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Attendances - the good, the bad and the ugly

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I said a while back that I’d start a thread on the mystery that is our historical attendances. I’m going to split it into three parts: the good (up to 1955), the bad (1979-1983ish) and the ugly (early 1990s) and try to be as honest and objective as I can be. Any thoughts or comments on any section are of course welcome.

My feeling is that there is undoubtedly some truth to oppo fan's claims that our attendances have been sh*t (I mean I missed the infamous 6,009 Orient game but I have been at the bridge with less than 9,000 in it so there's little point denying it totally) but this is actually very far from the full picture. In fact I'd argue that it simply isn't true for the first period (up to 1955) and may not be for the second (the 80s) if you look at it in context. Where I think we come unstuck, and what I struggle to have any good explanation for is the third period, the early 90s. As Carshalton Blue has said this is where the figure are embarrassing and there is little to be said to mitigate them.

 
The Good

So, that first period, the good years, I think anyone would find it hard to dispute that we had very good attendances in our first fifty years (What? History? Us?) but some still do. What’s the evidence for and against?

It’s often stated that we have the fifth highest average attendance in English football. The source for this is, I believe, this website:

http://www.european-football-statistics.co.uk/attn/nav/attnengleague.htm

I couldn’t find the actual page on that site but here’s the list that someone else obviously cut and pasted from it (and is now out of date so the averages are wrong even though I believe the club’s positions remain the same):

Average All-time Attendances

[SIZE=7.5pt]1 Man. United[/SIZE]                  [SIZE=7.5pt]    36, 885[/SIZE]

[SIZE=7.5pt]2 Liverpool                                 33, 773[/SIZE]

[SIZE=7.5pt]3 Tottenham                              33, 437[/SIZE]

[SIZE=7.5pt]4 Arsenal                                    32, 413[/SIZE]

[SIZE=7.5pt]5 Chelsea                                   31, 322[/SIZE]

[SIZE=7.5pt]6 Newcastle                                31, 038[/SIZE]

[SIZE=7.5pt]7 Everton                                   31, 023[/SIZE]

[SIZE=7.5pt]8 Man.City                                 28, 631[/SIZE]

[SIZE=7.5pt]9 Aston Villa                              27 ,992[/SIZE]

[SIZE=7.5pt]10 Leeds                                    25, 634[/SIZE]

It should be noted that there is an important caveat to these figures. We weren’t around pre-1905 when attendances were much lower and maybe some clubs have suffered because of this by having their average dragged down e.g. Aston Villa . Maybe our average is a little artificially high due to this. Whatever the case, when you examine the years we did exist those first fifty were pretty good by anybody’s standards and there is evidence to show this:

·         We have the third highest ever attendance at an English club ground – the 82,905 at the Arsenal game in 1935. (This comes just behind a Man City Cup game and a Man Utd league match played at Maine Road).

·         We were the first team to average over 40,000 in a season in 1921.

·         We were ten times the best supported club in the country (average attendance) between 1905 and 1955. But only in that last year did we actually win anything. Other than that a third place finish in 1920 was as good as it got. One of those years we were best supported was a relegation year (1924) and another was in Div 2 (1926).

·         Also, I believe (maybe not claiming this as a fact since I couldn’t find the list) we have 4 of the top ten highest attendances of all time (this may not be true now with the redevelopment of Old Trafford but I think it still is).

Our top five attendances according to the official club website:

82,905 Arsenal (12/10/1935) - Highest ever attendance for an English League game
77,952 Swindon Town (13/04/1911) - FA Cup Round 4
77,696 Blackpool (16/10/1948) - Football League
76,000 Tottenham Hotspur (16/10/1920) - Football League
75,952 Arsenal (09/10/1937) - Football League

So, you’d think that was pretty unequivocal. Those who argue that we have no history and ask where we were when we were sh*t should take a look at this. This is real history, mostly pre-war and, while were weren’t exactly sh*t compared to the eighties, we were hardly setting the world alight either. Most of those years we were never in the running for anything and finished mid table or worse.

There is a reason for the old Norman Long music hall song “On the day that Chelsea went and won the cup”.  It wouldn’t be funny or worth writing about if we weren’t seen at the time as a ‘big club’ with big attendances that was maybe expected to win it. It wouldn’t and couldn’t have been written about Aldershot for instance.

