Charlton Athletic Online

Just a mention about the crowd figure for today – Charlton are rightly proud of the fact that the last 160-odd league games at The Valley have attracted support of over 20,000 fans. This record is now in danger I think…

We saw that when Reading arrived last month that they only brought about 800 – 1,000 supporters with them, and this enabled the announced attendance figure to just creep over the mark – 20,020. Wolves brought much more support, and Swansea did too in the first game of the season. Whether there where sufficient Charlton fans in the ground to keep all those attendances over 20,000 is debateable; tickets sold equated to enough bums on seats to keep the target figure intact.

If you look at the make-up of the figures, you can see why the 20,000 barrier is in danger:

Charlton have around 15,000 season ticket holders; walk up attendees (i.e. non-season ticket holders) are between 1,500 for an average game, and 5,000 for a bigger match; away support can be up to 3,100, but this cannot be guaranteed and will usually be less.

Simple maths means that for an average game, we need to have about 5,000 supporters filling the away end or at the game supporting Charlton without a season ticket.

Next week, I’m sure Ipswich will bring sufficient support to keep that balance over 20,000, but will that be the case with the less glamorous game today against Sheffield Wednesday? Possibly not…

So if anyone is in two minds about going today, please try to make the match as it would be great to keep the run going (for a few weeks longer at least).

Labels: Charlton, Sheffield Wednesday, The Valley