“Read it again Moggy , 2000 more HOME fans , the decrease in away fans is obvious,and inevitable following relegation .”

“Crowds were 2,000 more in the Championship than they are now that is correct. But visiting teams regularly filled the away end, instead of the 75% of empty seats you regularly get now.”

“We did attract more fans. We had 5200-5400 home fans when we were in the Championship, some 2000 more than now.

We could have had more with better ticket selling (prohibitive, time consuming and overly complicated) better marketing and image and a better matchday experience. The club pretends to improve things but it is no more than papering over cracks. Changing music does not bring fans back. The football does but as for many a year the football and the fans are secondary. e.g Why spend 600k plus on a bar extension for the top 10% ten bob millionaires fans, exclude it from the real fans whilst the team plummets down the leagues. It beggars belief it really does.”

“You're right SheffCCIron life nowadays is way more complicated.When we were in the Championship we still couldn't attract the local popn.Irrespective of whether or not we could compete the standard of other teams were worth watching .However not so for the Sky armchair Premiership fans .Life is way too complicated to have a ground in the town centre when there is nothing else in there .Hang on, the Town Cntre has moved out of town & guess where our ground is?”

“You're naive ironite. Adkins was cheap and on the doorstep. Wharton is always looking to save money.”

“You're being a little harsh Pstoff....we were fourth in League One when Adkins was given the job. Our board was able to save us from the brink of oblivion, back Brian Laws with a spine of experience (admittedly we got lucky with a very lucrative cup draw against Chelsea which paid for Billy Sharp and Andy Keogh), but not many people would trust a physio to manage a successful team even on an interim basis.”

“With all this arguing, can you not see that in a round about way you are all correct. It is hard to put the lack of attendances at the door of one thing more than the other. For example is the board responsible for a lack of ambition, thus partly responsible for our slip out of the Championship? Yes.
Does the current economic climate mean people are less keen to go watch a team that isnt playing good football and will regulalrly lose? Yes. Would they pay if we were playing better? Most likely. Were we fortunate to have a few good seasons where we stumbled (ahem, scouted) on some fantastic talent that we then had to sell on simply to keep above the dreaded negative pound sign? Quite possibly. Were we fortunate to inherit Nigel Adkins? Again quite possibly.

Alot of things add up to the situation we are currently in. Also remember that with the coverage and mass media of premiership clubs, it is hard to get younger people excited by a team like ours. With a better run in the championship this would have improved, but unfortunately it still would have taken time to turn a chelsea fan into a scunny fan even if they lived on Glanny Way.

We maybe were lucky to have been in the Championship, but remember it doesnt mean it cannot happen again. if you had asked me in 1993 would we spend two seasons in the second flight within the next 15 years, I personally wouldnt have expected it. have some faith, who knows what is round the corner (once Warton leaves..............)”

“The only thing the board has done for the club in the last 5 years was accidentally finding us Adkins when all they had in mind was doing management on the cheap. That was there only contribution if you can call it one. Staff found the players which the board sold so cannot take any glory there and as soon as we lost our only reason for success we did not replace him and indeed still haven't.

No real amount of money or change of chairman will make those days return unless we can get Adkins back from Southampton. That is like Aberdeen getting Fergie back.”

“Deereyme.........YOUR COMMENTS ON THIS FORUM MAKE MORE SENCE THAN ANY OTHER POSTER, INCLUDING MYSELF, WELL SAID.

At the end of the day, we are all United supporters that want the best for our club, and as for Scunthorpe people not attending matches, I would think that of the 4,000 remaining fans, possibly 1,800, of these are like myself, and travel to games from outside of the town, in fact I would think that there are as many that travel from places like Derby, Doncaster, Sheffield and other towns than there are that travel from Scunthorpe to Manchester, Leeds etc.

I have two son in laws that are avid supporters of Arsenal and Chelsea, neither have ever set foot in either of these clubs stadiums, I know that 99.99% percent of Man U, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Spurs fans that live in our area are armchair supporters only, even though they wear team caps, shirts and hats, ALL CLUBS CAN MANAGE WITHOUT THESE SORT OF FANS.

Dereyme writes more sence than any of us, just plain sence.”

“Ironite, I'm feeling so arrogant I thought I ought to read your comments again to see if I could make out anything coherent in your argument and unfortunately I found pretty much nothing (as I'd loved to have found something more convincing). The main points that demonstrate delusion and the usual resorting to personal attacks are that I have somewhere claimed to know why our club fails because I'm older and that I should trust you when you say I know nothing. I've never claimed this and why on earth would I trust someone I've never met? Also, what's this point about it being obvious why attendances are so poor being related to the economy? Are these the same people within the town's economy who have enough money to pay to travel to all those matches out of town that you ascribe to being the root of the problem? Your last point is the most unconvincing: 'We have no fans with no interest because as a town, we have no industry and no commercial prospects, nothing to do with anything our Chairman in the 70's did'. Again, the usual misinterpretations from the usual crowd. I agree, it's got nothing to do with what our Chairman in the '70's did. Why are you disagreeing about something I haven't said? I did say finances were the root of the team's decline in '70's yes. I didn't say it was the fault of the Board at the time and neither do I think that. Please, if you're going to try to derail a groundswell of opinion do it with some grace and fair argument. That aside the last point doesn't hold any water if you consider the '80's and 90's when there were certainly more commercial prospects and plenty of industry than now, albeit a declining steelworks counter-balanced with a raft of tokenistic SME's. The average gates at SUFC have remained more or less the same throughout this period. I rest my case that they have never recovered from the 70's due to apathy passed down through following generations, and yet, when a golden opportunity arrived to buck the status quo that opportunity was thrown away by the current Board. My theory is that it would have taken a good 5-10 years to change it, but it just may have been possible with sensible sustained investment and a good 5-10 year plan. What we got is a short-term, over cautious, over conservativism that, given our spiralling decline, may just be the death of us anyway.”