Song starts at 3:24. If you’ve never heard it before you really should:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLgBWOwEXVA

So we should get some praise for these attendances from the ‘history’ brigade shouldn’t we? This is surely a period of ‘good’ attendances? Well... no. Firstly they don’t actually know their history, what they repeat ad nauseum is their own prejudice and doesn’t rely on the facts. It’s mostly based on the 80s. Secondly, even if they do know about these figures it still doesn’t satisfy them. They just can’t give us any credit. I’ve had a Scouser tell me our games sometimes got high attendances but our fans were “the most fickle” in the league.

Now, I think on one side he was making an argument based on our attendances in the eighties (I’ll cover that elsewhere) and on the other to do with our fluctuating attendances back in the day. For instance his trump card was that one season (38-39) we got 64,443 v Arsenal in October and only 6,801 at home to Liverpool on Christmas Eve.

I admit he had me on the back foot after that one for a while because, let’s face it, that’s a pretty shocking fluctuation, but then I did some digging and discovered that in that Christmas period London was in the midst of the worst winter it had experienced in many, many years and half the country from the Wash on down was in snowmageddon territory. London was practically in shutdown. I don’t know if that’s an acceptable excuse (there were about 10,000 at West Ham that day) but it seems fairly valid to me.

Then I started looking at other teams’ attendances and the truth is there were loads of clubs who experienced fluctuations just like ours. I found a bunch of others just as bad as that if not worse (on face value). I don’t know what caused Man City to go from 76,166 v Cardiff in one match to 3000 v Forest in another in 23/24 but I’ll bet there was a pretty good reason. In those days postponed fixtures were sometimes rearranged for work days when the factories were full of workers and few could go. Maybe it was the weather again, I don’t know, but we were far from the only two clubs who had this ‘problem’ so it seems to me this was fairly normal for the times:

Charlton

1937/8 75,031 v Villa; 14,648 v Stoke

Sunderland

1933/4 75,118 v Derby; 3,911 v Pompey (also 9,005 v Middlesbrough)

Bolton

1932/3 69,912 v Man City; 5,320 v Pompey

Newcastle

1930/31 68,386 v Chelsea; 9,159 v Bolton

Sheff Wed

1933/34 72,841 v Man City and 6,546 v Leeds (Mon) and 5,182 v Wolves (Sat)

Huddersfield

1931/2 67,037 v Arsenal; 2,963 v Man City

Spurs

1936/7 71,913 v Preston; 11,097 v Barnsley

1937/8 75,038 v Sunderland; 11,049 v Stockport

Manchester United

1946/7 66,967 v Wolves; 8,456 v Stoke

Manchester City

1923/4 76,166 v Cardiff; 3000 v Forest

1925/6 74,799 v Hudds; 11,384 v Arsenal

1933/4 84,569 v Stoke, 13,815 v Liverpool

1934/5 79,491 v Arsenal; 13,899 v Wolves

1936/7 74,918 v Arsenal; 16,146 v Grimsby

1954/5 75,000 v Man Utd; 13,648 v Leicester

1955/6 76,129 v Everton; 15,227 v Everton again (4 days later!) or 13,998 v Charlton

Birmingham City

1935/6 60,250 v Villa; 9,089 v Sheff Wed

Another point to consider is that, with a bigger ground than most, the potential for getting greater fluctuations existed.

So, for me, it’s case dismissed for the naysayers, we had very, very good crowds by the standards of the day which is about the only way you can judge it.

And, if we didn't always have bad crowds in the past, what does that mean for the period when we did? Does that make it an aberration rather than the norm?

 
The Bad

OK, so no one is going to claim our attendances were good in the early to mid 80s. You only have to think of that Orient attendance to realise you can’t make that case.

However, I really do think you can make a case that, if not good, the attendances weren’t actually that bad. Not when you put them into the context of the times.

