I'd honestly be very surprised if many fans see us as a PL club.
For most of my lifetime we were a run of the mill second tier side and i think that would be about our level, (as the 50/40/30/20 year averages in the original post kind of confirm).
There are PL clubs I don’t see as PL clubs and even some of the biggest are often only a bad season or a bad owner away from losing that crown.
Charlton has to be in that top tier of potential in terms of its catchment area, location (ie London and access to a young and affluent fanbase) and room for expansion of the ground. Most clubs can’t tick two of those boxes, let alone all three.
As it stands, the stadium with all its faults is light years ahead of many others, including the PL. Sparrows Lane could probably accommodate the facilities available to half the league.
Are we a big club ? I suspect we are a lot bigger than people realise, including our own fan base.
Sparrows Lane is miles off the Prem training grounds now
PL years were a bonus in my opinion - as was late 80’s in Div 1 under Lennie - when Dad first took me in 1976 we were a solid Div 2 club, with a blip of being relegated to Div 3 for 1 season - promotion to Div 1 in 1986 was a huge surprise given the circumstances, and staying there until 1990 probably an even bigger surprise - we then settled into being a Div 2 club again, until another surprise to go to Prem in 1998, went down, but then straight back up - was our stay in the Prem longer than it should have been - I’m undecided - Curbs created a club and culture that kept us there - he deffo had a ‘no dickheads policy’ long before Holden dreamed that up - if we had lost Curbs earlier, we would have gone down - the similarities between Curbs and Seed in that respect are plain to see
I think the only people who can / could consider us as a former big club were those that were going in the glory years of late 1930’s to mid 1950’s (which includes my late Dad) when we were definitely a big club, with big crowds, big stadium, and by and large a top half Div 1 club
It must have been very difficult to see the appallingly low crowds we got in the 70’s and 80’s in our massive stadium, if you had been watching Charlton in the 40’s and 50’s when on for a fair few matches there was over 50,000 or over 60,000 were in The Valley, especially when Arsenal came to visit - I can remember going to some matches with Dad late 70’s and early 80’s when he was very down about the crowd size, given what he had experienced as a boy / teenager / young adult
I'd honestly be very surprised if many fans see us as a PL club.
For most of my lifetime we were a run of the mill second tier side and i think that would be about our level, (as the 50/40/30/20 year averages in the original post kind of confirm).
There are PL clubs I don’t see as PL clubs and even some of the biggest are often only a bad season or a bad owner away from losing that crown.
Charlton has to be in that top tier of potential in terms of its catchment area, location (ie London and access to a young and affluent fanbase) and room for expansion of the ground. Most clubs can’t tick two of those boxes, let alone all three.
As it stands, the stadium with all its faults is light years ahead of many others, including the PL. Sparrows Lane could probably accommodate the facilities available to half the league.
Are we a big club ? I suspect we are a lot bigger than people realise, including our own fan base.
Well obviously there's clubs like Bournemouth, Luton, Sheff Utd and Brentford that aren't seen as PL clubs.
But there's no way you can class Charlton as being in the 'top tier'. There's only 20 PL spots and there's a ton of clubs not currently in the PL who are either bigger than us (Leeds, Sunderland, Sheff Weds, Leicester, Derby, Southampton) or at least on a par with us (Ipswich, Norwich, Middlesbrough, Stoke, Birmingham, Bristol City, Cardiff).
In any given metric (aside from academy quality) we are not top tier.
I’d agree Leeds and Sheffield Wednesday are two clubs on that list you could say are big/potentially big but the rest are ‘treading water’ clubs that can rise briefly and then will sink again because they are limited from stepping up even further. Other than Sunderland, they won’t be in that 60k+ bracket for ground size for instance. Other than Birmingham they won’t have that potentially affluent large catchment area.
If you go from the start of the Premier League in 92/93 to the end of last season/start of this season, the all time Premier League table is as follows:
I'd honestly be very surprised if many fans see us as a PL club.
For most of my lifetime we were a run of the mill second tier side and i think that would be about our level, (as the 50/40/30/20 year averages in the original post kind of confirm).
