Is it really so difficult to see why it matters how many City fans attend Sixfields?
We all want a successful team and so normally we want the club's revenue to be maximised to fund that. We'd also usually be proud of decent gates.
What is different this year is that the owners have moved Coventry City out of Coventry claiming they were forced to do so. Knowing how much most fans would resent this they need to try and convince that they have no choice and a big part of their hoped for argument would have been that many fans understood that and supported their drastic action. So gates of 7000 as mooted would have gone a long way to justify such a claim. They would have asserted that once accounting for travel difficulties and a few hundred extremists most of the support was with them.
The fewer who attend the harder that case is to make out. The reality is that despite what is almost certainly our best start to a season in any division for decades, together with attractive football and low prices only a maximum of 1600 are prepared to go to Northampton, 35 miles away, whilst thousands will go the Port Vale, Wolverhampton and Milton Keynes. If it is also the case that the 1600 is inflated by free tickets and local interest then the fact that the overwhelming majority of Coventry supporters abhor the move cannot be concealed.