My argument has always been that some of the fall in attendances was just natural for a club on the decline, some was due to a general decline in football attendances and some was due to other reasons. What I firmly believe is that through a combination of factors we lost an entire generation of fans during the mid 70s to early 90s. Here’s my reasoning:

1.    The club was unsuccessful. Ain’t no club in the world that doesn’t lose fans when times are hard (over an extended period of time, one off seasons of fun in Div 2 like Man Utd had in the 70s don’t count, they were never truly in decline as a club and weren’t faced with the same problems we were):

·         7 years out of 9 in Div 2 between 75 and 84 and another relegation in 88 (the only team ever relegated via the play-offs).

·         What was officially the worst team in league history when it got relegated with what was the lowest points total until that time in 1979 (my first season, lucky me).

·         Lowest league positions in our history in 82 then 83.

·         Some comically bad football e.g. the world’s worst goal drought in 81 and I once read we got ‘giantkilled’ 11 times in ten seasons (I’ll have to look that up). Really you had to be there to believe it. I mean we were the absolute masters of f**king it up when it should have been easy. In some ways it was quite funny. In others it really wasn’t.

2.    The club was in near terminal decline:

·         We had bankruptcy and financial issues that few clubs have had to deal with. There was an air of despondency and despair around Chelsea back then that I think few today would appreciate. To me it felt like a club that was dying on its feet.

·         Add that to the ground. Don’t get me wrong I loved the Bridge as it was, it was home. BUT it was a also sh*thole of a ground and a dreadful place to watch football. Had we had a smaller, or not even smaller but more enclosed stadium, the atmosphere would have been better and it would have been a more enjoyable experience. Smaller crowds due to on pitch failure just made it worse.

·         This wasn’t helped by, what was it, three seasons of reconstruction on the East Stand? That gaping hole all along one side on what was already a stadium that felt too open. That helped kill the atmosphere as well.

·         Then add that to the hooliganism. Again, I would be a liar to say I didn’t get caught up in the buzz and the anarchy of the times, it wasn’t something that bothered me as a teenage boy BUT it did drive people away. Rightly or wrongly we probably had a worse reputation for hooliganism than most clubs and that seeped into the popular consciousness and probably stopped people coming. I personally know of two genuine supporters who turned their backs on the club and vowed not to go again and they haven’t (one the day the Dippers won the double at our place and one after the Boro riot). I can’t believe I’m the only one who has experienced this or that they are the only blokes who made that kind of decision back then.

3.    Football in general was on a downward spiral.

·         Hooliganism of course but also more disposable income and other things to entertain oneself with.

·         Attendances at Chelsea have to be understood in the light of what was happening to football as a whole. The years between 1981 and 1986 were the years of the lowest crowds since pre WWI. Everyone’s crowds were falling, not just ours. Had our demise happened in the 60s or the 2000s (with a nice stadium close to the pitch and good facilities) we would never have seen the low crowds we saw in the 80s. Of course they would have fallen but not to the levels they did.

4.    Spurs and Arsenal were, as usual back then, more successful, but just to make matters worse even our smaller local rivals were at their historic peaks just as we were at our historic low.

·         L’Arse made three Cup Finals in a row 78-80, winning one. They also made the CWC final, had some very good players (Brady et al) and generally finished in a good position in the table.

·         Spurs, although in Div 2 for a couple of years in the 70s, won the Cup twice (81 &82) and lost in the final in 87. They also won the UEFA, finished third in the League three times in the 80s and fourth twice, usually qualifying for Europe. Their team was exciting to watch, they had Hoddle, Ardiles and Villa and so on.

·         West Ham won the Cup 1975 and 1980 and mostly finished above us in that period. Also played good football with Brooking, etc.

·         Palace were the ‘team of the 80s’ for a while, there was a buzz about them between 75 and 80 as they won a number of promotions and made the top flight.

·         QPR (2 ½ miles away) nearly won the league in 75, made the Cup Final in 82, won the League Cup and often finished above us.

·         Wimbledon (6 stops on the district line) were on the rise, began to finish above us and even won the f***king Cup and had as many as we did until 97.

·         Even Foolem ( not much more than a mile and half away) made the Cup Final in 75 and had the Best and Marsh roadshow for a bit.

·         In fact Millwall were above us for a time and lead the league in what was it? 89?

