Our attendances

Almost 50,000 fans were in attendance last night for the Preston game.
Add to that the 50k average we are posting in the league and we are posting some pretty incredible stats at the moment.
I read the other week that we were one of the top 6 best supported teams in Europe one particular Saturday.
I think it's a blend of the club being reasonable on ticket prices (£10) for cup games and also... the Rafa effect.
Long may this continue... and I think it will......

 

If we go up and establish ourselves back in the PL then the club may have to seriously consider expanding the ground. This has all the hallmarks of the early Keegan days.

 

We can't expand it once he's sold the land but I always think just how amazing it would be if the east stand etc was also done

 

can't do anything on the East Stand side due to the listed buildings in Leazes Terrace

 

I know I wish those peasant ridden grunt holes were accidentally torn down though

Can you remember the plans for our 80000 seater stadium being on display next to the Chevy chase before all the hippys filled in a petition against it being built on the leazes park?

 

After being part of a few chock a block home games this season, and watching from Level 7 last night, a ground expansion IMO should be seriously on the agenda.

Find a way to enlarge the East Stand without upsetting the buildings behind. It must be possible in 2016!

 

Demolish the thing brick by brick and re-build it somewhere. Solves the problem!
Seriously though, we should be looking at ways to get around this.

 

The fact we are in the championship and have more home fixtures has pushed us up the attendance tables. Averages we are roughly the same, but in terms of how many people walk through the turnstiles over the course of the season, it will have dramatically increased, also if you include cup games as we have had an unusual amount of home draws (which rarely ever happens). Financially this can only be massively beneficial to the club too.

I do have a theory about the cups, I think owners are asked to make "contributions" to the FA and the result of which results in what type of draw you get. Ashley over the last few years may have made minimal or no donation and resulted in away draws or difficult draws such as City and Spurs or miles away Brighton! It really wouldn't surprise me if the FA were so corrupt, this would probably go as far as league fixtures, televised games etc. The luck we have had so far in the cup draws has been overly strange, perhaps tonight will be the end of it

 

Not sure whether we need increased capacity - think the 52000 mark is about right. Normally relatively easy to get tickets for PL games. I would definitely not build a new stadium though - the location in the centre of town causes parking problems etc but its great to have a stadium that dominates a city like that. Love the view as you come up the the motorway and it stands out like it does.

 

So you think the balls are marked or weighted somehow? You are starting to sound like a Sunderland supporter.

 

yes I can,
my business was in a very good position of getting lots more work from this scheme
considering what we had done for the club previously

I remember the person that set up the petition
she would campaign on Northumberland street getting anyone's signature to oppose the scheme,
(In order of inportance) Visitors, Overseas Students, cats, dogs pigeons, makems

 

We don't but and won't ever unless via some miracle we become aub that wins things

 

But what if something happened to those buildings?

 

It cost more money building the extention as far as I'm aware

80000 imagine that

Shame

 

Surely they could just build on top on them and paint pictures of outside on their windows

 

Not 100% sure, perhaps home teams hot, away teams cold.

 

The original plan was to redevelop the Gallowgate end as the East Stand is a non starter with the properties there.

 

Not all that difficult.

Buy the terraces. Grant consent to the club to interfere with their rights to light. Sell the terraces, incurring maybe a 20% loss on the resale due to the absence of rights to light. Would cost a lot less than Thauvin.

 

No chance

 

one of the guys I used to work with moved to a different firm of Consulting Engineers in Newcastle a good few years back (end of Keegan era ish). They worked on a scheme to develop the Gallowgate end further and build back over Strawberry Place so that the road would effectively be "tunnelled" under the extended stand.

The Strawberry Pub would have been taken down and rebuilt into the new stand and the escalators from the Metro would've brought you up directly onto a concourse outside the stadium.

Was fully designed and as far as I'm aware is still viable - would simply need planning approvals if the club wanted to push forward.

Would have increased capacity to around 60k from memory