I was looking at the stats for the past season and found a few things quite interesting. The main one is how the Average Attendance league actually compares to the final tables. Normally having more fans at matches, generates more money, and therefore should create better teams on the pitch. This of course is not always the case, due to how the clubs are managed on and off the pitch. Anyway I thought I would point out the largest discrepencies of league position versus attendance.

Below Where They Should Be

Bradford are 39 places below.
Leeds are 34 places below.
MK Dons are 23 places below.
Leicester are 21 places below.
Norwich are 20 places below.
Forest are 17 places below.
Sheff Utd/S'ton are 13 places below.

In the case of Forest & Dons this discrepency is being righted due to promotion. For Leicester things are getting worse.

Above Where They Should Be

Portsmouth are 22 places above.
Wigan are 18 places above.
Stoke are all 13 places above.
Bolton/Plymouth/Bristol C/Palace are all 12 places above.
Blackburn/Burnley are 11 places above.
Hull are 10 places above.

Hull and Stoke will be punching even further above their weight next year.

Middlesbrough,Man Utd,Liverpool and Southend are in exactly the same position in the Average Attendance table. A distinctly average and satisfactory season!

Hope you find this interesting and I appologise to any i have missed. These figures are obviously slightly exagerated the further from their position you go. In lower leagues, away attendances drop and some home fans lose interest, and vice-versa.

ps. I have only used the top 50 attended teams in England for these figures. Any teams with Attendances of less than 8,000 have not been included.

Portsmouth are the club who has over-achieved most in the League (22 places), and have gone and added the Cup as well. Does not get any better than that really...

Bradford had a season ticket offer this season.

Our season tickets are £100/£125/£175 next season. It's reckoned we'll sell about 14,000 and have an average attendance of around 16-18k.

An average attendance of 13,692 for a team mid-table in League 2 is very good indeed.

Bradford is a very sad story, and there must be better times ahead for them.

Also, Bradford count all season ticket holders as 'attended' - even if they don't bother to turn up.

It's a very sad story indeed. Forgive me if I don't shed any tears for them though...

FC United would be about 5th in the Conference, I think, if it were judged on attendance.

Exeter City would be about half way up League One. Slightly behind Oxford, it has to be said. Come on, City, tomorrow!

http://www.tonykempster.co.uk/attcomp.htm

God Bless Tony Kempster.

There's some interesting home and away gate breakdowns on the stats. I was modestly cheered by the fact that while our home gates are something like 19th in League One, our average away turnout this year was the ninth best in the division. Which, given that we're always being mocked for small support and given that we had trips to Hartlepool and Carlisle this season, is a small puny straw to clutch

Bit of a disaster there for Brache Sparta at the foot of the table.

After averaging a healthy 16 spectators the season before, this term their attendances plummeted by 58.7% to 7, the highest crowd being 12 and the lowest 1.

Makes me laugh that Forest get better attendances than both Wigan and Portsmouth. Even though we don't have the advantage of teams like Utd, Liverpool etc bringing large numbers of away fans. We have Yeovil bringing 600 instead.

Weird, isn't it? Do you think it might be because there are more of you?

Down with the Yeovil 600!

QUOTE:
Bradford count all season ticket holders as 'attended' - even if they don't bother to turn up.

That can't be right, can it? It makes a complete mockery of the whole thing.

Shocking to see that my beloved Epsom & Ewell had only 19 for one game, and averaged 61 over the season. We used to get 250-300 every week when I was a lad.

Ant - it's standard practice. I was at Wembley yesterday and there were way] more than 275 seats not taken up yesterday at the Final which would be the case were every one of the 89724 in the recorded attendance been in the ground.

you were there? why didnt you pop over to the 1927 designated pub to say hello?