If you were a football fan in London in the mid 70s to 80s Stamford Bridge was not going to be the obvious place to watch your football. Naturally this is a generalisation but I hope you can see the gist of what I’m getting at. Success breeds larger crowds, failure shrinks them. It’s that simple. And we were really up against it back then. One thing that I found funny was that when I brought up the issue of Everton's low crowds in the 80s the Scouser I referred to in my previous post claimed they were "living in our [Liverpool's] shadow." Now how come that can be used to excuse Everton but not us? If Everton had had all the problems we had in that period and all the local rivals doing better what do you think their attendances would have been had they been in Div 2 for 5 years in a row?

So, we got just over 13k in ‘82 and just under it in ’83. That’s bad but what were the rest getting?

Everton, one of the ‘Big Five’ averaged 20,310 in 1983 and 19,288 in 1984.

Arsenal, also in the ‘Big Five’, 25,589 in 1982 and 24,154 in 1983.

Spurs, further ‘Big Five’, 20,859 in 1986.

All of these clubs were winning FA Cups, finishing in the top half of Div 1 and maybe playing in Europe. Chelsea, averaged 13,132 in 1982 (2nd lowest position), 12,672 in 1983 (lowest league position ever) and 21,120 in 1984 (promoted).

More instructive perhaps would be comparisons with Leeds who were getting 15,000 and 13,000 in '82 and '83 and Newcastle 16-17,000 since they were both in Div 2 with us (but from higher positions, with much better grounds and not with the off field problems we were having). Middlesbrough were averaging 8,000, 5,000 and 6000 between 1984 and 1986.

Given these figures I really don’t see our gates as remarkably low. Seeing that, until recently, we were far and away the least successful of the top 6 best supported teams (the others being members of the so called ‘Big Five’) one could make the argument that our support has been pretty good. Perfect? No. But probably about as good as others would have been in the same situation. I simply don't agree that the bad was that bad.

 
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The Ugly

If the first fifty years were very good and the next 20 were good then the late 70s to mid 80s can be seen as an aberration and not the norm (i.e. admittedly low crowds but for understandable reasons). What does that mean for the rest of our history? It would mean that the crowds we have now are not unusual as the "where were you when you were sh*t" brigade would have it. They are in fact what we've had for most of our history. Not the history that the "where were you when you were sh*t" mob would remember of course but that's their problem. We had 70 years of good crowds before the rot set in and it bears repeating that this was on the back of winning very, very little indeed.

But how then do we explain the early 90s? A non recovery from all the stuff I wrote about in the last post? Maybe we have always been fickle and that 9,000 crowd against Coventry in 94 was not unusual if you look at our entire history. Instead it ties in with the 6,801 against Liverpool in 1938 and my Scouse opponent was right, we're fickle.

I don't know if this fully explains everything and I'm looking forward to your input with your ideas but here's my own personal take on it that might explain some small part of it. I left the UK to go travelling in May 88. I missed the Boro play offs because I booked my tickets well ahead when we really didn't look like we'd be sucked into a relegation battle. I travelled on and off for pretty much the next 4 or 5 years, missing the promotion season and the couple after that. When I came back full time in 92 I started going to the Bridge again a bit but it was 'different' than before.

One thing is that you get out of the habit of going (this is a very important point that I should have made more of in the previous post. Watching football is a habit that goes in cycles depending on a number of factors, certainly for me but I think also for many others). Secondly this wasn't my team any more. I worshipped at the feet of Pat and Speedie and Dixon and now we had Vinnie Jones and were managed by Porterfield! We has seemed an exciting club that had a team playing good football and now we work more... well... you know.

Added to that, off the field the club seemed to have gone backwards if anything. There was a sense in 84-86 that we were on the rise again back to 'big club' status. When I returned to the Bridge it felt not just as if we had been treading water but it actually felt like we had gone downhill. Less of the ground was open, capacity was smaller, we still didn't own the ground, Save The Bridge was still operating, the players still trained at Harlington. Crowds hadn't really risen, they were OK but nothing special. There seemed to be no buzz about the place.