There are PL clubs I don’t see as PL clubs and even some of the biggest are often only a bad season or a bad owner away from losing that crown.
Charlton has to be in that top tier of potential in terms of its catchment area, location (ie London and access to a young and affluent fanbase) and room for expansion of the ground. Most clubs can’t tick two of those boxes, let alone all three.
As it stands, the stadium with all its faults is light years ahead of many others, including the PL. Sparrows Lane could probably accommodate the facilities available to half the league.
Are we a big club ? I suspect we are a lot bigger than people realise, including our own fan base.
Sparrows Lane is miles off the Prem training grounds now
My son said even the academy facilities for Palace were upgraded when he went there for a match with Kinetic academy last season. Selhurst may be a bang average stadium but the facilities at the training ground in Beckenham are Premier standard since they did a revamp.
I'd honestly be very surprised if many fans see us as a PL club.
For most of my lifetime we were a run of the mill second tier side and i think that would be about our level, (as the 50/40/30/20 year averages in the original post kind of confirm).
There are PL clubs I don’t see as PL clubs and even some of the biggest are often only a bad season or a bad owner away from losing that crown.
Charlton has to be in that top tier of potential in terms of its catchment area, location (ie London and access to a young and affluent fanbase) and room for expansion of the ground. Most clubs can’t tick two of those boxes, let alone all three.
As it stands, the stadium with all its faults is light years ahead of many others, including the PL. Sparrows Lane could probably accommodate the facilities available to half the league.
Are we a big club ? I suspect we are a lot bigger than people realise, including our own fan base.
Sparrows Lane is miles off the Prem training grounds now
My son said even the academy facilities for Palace were upgraded when he went there for a match with Kinetic academy last season. Selhurst may be a bang average stadium but the facilities at the training ground in Beckenham are Premier standard since they did a revamp.
Better than ours, but way below the top training grounds. It's quite a small site when compared to many of the new training grounds.
Leicester's for example cost £100m and includes 21 training areas, 14 full-size training pitches and a 499-seater pitch for youth team games.
I'd honestly be very surprised if many fans see us as a PL club.
For most of my lifetime we were a run of the mill second tier side and i think that would be about our level, (as the 50/40/30/20 year averages in the original post kind of confirm).
There are PL clubs I don’t see as PL clubs and even some of the biggest are often only a bad season or a bad owner away from losing that crown.
Charlton has to be in that top tier of potential in terms of its catchment area, location (ie London and access to a young and affluent fanbase) and room for expansion of the ground. Most clubs can’t tick two of those boxes, let alone all three.
As it stands, the stadium with all its faults is light years ahead of many others, including the PL. Sparrows Lane could probably accommodate the facilities available to half the league.
Are we a big club ? I suspect we are a lot bigger than people realise, including our own fan base.
I’m not sure Charlton really tick any of those boxes. Being in London is a gift and curse, the market is saturated with more professional football teams than any other city on earth. You are also competing for finite disposable income with some of the greatest cultural attractions in the world too.
Also, is there really room to expand the stadium anymore? Thought it had mainly been sold off.
I'd honestly be very surprised if many fans see us as a PL club.
For most of my lifetime we were a run of the mill second tier side and i think that would be about our level, (as the 50/40/30/20 year averages in the original post kind of confirm).
There are PL clubs I don’t see as PL clubs and even some of the biggest are often only a bad season or a bad owner away from losing that crown.
Charlton has to be in that top tier of potential in terms of its catchment area, location (ie London and access to a young and affluent fanbase) and room for expansion of the ground. Most clubs can’t tick two of those boxes, let alone all three.
As it stands, the stadium with all its faults is light years ahead of many others, including the PL. Sparrows Lane could probably accommodate the facilities available to half the league.
Are we a big club ? I suspect we are a lot bigger than people realise, including our own fan base.
Sparrows Lane is miles off the Prem training grounds now
My son said even the academy facilities for Palace were upgraded when he went there for a match with Kinetic academy last season. Selhurst may be a bang average stadium but the facilities at the training ground in Beckenham are Premier standard since they did a revamp.
