or pay a tenner (or less) and watch it from the sofa.
I wouldn’t do it every game, but if you’ve had a long day at work, or are not feeling your best, it’s very tempting.
ML is a multi billionaire , I think once the academy is up and running he’ll turn attention to AP and its surroundings, he’ll buy the land around AP including much of the industrial estate, he’ll give notice of the termination of the leases of the businesses situated on the estate and in partnership with the council he’ll find alternative office / factory space in the area ( must be lots of empty offices in the area) . Once the businesses are gone it’ll be straight forward to build the second access road, car parks , bus termini , shops restaurants, bowling alley , health club, luxury flats, and rebuilding Adams Park to modern standards with increased capacity.
Before anyone shouts me down and accuses me of wanting to destroy local businesses and jobs, the above is what I think a multi billionaire owner of a football club will do, rather than my own opinion.
Guilty 🙋
Can you imagine the decontamination bill for demolishing Basic Chemical - the Chernobyl of Sands?
I do agree that all of that area of investment comes later in a plan but it's difficult not to worry what happens if the plan stalls. Football is full of grand plans that don't always come off.
I don't see them being tied to AP though, and I think most people agree it wasn't a great place for a stadium anyway. Unlimited money would rather open some other options though.
The moment they announced tougher rules from next season this was bound to happen in this window . And did .
To expand a bit (and I know our circumstances are all different) now that I’ve given up my ST due to the sheer lack of Saturday games, I now see the horror of a £31 ticket that was previously hidden from me (even though it was actually costing me more).
At the same time, someone is offering me the chance to watch the game with a great commentary team for a tenner and I can literally think about tuning in five minutes before it starts. I don’t have to pay £5 + to park my car and a halftime coffee costs me 10p.
Of course, if there were more Saturday games I’d never have discovered this other option. But now I have, it’s trickier.
For me, the gap between our matchday experience and the price of it is totally out of whack with the club’s excellent streaming option. But it appears that the club is unconcerned by this.
He'd be better off buying the farmland near where the M40 meets the M25 and building there. Easy access to Wycombe and Heathrow.
Gerrard's Cross is near enough to avoid being called another MK Dons, isn't it?
And an amazing boost for the station at Denham Golf Club.
Our average home attandence is just over 5000 in this league . I am pretty confident it would be between 6000-6500 in the championship.With the away end selling out for most matches it seems likely to me we would have between 7000-8000 total crowd for the bulk of matches . Against QPR and Watford I would expect a sell out . If we got to the Prem we would sell out most most matches and need to extend and put a new road in . The arm chair /glory supporters would come in their droves if we made it to the prem . If Bournmouth can survive with a capacity of 11000 then we could with 7000-8000 in the championship and with similar in the prem . The point is we are following the same model Bournmouth has . Developing the best talent and selling players for ££££££££££ . That is where the money is coming from . Before anyone panics about us spending approx £2m in this window . We have an asset in Kone for more like £10m and all of the payers we have bought have either got potential to be sold for far more in the future or at least for what we have paid for them . I would far rather we were doing what we are , and going on the journey we are , than languishing in the bottom two divisions living on crumbs .
Agreed!!
Yep it doesn't make any sense making big changes to the current location when we'd probably have an absolute glass ceiling of about 15,000 capacity.
It'd be a new site with much higher ceiling growth capacity.
However, before then let's get Crawley away dealt with.