In 85 I had started to believe we would win something again. Around 92-93 I remember resigning myself to the fact that I might never see us win a trophy in my lifetime. If that sounds ridiculous now look at the Geordies or Sunderland. I'm not saying that winning stuff is the be all and end all, far from it in fact. But what I am trying to say is that there was none of that air of excitement and expectancy that we had in the 80s for a bit. I felt quite despondent about our long terms chances and in some ways it felt worse than the crisis of 82-83. Long term I just couldn't see where the club was going.

These kinds of feelings and that kind of atmosphere have a huge part to play in attendances. Look at the Geordies when Keegan came back. Positivity, the return of the Messiah and all that = instant increase in crowd size. I don't know if this helps explain Coventry in 94 because by then things were changing and we were on the up again but it may help explain a part of it. Going to Chelsea was not the habit for many of us that it might or should have been. The buzz wasn't there at home. You could turn up or not, usually make the decision at the last minute and have no problem getting in unless we were playing Man Utd or the Dippers. There wasn't much expectancy that anything exciting would happen at Chelsea and that you were missing being part of something great if you didn't go. That kind of habit takes time to start and time to break. We probably only ever had that for a few years in our history until about 96.

I don't know, I'll be interested to hear what you lot think. I didn't go to that Coventry match even though I'd been at Wembley (though I honestly think I had a very good reason). Maybe I'm as fickle as the rest. Over to you to explain it. If it can be explained.

 
Great research and post. However, you do realise what a rival fan will do should they read this? They'll read it all through their dead eyes...completely ignore all the points made and the facts highlighted...and say "yeah, but what about when you only got 9k against Coventry in 1994?"

Regarding the early-90's, I think Chelsea had the chance to really kick on after 1990. That summer, we had just finished 5th and then signed Wise and Townsend for £2.8m combined (a lot of money back then). We had a pretty good team going into that 90/91 season...Dixon, Durie, Wise, Townsend, Dorigo, Beasant...all capped by their countries. But then the 91 season proved to be inconsistent. That year we were the only team to beat Arsenal, did the double over Man United, beat Liverpool to more-or-less end their titles hopes and took 4 points of the Spurs side of Gazza and Lineker (as well as thumping them 3-0 at WHL in the QF of the League Cup). Then we'd lose crap games like Oxford in the FA Cup, Luton in the league, 7-0 at Forest etc. The team obviously had potential but something wasn't right. Then the better players and more consistent performers like Durie, Dorigo and Townsend wanted out and when they got their wish, they were replaced with dross like Jones, Joe Allon, Tom Boyd etc. Those early-90's years thereafter really were a bit nothingy and that really reflected in the attendances. There was nothing to look forward to. It took the Cup run in 94, the ECWC run in 95 and the signings of Gullit and Hughes for 95/96 to turn it around. Thankfully Chelsea haven't looked back since.

 
Fantastic thread really interesting and coincidently I was looking up our crowds at the end of the seventies out of interest last night as I remembered them being pretty reasonable.

I am one of the lost generation as you put it started supporting in 75 just before we got relegated (first football memory wasthe 1-1 Everton result coming through on teletext to confirm we were relegated). The season after I went only to an away game at Orient (1-3) but the season after I went to the bridge twice and both times the crowds were big,42000 v southampton and 55000 v fulham and looking at the rest of that season there were several crowds above 30000. Also the season after in division one we had several plus 30000 crowds and some plus 40000. So its fair to say we didnt lose everyone straight away after the decline of the cup winning side.

I have a theory regarding the bad and ugly years, the early eighties was pretty depressing generally, the hooliganism had gone from several hundred running across a terrace and back (with a kick and a punch if you were unlucky) to some pretty nasty stuff with weapons etc. Skinheads were still about there was unemployment and the general feeling of the era was aggressive and football mirrored that. On the pitch it was pretty ugly too Micky Droy Dennis Rofe Alan Mayes not very glamourous apart from the odd Walker good day or when fillery could be bothered .

If you looked around at other clubs (and you could turn up at other london grounds still on the day) their crods didnt pull up any trees at the time for pretty much the same reason. Though in the case of Spurs and west Ham they were going through a successful period on the pitch and of course got bigger crowds as a result. However just to take 82/3 as an example we had some dreadful crowds (the orient one comes to mind) but look what happened with a sniff of FA cup Glory well over 40000 for Liverpool and Spurs at home. At the time we had what i would call a floating support and probably did right up til the mid nineties, you could turn up on the day make a last minute decision to come and many did. Also as said it was a time when other leisure activities became options as there was more disposable income about (talking about the late 80s early 90s now). I think we always had the support base for at least a 30000 average but a mix between poor teams and changing society affected things. Also people forget that the membership cards became more of a necessity and Bates actively and fairly successfully tried to price out our old school support.

