increasing capacity - revisited

Last year we filled 96% of capacity (according to Deloittes).

I'm not sure whether they take into account away fan allocations not being fully taken up or losing a few thousand seats for the Europa league and champs league matches.

most league matches are sell outs even against the 'lower' clubs.

We must be in a position to increase capacity a little and continue to sell out.

Even 5,000 more seats at £30 brings in £150k per match and about £4M over the season. With FFP rules, this isn't to be sniffed at.

Success means more fans want to go to matches. We've seen that especially this season.

Seriously, how many more could we accommodate and would it be easy to build?

seriously, stick to what you've got, more success means more games means more ££££s to shell out.

Nothing worse than a load of empty seats.

IF we win the title this year, we will obviously attract the more fairweather, fence-sitting fan. If we do look to increase capacity, we should wait until standing is allowed again, this will give cheaper tickets and allow more people per square foot in, making it affordable to others who don't have vast amounts of disposible cash hanging around, and give a better atmosphere, I watch some German games and I'm impressed with the atmosphere they get, grounds are packed well before kick off, you can stand up and drink beer!!!!

I don't think we need to increase the capacity,I've never yet seen a match where every seat is taken no matter what the sold out signs say and if we aren't filling the ground now it's an expense we don't really need

Technically we've only had our maximum capacity once, that was when we played Newcastle. We've been close for other games, but I think we can hold off for now.

If we win the league this season, we might be able to get away with it. Increase either the North or South stand (both easy enough to do, the stadium is designed with that in mind) and gain another 6k seats. Or, as Beware suggests, switch a section to terracing.

if it doesn't count towards fair play rules expenditure, then i would have expected them to have already done this (unless they have something else in mind)

First step should be to open up the top tier regularily when we know away teams are only going to bring a few fans. Happens so often, and the top deck of the away section is left entirely empty.

As Beware says the review into safe standing is also imminent, so we should hang on for that - could put us up to 50 or 60k without actually making major changes to any of the stands. Also gives us a better chance of filling that on a regular basis, than filling another 20 thousand seats up in the clouds.

I thought ONH had thrown his toys out of the pram and resigned from this site a few months ago after failing to feel the love?

I think his ADD got the better of him.

Nah....they were level at last with us, we had players away, players banned and not playing very well......so he couldn't resist.

Normal business resumed - he'll fuck off.