last nights crowd

paulbaconsarnie

last night we played our first home game under a new manager.
we were playing arguably the biggest football club on the planet.
we have the cheapest season tickets in the league.
the ground holds 27,000+. the attendance was 25,400ish.
i know the attendance figure was down 500 because of the away fan restrictions, but in the same respect all season ticket holders whether on holiday or not were part of the 25,400.
the club opened up the possibility for last years season ticket holders to take up the tickets.
so out of 24,000 home seats we managed to sell 22,400.
i know it was a night game and on sky blah blah blah but we will never be able to control that.
are we seriously going to increase our capacity if we couldn't sell out last night?

LenGlover

August is holiday time too so a lot of people that would have gone given the chance were unable.

August games never sell out from what I can remember.

AFKABartram

we simply haven't got the fans. We may well be able to sell seats at times if the price is right, but our 'hardcore' remains one of the smallest in the Premiership.

The expansion plans and the drive to filling extra seats should be shelved for now. At least until the hardcore element has been increased in numbers. The ground at the moment is probably at the most sanitised level that it should be, too much in some peoples view. Adding extra seats will only add non-charlton followers.

paulbaconsarnie

i take on board your point len about august attendances, but still think the man utd pulling power outweighs this.
they have sold out for the bank holiday weekend against watford but i realise that is not a fair comparison.

my point i wanted response on, was the expansion of the ground and i think afka has it pretty much spot on. i think we are in danger, if results don't go our way that we might see the return of 'target 10,000' only this time in a downward spiral.

oh god, i've seen 1 game and i'm already suicidal. back to captain kronenbourg to look for a rosier picture.
come on you addicks!

LoOkOuT

Well, in terms of fans, I was riding my scooter into town this afternoon, wearing my Charlton top, when I pulled in behind a car at a stop light. Lo and behold, in the corner of the backwindow was a Charlton sticker! I held up the badge on my shirt and he started laughing in recognition. So, in sunny Bermuda (population: 65,000), there's two of us!!! It was the last thing on earth that I would have expected to see this afternoon.

BlackForestReds

The expansion plans and the drive to filling extra seats should be shelved for now

Don't be defeatist, when we moved back to the Valley we were weren't filling the place and that was when capacity was 8,500. Then we opened the East Stand and extended the West Stand and had to launch a camapign to get the numbers up to 10K! The truth is that football is expensive, even at £30 that's a lot of money, add in programme, hassle, beers etc and it adds up. The other problem is that the area around Charlton isn't that well off, and there are a good number of fans in Kent etc. The Valley Express and marketing campaigns are spot on to get these people in. As we extend the ground we need to have the fan base to go with it. We have though to give these fans a product that they'll want to see, no good playing negative defensive tactics. The fans will come and see good attacking football and will always prefer a 3-2 than a 1-0.

BlackForestReds

Bear in mind also that last night's game was live on Sky.

buckshee

I think in terms of the expansion plans we should be looking more at knocking down the jimmy seed and replacing it with a stand that as planned joins up to the east and west but doesn't take us over the 30,000 mark because it's quite obvious that we can't fill it and the last thing I want is a ground that is 25% full with away fans

Henry Irving

I think a better test is the game v Bolton. We're on a low point (bottom!) against a non-glamourous team who themselves have seen a 3k drop in ST (down to 16k). It is still summer holiday time so that will have an impact as well. Saturday will tell us more as the price is the normal £20 rather than the big club £35. If we get 25k then we're doing OK.

The thing about the East Stand build is that it is gives us a lot more boxes which generate much more income. I think we have 18. Aresenal have 75 and Soton 32.

Done my bit by getting 2 French journalists seats in the North Upper. Any French speaker want to make them feel at home?

razil

I think some peeps are bit gloomy about ground expansion. So long as there is still investment in the team as well I have nothing against expanding the ground, a few thousand a year till we reach the limit. We will never grow as a club if we don't. Rebuilding a hardcore might take years, decades, or possibly even a generation.

As for the manu game, I think the weather, time of year, midweek, live on sky, post world cup failure, our very poor run of form last season, and the lack of any exciting transfer activity, etc all contribute.

R

Curb_It

[cite]Posted By: Ben Hayes[/cite]

Done my bit by getting 2 French journalists seats in the North Upper. Any French speaker want to make them feel at home?

i sit with a French guy at football but unfortunately he is not going on saturday so would not be able to chit chat over a gauloise on the concourse.

Addickted

I'll have a go Ben.

I am a cunning linguist.

CrayAddick

Can't believe we moaned about this. Now look at us.

Woow how time changes minds