Personal circumstances also play a part for instance  I always played football to a reasonable standard so came to lots of midweek games and caught the start and end of each season plus the christmas and new year games.In fact when Sunday games started it was a godsend and I started getting to more matches if i wasnt playing too late that day. And as mentioned its easy not to go when Chelsea were crap although strangely I went quite a lot whilst we had that uninspiring early 90s team. Re the Coventry game I was also at Wembley but missed Coventry as I had a rearranged match to play in that night. Was due to go otherwise and think a mate borrowed my membership card. But yes that was a poor crowd but still an example of our floating support I got locked out at home to United that season for instance.

To be honest all the where were you when you were sh*t stuff whilst irritating is highly selective as is the 'No history' nonsense. These people choose to remember Orient at home but not 45000 V Liverpool a few weeks earlier. Same as in the nineties several examples of sellouts but no lets focus on coventry at home because it suits the arguement. I think the arguement is not totally inaccurate mind you and I would argue that our current average is somewhere between 5000 and team 10000 higher that recent historic figures suggest. Of course this has lasted for over ten years now so you can argue that it is now justified but lets face it we havent relly been tested in terms of loyalty in the past ten years and football is still 'trendy'.

The other thing you picked up on was the selective memory re eras. Our 'good' period crowd wise was too long ago for people to count it and the bulk of todays fans and media think back to 80-95 as 'history' so to them we are a yo yo club with fluctuating attendances who won the lottery and now everything (crowds and trophies) is artificial. Funny thing is to take Liverpool as an example (as its their fans and media allies) who perpetuate this line of thought they had little 'history' before Shankly (eg first facup win 1965) and actually we won a european trophy before them and qualified for the European Cup before them (55). everyone knows that they dont mean history in its proper sense what they actually mean is how many pots we had won. But for them history starts in 1973 and ends in 1990 (but will of course include recent cups of choice especially champs league).

For me though History means so much more Big crowds, Cup runs (if not wins) exciting teams not necessarily with trophie sto match. Great players like Hughie Gallagher, Lawton, bentley, greaves, Ossie, hudson, bonetti etc memorable matches and finally yes trophies. To say to another club you have no history is incredibly ignorant and disrespectful to the spirit of football, try telling an Orient fan or Brentford they have no history, of course they have and its probably as rich as ours in its own way.

Last point before you all drop off, We played an away game at Anfield against one of Liverpools great sides of the mid eighties and the crowd?? Surely well over 45000?? Nope just a paltry 25000 odd !!!! Selective memory, You bet!!!

 
Excellent post Fillerywhereru I started following Chelsea early 60's, attendances then were very good as they were in the 70's (remember a game with Ipswich at home Webby had to play in goal, 40,000 odd for that one) Into the 80's the gates dipped fairly alarmingly although this coincided with the 'white elephant' being built which led to having poor investment in the team. There were a couple of good sides then (Wilkins Wicks Stanley etc) but everything you allude to in your post is very true. 

 
One big factor in our poor attendances that has not been mentioned was the cost of watching us at home in the 80´s and 90´s. Simply put we were the most expensive side to watch in the Country. I´m from a Gooner family ( yeh i know) and we were charging 3 times as much as Arsenal were. I clearly recall it was 3 quid to stand in the Shed in the early to mid eighties while at Highbury it was costing them something like a quid at most. We led the way in prices for a long long time unfortunately. 

That Coventry game - i was at it and i do remember being surprised at the low turn out. It was actually the 2nd last game of the old Shed terrace. The next game we beat Sheff Utd to send them down in front of a much improved crowd. I would guess around 20,000. I still have a slab of concrete from the Shed end that i managed to pick up after that sheff utd game.