Better than ours, but way below the top training grounds. It's quite a small site when compared to many of the new training grounds.
Leicester's for example cost £100m and includes 21 training areas, 14 full-size training pitches and a 499-seater pitch for youth team games.
Agree about Leicester but the Juxtaposition is fantastic training facilities while they were relegated from the premier with the mandatory exodus of players.
Whenever I see a thread like this I always think of Oldham. They were premier league once, when I was growing up always seemed to be a fixture of ours. So its a reminder of how far there is to fall and how bad things can get. I also think of Brentford, I cant remember playing them that often and never thought they would amount to much. Likewise Brighton after losing their ground and reduced to playing at Gillingham and Witherdeen. So things can change for clubs of our size rapidly, which make up most of the 92, all you need is the right or wrong ownership and heaps of good or bad luck. I feel we are sinking to a new level in which future generations of supporters will aspire to "giving it a go in the championship for a few seasons" as some kind of success. I always thought we had massive potential after all we were once hosting 40k+ crowds in the top flight for many years, (long before my time). That ability to reach that potential has been removed over the last 15 odd years, parts sold off or removed or not invested in, key personnel not replaced or others of dubious quality brought in. We don't own a ground or training ground despite fighting so hard for it and some very good supporters stumping up money and time for them. We also no longer have owners who are Us or have or had much interest in soccer or our club. We are currently an average size 3rd tier club renting big sites, from the richest owner we ever had, with not much of a future. As opposed to our nearby clubs, who I don't like mentioning, who appear to be all we are not. In fact we are well below the average size London club, 20 years ago we had ambitions at the top table and were the mid size club to aspire to. Absolutely no disrespect to Orient and Wimbledon but that the size and ambition of us now.
I'd honestly be very surprised if many fans see us as a PL club.
For most of my lifetime we were a run of the mill second tier side and i think that would be about our level, (as the 50/40/30/20 year averages in the original post kind of confirm).
There are PL clubs I don’t see as PL clubs and even some of the biggest are often only a bad season or a bad owner away from losing that crown.
Charlton has to be in that top tier of potential in terms of its catchment area, location (ie London and access to a young and affluent fanbase) and room for expansion of the ground. Most clubs can’t tick two of those boxes, let alone all three.
As it stands, the stadium with all its faults is light years ahead of many others, including the PL. Sparrows Lane could probably accommodate the facilities available to half the league.
Are we a big club ? I suspect we are a lot bigger than people realise, including our own fan base.
I’m not sure Charlton really tick any of those boxes. Being in London is a gift and curse, the market is saturated with more professional football teams than any other city on earth. You are also competing for finite disposable income with some of the greatest cultural attractions in the world too.
Also, is there really room to expand the stadium anymore? Thought it had mainly been sold off.
London on its own has the population and infrastructure to fill every ground, museum and theatre on cup final day and when England are playing Twickenham and still accommodate more people doing other things.
Far from from having to compete for fans I would suggest having so many clubs is actually a good thing for the interest that it generates.
The Valley still has a large footprint. More creative use of the whole ground could see a far bigger stadium if the investment and interest was ever there.
It seems to me that a lot of our supporters still see us as a Premier League club that happens to have fallen on hard times and currently find ourselves languishing in the 3rd tier. I personally have always seen us as a top-half Championship club that had a good spell in the top flight and currently finding ourselves during a below average period.
This got me thinking of what our average position is over a period of time, so I decided to work out what our average is over the last 50, 40, 30, 20 & 10 years and I was surprised with some of the results.
50 year Average: 14th in Championship
40: 12th in Championship
30: 13th in Championship
20: 20th in Championship
10: 3rd in League One
Breaking the last 50 years down into 10 season chunks (starting in 72-73 season)
72/73-81/82: 6 seasons in the Championship, 4 in League One 82/83-91/92: 4 seasons in the Premier League, 6 in The Championship 92/93-01/02: 3 seasons in the Premier League, 7 in the Championship 02/03-11/12: 5 in the Premier League, 2 in the Championship, 3 in League One 12/13-21/22: 5 in the Championship, 5 in League One *Using current names for divisions.
