The West stand is open every game i suspect you mean the East Stand but if you are from Hull i know it will be hard for you to knoe your East from West
My apologies. I ask again therefore, is the East Stand open this season or are you going to keep it closed FOR EVERY SINGLE GAME OF A SEASON because your support from a city with a population of 750,000 is so meagre? Still, loyalty eh?
Fanbase, stadium, training ground, academy. More hating a team that doesn't hate you back. Well, I'm more on about your repertoire in general, but you'll tend to find that the best clubs do have a signature song (which isn't ****ing Elvis ). MOT has every relevance to Leeds United, so you're talking out your ****epipe there. Well OK, fans who only started to show up when you got a shiny new ground and were on the up then. My point stands. I think a lot of those people will melt away (and already are doing, by all accounts) with the longevity of your exile from the top flight. Leeds fans originally may have started supporting us for glory, but if they stick around, fair play to them they are no longer that. True glory supporters defected to Arsenal and Chelsea (e.g. Nasser Hussein, Colin Montgomerie). No-one said it had to be a pro team, and I don't see how that affects whether a team is supported well per capita or not. The hardcore ones who've been there in relatively ****e times as well as good, yes. Among the best. Every area of our ground is open for sale. Some areas are members-only such as the East Stand Upper and Family Area though. Last time the West Stand was closed was probably when it burnt down in the 50s. And do I really have to mention for about the 80th time that fans are BOYCOTTING? That's the reason for our sub-par attendances. Very few working class people from Beeston and Holbeck can justify paying £42 for a membership and £30+ for match tickets week in week out. It's not like Hull where a 22 year old can get in for £14.
What about the season after relegation when attendances plummeted? Let me guess, it was a boycott and not a lack of loyalty from glory supporters.... Was it the season after that when the East Stand (I am corrected) wasnt used for a single game?
We got around 30,000 when we went down before Bates arrived. So yes, we did lose a few thousand off our gate, and some of those people can be blamed for being glory supporters who ****ed off elsewhere. For some others, it was a matter of too much being charged for second division football, and many fans had to start repaying loans they'd taken out to go see us in Europe a few years previously, for instance. So a few factors came into it. We'd be selling out every week though if we had a club with any sales/marketing nouse about them. I'm sure of it.
And so you should from a city with 3 times the population of Hull. 2003/4 average attendance - 36,119 2005/6 average attendance - 22,294 That is a hell of a boycott to be fair. It must have hurt those loyal fans hard to stay so committed to it.
"Fanbase, stadium, training ground, academy." At last the secret formula! Let's get that academy/training ground built and demand top flight status
So will you please explain your average attendance of 3,413 in 96/97 against our 30,000? Or the just short of 7,000 as recently as 2001? Now correct me if I'm wrong but that would just about break any record of the gates to population ratio you so conveniently like to use these days.
Some of it isn't intentional 'never coming back till Bates leaves' boycotting admittedly, but it's still a form of it when fans are priced out of their own football club and can only make between one and five games a season, which I'd say possibly 150,000 people in Leeds do. We have about 8,000 season ticket holders. We average about 23,000 a game, which means there's a deficit of 14,000 people (if you assume around 1,000 away fans per game). Maybe 4,000 of those are made up of people who make around 10 home games, but I reckon 10,000 (i.e. almost half) of that crowd is made up of people who only make 1-5 games. Say those 10,000 are all different people at every game - that's 230,000 Leeds fans who are priced into only going to one game a season. Say that 10,000 is made up of 2,000 people going to five games a season, that's 46,000 people. So if you average it out, there's probably 100,000 Leeds fans in the bracket of unintentionally boycotting, and maybe the same number or more who actively refuse to go to games due to Bates, from my anecdotal experiences. I think teams like Watford and Palace with great behind the scenes stuff happening deserve a lot of respect. But your fanbase and stadium aren't top flight standard either really.
I wonder what gates Leeds might get had they been in the bottom 4 clubs in the country for three seasons running, and been through the sort of **** Hull City went through ? Cardiff's gates were just as small as ours and that's a much bigger city and regional centre Bradford is a bigger city and gets small gates to name but two Our 7,000 gates in the 4th division equate to you getting 21,000 in the fourth division- after ten years of disastrous decline.
[/QUOTE] I wonder what gates Leeds might get had they been in the bottom 4 clubs in the country for three seasons running, and been through the sort of **** Hull City went through ? Cardiff's gates were just as small as ours and that's a much bigger city and regional centre Bradford is a bigger city and gets small gates to name but two Our 7,000 gates in the 4th division equate to you getting 21,000 in the fourth division- after ten years of disastrous decline.[/QUOTE] Oh no you don't. Your 7,000 gates were in the season you were promoted and were on the up. Which means they doubled. You lot have less right than anyone to waffle on about glory supporters. Your 3400 gates would equate to us getting 12000. Which by the way we would achieve, even after ten years. In our seasons in league one, which is a disastrous decline for us our attendances on average were 2 thirds of our premiership crowds. And the ticket prices were far higher.
"Oh no you don't. Your 7,000 gates were in the season you were promoted and were on the up. Which means they doubled." Oh yes I do. Our lowest gate in our promotion season from div 4 was 11,308 v Bury in 2003. That's like you getting 33,000 as your lowest gate in a promotion season from div 4 versus Bury Try not to allow your bitterness cloud your judgement.
How much was a season ticket (or 'season pass', as you weirdos seem to call them) in 2003? If it was less than £200, I reckon Leeds could comfortably have got 30,000+ on a regular basis.
Weren't you the **** saying Leeds is an economic powerhouse whilst simultaneously bleating it cost too much to watch Leeds?
Not bitter at all. My mistake and I'm happy enough to admit it. But you've seen for yourself what a bit of success can do for crowds. My point is that I think it's rather pathetic to bring up this population bollocks to measure attendances. Every club has had peaks and troughs and they will always coincide with what is classed as success or failure within the expectations of each club.
Heh. Leeds is good, but it would have to be London ten times ****ing over for the everyday Loiner to be able to afford a season ticket under Bates prices.