Cov game was not straight after Wembley semi final either. It was something like a month or so after but cov game was played a few weeks before the Cup Final. Maybe people were saving money for cup Final tkts. Don´t forget also a lot of fans had to buy off touts for 94 final given our appallingly low allocation. Also there was Live Uefa cup Final on the TV  that night between Arse and Parma. Maybe some just fancied watching that down the pub. 

Lowest Chelsea home attendance i ever attended in the League was Saints at home. Something like 6,000. It was a midweek game in 92. Four days later we beat Sheff utd in fa cup 5th rd in front of something like 30,000. Huge at the time and those 2 contrasting attendances kind of sum up our home support for that period.

 
Some really good points made, there's various games that stand out for me when we had really low gates especially in the early 90s.

86/87 season we had some very low gates but we were absolutely crap on the pitch.

A game that stands out for me is Oxford Tues 10th feb we won 4.0 & only 9,546 turned up, that came days after we got 12k v Sheff Weds, what i think we need to take in comparison is the away support, in that 9,546 gate how many would Oxford have bought, they probably had a few 100, Man City 1993 monday night live game on sky, 10,000 turned up, those gates are on a par with what Wimbledon were getting at Plough Lane, now for me that is an embarrassment for a club of our size(back then) i cant think of any valid reason for gates like that especially in the early 90s, i went to City away that season & we proberly had 2/3,000 up there(i'm sure someone will correct me if i'm wrong) so take Citys numbers that they bought to us say for arguments sake 500, so only 9,500 Chelsea turned up for a home game, out of that 9,500 2/3000 travelled up north for City away, id agree with whats already been said in that our support was fickle, especially the floating support.

Its no wonder other fans ask where were we when we were sh*t with gates like those we used to get at times.

 
Yes, superbly researched thread, and some excellent posts by Fillery and CB. This bit from Flllery puts everything into context:

the bulk of todays fans and media think back to 80-95 as 'history' so to them we are a yo yo club with fluctuating attendances who won the lottery and now everything (crowds and trophies) is artificial.
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Those of us who go back to the 60s know we were a huge club who just didn't win much, but younger fans just don't see that - they see the way Fillery so accurately puts it. And while people point to the massive crowds we managed to draw in our unsuccessful years, others can correctly highlight the pitiful attendances either side of the bumper crowds as proof our our fickle fans.

 
Let's lift the doom and gloom for a minute and take note that Man Utd had lower attendances than us almost every year in those first fifty years of our existence. They beat us by about 1k in our first season (05/06) by 2k the next year and then nothing after that until three seasons in a row in 48,49 and 50 and then again in 52. Interestingly they were runners up in 47,48, 49 and 51 and won the league in 52. Glory hunters? Nope, not picking on Utd, it's just that success breed bigger crowds.

Other than that period in the late 40s they were never even at the races. Most years they weren't even in the top 5 and often not the top 10. That all changes with the advent of the Busby Babes and then Munich. Before that, looking at attendances only, you wouldn't have called them a top 5 club whereas we were probably top 3 or 4. Now imagine what we would have been like had we actually won anything.

Here's the evidence: http://www.european-football-statistics.co.uk/attn.htm

 
Here's one for the older fans. I forgot to put this in as a possible reason for lower attendances in the 80s but I don't even know if it's right so I'd be interested to hear what the oldies think. Is it true or possible that allegiance to football clubs (and possibly attendance with it) changed with the advent of regular football on television?

What I mean is that after the mid 60s when MOTD and other progs like the Big Match started appearing on our screens did more people begin to support teams other than their local one? Did they start to support the successful ones more than they had previously when maybe it was more of a support your local team thing? What I was thinking was if, since you could now watch a team from anywhere in the country on the TV and be more involved in its fortunes, was that part of the reason why there were so many Dipper fans in Surrey and London in the 70s and 80s or was it like that before TV football? Were there more glory hunters around after TV football than before or was it just the same? Those Utd crowds that went up so obviously after 57/58 were they Manchester or Lancashire people or were they drawn from all over the country?

If it's true, I don't think this would have helped us either. We seldom featured on MOTD for years when I was growing up.

 
It's pretty impressive that three years after being founded we were the best supported team in the country.