So, on average we're a mid to lower Championship team overall, but seem to be a team in a decline over the last decade. For a club our size this simply isn't sustainable and if things continue as they are there will come a point when it simply isn't viable to have a 27k stadium and we will have to cut our cloth accordingly or we could find ourselves with the stark reality of the club going belly-up forever. Worrying times are still very much with us.
Sorry for a rambling post, but boredom sometimes gets the better of me.
I was listening to the ‘My New Football Club’ podcast with David Earl and Joe Wilkinson which for those of you who haven’t heard it, it’s hilarious!
In there episode with Ellis James, he talks about the kids growing up in South London , where he lives, who you see walking around with a PSG shirts on “when you would expect them to be supporting Crystal Palace or Millwall”. That really hit home how insignificant we have become.
I'd honestly be very surprised if many fans see us as a PL club.
For most of my lifetime we were a run of the mill second tier side and i think that would be about our level, (as the 50/40/30/20 year averages in the original post kind of confirm).
There are PL clubs I don’t see as PL clubs and even some of the biggest are often only a bad season or a bad owner away from losing that crown.
Charlton has to be in that top tier of potential in terms of its catchment area, location (ie London and access to a young and affluent fanbase) and room for expansion of the ground. Most clubs can’t tick two of those boxes, let alone all three.
As it stands, the stadium with all its faults is light years ahead of many others, including the PL. Sparrows Lane could probably accommodate the facilities available to half the league.
Are we a big club ? I suspect we are a lot bigger than people realise, including our own fan base.
Well obviously there's clubs like Bournemouth, Luton, Sheff Utd and Brentford that aren't seen as PL clubs.
But there's no way you can class Charlton as being in the 'top tier'. There's only 20 PL spots and there's a ton of clubs not currently in the PL who are either bigger than us (Leeds, Sunderland, Sheff Weds, Leicester, Derby, Southampton) or at least on a par with us (Ipswich, Norwich, Middlesbrough, Stoke, Birmingham, Bristol City, Cardiff).
In any given metric (aside from academy quality) we are not top tier.
I’d agree Leeds and Sheffield Wednesday are two clubs on that list you could say are big/potentially big but the rest are ‘treading water’ clubs that can rise briefly and then will sink again because they are limited from stepping up even further. Other than Sunderland, they won’t be in that 60k+ bracket for ground size for instance. Other than Birmingham they won’t have that potentially affluent large catchment area.
I'm not even sure what point you're trying to make now.
In what world would we be in a 60k+ ground size bracket? It's not the 1950s anymore.
It seems to me that a lot of our supporters still see us as a Premier League club that happens to have fallen on hard times and currently find ourselves languishing in the 3rd tier. I personally have always seen us as a top-half Championship club that had a good spell in the top flight and currently finding ourselves during a below average period.
This got me thinking of what our average position is over a period of time, so I decided to work out what our average is over the last 50, 40, 30, 20 & 10 years and I was surprised with some of the results.
50 year Average: 14th in Championship
40: 12th in Championship
30: 13th in Championship
20: 20th in Championship
10: 3rd in League One
Breaking the last 50 years down into 10 season chunks (starting in 72-73 season)
72/73-81/82: 6 seasons in the Championship, 4 in League One 82/83-91/92: 4 seasons in the Premier League, 6 in The Championship 92/93-01/02: 3 seasons in the Premier League, 7 in the Championship 02/03-11/12: 5 in the Premier League, 2 in the Championship, 3 in League One 12/13-21/22: 5 in the Championship, 5 in League One *Using current names for divisions.
So, on average we're a mid to lower Championship team overall, but seem to be a team in a decline over the last decade. For a club our size this simply isn't sustainable and if things continue as they are there will come a point when it simply isn't viable to have a 27k stadium and we will have to cut our cloth accordingly or we could find ourselves with the stark reality of the club going belly-up forever. Worrying times are still very much with us.
Sorry for a rambling post, but boredom sometimes gets the better of me.
