If this takeover has happened, if SISU are gone, if it turns out our new owners are genuine and start delivering what i suspect will be loans first, quality ones, do you think attendances will rise significantly or has the damage inflicted by the sisu years been too much to bear for many ?
I think they would initially but would soon dwindle if the impetus of the takeover was not sustained, like you say quality loans would be a great start supported with an era of openess.
I think they would significantly, fans have been driven away over time by lack of hope. I know we had the initial sisu involvement and not sure what the average gate was back then. It seems lot of lapsed supporters seem to be champing at the bit this time and i see if something is announced before the Middlesbrough game maybe even the Southampton match there will be a large increase in home support. Of course as ever it would be down to results and performance
After an initial surge, the gates would increase slowly if a measure of success was attained - firstly by getting out of the relegation zone. If a real play off challenge was mounted next season, gates would continue to increase. A lot of 'ifs' I know, but that's how I see it.
I know it's a long time ago and the situation is very different but i remember as a kid Jimmy Hill joining and the feel good factor zoomed in straight away i get the feeling history might repeat itself for a good while.
I would say 2-3k straight away then more with new players. We do have to be realistic though ffolks and say that our attendance average for a club our size is more like 19k.
We'll get a bump from renewed optimism, but then it'll be down to the board to work to keep those fans and grow the attendances a bit more through clever marketing strategies. If we just keep relying on success on the pitch to improve attendance then we'll be back here in 5 years.
Think we might get a surprise one or two biggish games coming up, Leeds, Birmingham but we aren't too good a side presently and the more come back the more demanding the fans will get. The last few weeks though talking to different lapsed fans there is a bigger interest in our plight at the moment, whether thats a feeling sorry for a lame duck issue i don't know.
Looking back to our first seasons attendances in the Ricoh I think we would get an increase of maybe 3-4000 if we made some signings and had a decent run. There a lot of people who have been driven away by SISU and the terrible football on display who would come back if they were getting entertained for their money and the club had an air of optimism about it. Anything above 20 000 would require some form of success as that seems to be about our ceiling in terms of consistent home support. The damage has been done to the generation of non-city supporting fans in Coventry who weren't interested in watching pure pish for 10 years. Getting them or their kids back will take time and will only occur when we re-install some pride in the club.
You'll be surprised what a bit of optimism can bring, yes we have the telly Man United, Arsenal and Chelsea fans etc but in the Hill era just about all the local midland clubs were in the top flight and it was easy and cheap to go.