35000, it is possible!

[TBLOCKRANGER]

I remember the 70s and 80s when the whole of East London was West Ham save for defined pockets of other clubs such as Millwall and Orient....cannot compare them to us up until Chelsea were formed circa 2004 Hammers were the 3rd biggest club in London.
We've always had a small fanbase, even the great Sir Les era team we were getting in 11k for league games.
Biggest mistake TF made was turning up and immediately proclaiming a 40k stadium on no evidential basis, it was clear he didn't have a scooby about the history of the club, all it did was create unrealistic expectations that are continuing to this day.

[1973 ranger]

TBlock the last chairman who spouted the shite Fernandes did was Ridsdale at Leeds. At they got to a Champions League Semi Final.

[TBLOCKRANGER]

TBlock the last chairman who spouted the shite Fernandes did was Ridsdale at Leeds. At they got to a Champions League Semi Final.

At least they had a nice fish tank at Elland Road to be fair

[Gtleighsr3]

as we seem to be skint,we should offer for a fee millwall to play at ours.Both get pony crowds so bring an extra 20 quid a fortnight in to spend on our confrence squad building.

[1973 ranger]

Elland Road had the fish and all we had was Kia the Shark.

[dave58]

My mate hammers ST holder they virtually gave them away £200 for a season but you had to commit to buy for 2 years, also they can afford to be cheap when the tax payer is picking up the entire bill for the stadium, they have no outlay whatsoever other than the footballing costs, the deal they have is totally crooked, we would never fill a 35000 seat stadium 30.000 would be ample big enough.

[Timmy the Doc]

We could fill 35000 like we did one beautiful day not long ago. We have 1,1 m Twitter followers. The visibility of Premier League is huge. 2-3 years there and the amount of followers would double. Of course 5-10k per game would be tourists but they would bring extra £10m every year. All this is speculative until we have some success in the Premier league.

When Tony bought us his goal was to make us a successful team in the Premier League. Tony's idea was to follow the path of Chelsea and Man City which quite recently had invested some £200m in players and bought instant success. He hired Beard, because he thought he was be the best man to fill our new multifunctional stadium. He of course knew that Warnock wasn't the right manager to build a successful Premier League team and after we had played 8-9 games without a win, it was time to appoint Hughes to do the job. Unfortunately Hughes was a weak man. As none of his employers had any knowledge about football and football business, he soon became a puppet of his agent.

[MattyRangers]

Anymore than 25k capacity and it will be Coventry-esque.

[1974Rs]

Even when we were good(which ever era you think that was) we rarely sold out!

[Garyd73]

Yes as previously stated the ST were really cheap, I reckon if we were in the PL and sold ST for 200-300 quid we would get a healthy number sold. I don't know but if we had maybe 10K at the moment I reckon we could do close to 20k at that price.

[1974Rs]

The may be cheap by they aren't enjoying, it horrible football stadium.

[Abseits]

Currently we have the 50th biggest stadium in English professional football. That's far too small to sustain a seriously ambitious club - 18000 is third tier; not top flight. 30 - 35,000 is necessary to keep pace with rivals. Should be easy to design a stadium where certain areas can remain closed (eg a top tier) so smaller crowds don't look sparse. Frankly, I can't see it happening at Rs unless it's via some sort of ground share with another professional sports club.

[Alanwycombe]

I remember the 70s and 80s when the whole of East London was West Ham save for defined pockets of other clubs such as Millwall and Orient....cannot compare them to us up until Chelsea were formed circa 2004 Hammers were the 3rd biggest club in London.
We've always had a small fanbase, even the great Sir Les era team we were getting in 11k for league games.
Biggest mistake TF made was turning up and immediately proclaiming a 40k stadium on no evidential basis, it was clear he didn't have a scooby about the history of the club, all it did was create unrealistic expectations that are continuing to this day.

We've never had massive support. Even in our first top flight adventure back in 68/69 I think we only got 18/20k and that was when fans supported their local team and it was relatively cheap to come.

[1974Rs]

Currently we have the 50th biggest stadium in English professional football. That's far too small to sustain a seriously ambitious club - 18000 is third tier; not top flight. 30 - 35,000 is necessary to keep pace with rivals. Should be easy to design a stadium where certain areas can remain closed (eg a top tier) so smaller crowds don't look sparse. Frankly, I can't see it happening at Rs unless it's via some sort of ground share with another professional sports club.

Size of the staduium is irrelevant it's how many that go which is the point.

[dave58]

We've never had massive support. Even in our first top flight adventure back in 68/69 I think we only got 18/20k and that was when fans supported their local team and it was relatively cheap to come.

Even in the 70s with the great team that nearly won the league I think our average gate was around 22.000-25.000