As to history, all clubs have had poor attendances. I wonder if all those who throw the "where were you when you were sh*t?" line around are aware of the following?:

Arsenal:

4,554* vs Leeds, 05/05/1966

8,738 vs WBA, 05/04/1966

13,738 vs Boro, 16/02/1982

14,843 vs WBA, 26/04/1986

Liverpool:

9,902 vs Brentford, 25/10/1983

12,021 vs Dundalk, 28/09/1982

12,533 vs Chesterfield, 22/09/1992

12,769 vs Apollon Limassol, 16/09/1992

Spurs:

9,359 vs Birmingham, 16/04/1986

10,841 vs WBA, 08/03/1986

13,036 vs Southampton, 05/05/1986

13,135 vs Coventry, 08/02/1986

*For a top flight match. Even in the darkest days of Division 2 mediocrity I'm not sure if we managed an attendance quite as pitiful as that.

 
Good stats Englishman.

I challenged a Gooner online about that attendance v Leeds and he claimed their fans were boycotting the game as a protest against their league position and their manager. Leaving aside the fact that that is about the epitome of the fickle, spoilt football fan to whom success is everything does anyone know if that is actually true? I think it's more likely that it was the last game of the season when they finished in comfortable mid table and they couldn't be arsed to turn up. Be nice to know the truth on that one.

To be fair to the Dippers all those low attendances are against pretty poor quality oppo. Spurs, on the other hand, have no excuse.

 
Cobham said:
Here's one for the older fans. I forgot to put this in as a possible reason for lower attendances in the 80s but I don't even know if it's right so I'd be interested to hear what the oldies think. Is it true or possible that allegiance to football clubs (and possibly attendance with it) changed with the advent of regular football on television?

What I mean is that after the mid 60s when MOTD and other progs like the Big Match started appearing on our screens did more people begin to support teams other than their local one? Did they start to support the successful ones more than they had previously when maybe it was more of a support your local team thing? What I was thinking was if, since you could now watch a team from anywhere in the country on the TV and be more involved in its fortunes, was that part of the reason why there were so many Dipper fans in Surrey and London in the 70s and 80s or was it like that before TV football? Were there more glory hunters around after TV football than before or was it just the same? Those Utd crowds that went up so obviously after 57/58 were they Manchester or Lancashire people or were they drawn from all over the country?

If it's true, I don't think this would have helped us either. We seldom featured on MOTD for years when I was growing up.

I think that you hit the nail on the head. Chelsea were seldom on Match of the day back in the 70's when I started going to the bridge. We were of course featured a bit more on The Big Match on a Sunday afternoon but this was still a program broadcast in the south east only as far as I can remember. MOTD was obviously nationwide and they were only ever interested in teams from the north west and in particular Liverpool, who were at the height of there powers at that time. Liverpool no doubt gained a huge nationwide  fan base from this extensive national coverage which promoted their success. United of course became a mega supported team after the tragic air crash in 58 
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Great thread Cobham. Our attendances nosedived from 79-95. But the facts are from 1906-1978 we averaged more than our history loving north London neighbours despite winning only 4 major titles. Rough averages are.

UNITED 29,500

LIVERPOOL 29,500

CHELSEA 28,760

SPURS 28,660

ARSENAL 27,800.

 
To be honest,I think there is & always has been a trend to follow the most succesful team of the period.

If the team is poor on the pitch for any length of time,fans tend to start voting with their feet and stay away,picking only the 'glamour' matches to attend.

Maybe it's human nature,but I think the vast majority want to be part of something that's successfull and popular & are happy to pay well for it,but as soon as it goes tits up,they disapear.And I think that's true in life as well as the up's & down's of a football club.

There is a couple of question's I'd like to raise though..........

I've often wonderd has the sheer amount of pro clubs in London effected the attendence figures & the choices of fans new to the sport?.Not everyone is introduced to their local team by their dad,uncle etc.Looking at the north west,there is only two large clubs in scouseland, only two in Manchester, plus only two in the northeast to choose from

Also,since the 80's & the massive increase in the cost of housing in London,if football is the game of the working man,how many working guys live around Stamford Bridge thesedays?.If the support isn't so local today, will that effect Chelsea's support in the future?.

Sorry,I mean't to add great thread by the way.

 
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