I was listening to the ‘My New Football Club’ podcast with David Earl and Joe Wilkinson which for those of you who haven’t heard it, it’s hilarious!
In there episode with Ellis James, he talks about the kids growing up in South London , where he lives, who you see walking around with a PSG shirts on “when you would expect them to be supporting Crystal Palace or Millwall”. That really hit home how insignificant we have become.
TBF, there are kids you see walking around south london that look like someone you hope is a palace or Millwall fan rather than a charlton fan though wearing a PSG shirt probably reflects certain players at that club and nothing to do with supporting the team itself and will likely be replaced with a another club’s as those players move on
There’s a ‘romance’ to charlton that we cling to - the huge ground enabled us to capitalise on the success and draw in the huge crowds that were possible due to the thousands of workers from the thriving industries along the Thames. The club didn’t re invest in that period, those industries died, the club began to die - the 90’s saw a resurgence and curbs helped us fulfil sone of that lost potential - I still think there is some unfulfilled potential but no more or less than probably 40 other clubs outside of say the big ten.
Man Utd Man City liverpool Arsenal newcastle Chelsea spurs everton Leeds Aston Villa
there’s probably another category actually who r deffo bigger than us: sheff wed ,Sunderland, forest etc but is their potential any bigger? Probably not - the London factor closes that gap
It seems to me that a lot of our supporters still see us as a Premier League club that happens to have fallen on hard times and currently find ourselves languishing in the 3rd tier. I personally have always seen us as a top-half Championship club that had a good spell in the top flight and currently finding ourselves during a below average period.
This got me thinking of what our average position is over a period of time, so I decided to work out what our average is over the last 50, 40, 30, 20 & 10 years and I was surprised with some of the results.
50 year Average: 14th in Championship
40: 12th in Championship
30: 13th in Championship
20: 20th in Championship
10: 3rd in League One
Breaking the last 50 years down into 10 season chunks (starting in 72-73 season)
72/73-81/82: 6 seasons in the Championship, 4 in League One 82/83-91/92: 4 seasons in the Premier League, 6 in The Championship 92/93-01/02: 3 seasons in the Premier League, 7 in the Championship 02/03-11/12: 5 in the Premier League, 2 in the Championship, 3 in League One 12/13-21/22: 5 in the Championship, 5 in League One *Using current names for divisions.
So, on average we're a mid to lower Championship team overall, but seem to be a team in a decline over the last decade. For a club our size this simply isn't sustainable and if things continue as they are there will come a point when it simply isn't viable to have a 27k stadium and we will have to cut our cloth accordingly or we could find ourselves with the stark reality of the club going belly-up forever. Worrying times are still very much with us.
Sorry for a rambling post, but boredom sometimes gets the better of me.
I was listening to the ‘My New Football Club’ podcast with David Earl and Joe Wilkinson which for those of you who haven’t heard it, it’s hilarious!
In there episode with Ellis James, he talks about the kids growing up in South London , where he lives, who you see walking around with a PSG shirts on “when you would expect them to be supporting Crystal Palace or Millwall”. That really hit home how insignificant we have become.
TBF, there are kids you see walking around south london that look like someone you hope is a palace or Millwall fan rather than a charlton fan though wearing a PSG shirt probably reflects certain players at that club and nothing to do with supporting the team itself and will likely be replaced with a another club’s as those players move on
Fair point, I suppose I was just trying to say I took offence to Ellis James’s individual theory.
It seems to me that a lot of our supporters still see us as a Premier League club that happens to have fallen on hard times and currently find ourselves languishing in the 3rd tier. I personally have always seen us as a top-half Championship club that had a good spell in the top flight and currently finding ourselves during a below average period.
This got me thinking of what our average position is over a period of time, so I decided to work out what our average is over the last 50, 40, 30, 20 & 10 years and I was surprised with some of the results.
50 year Average: 14th in Championship
40: 12th in Championship
30: 13th in Championship
20: 20th in Championship
10: 3rd in League One
Breaking the last 50 years down into 10 season chunks (starting in 72-73 season)
72/73-81/82: 6 seasons in the Championship, 4 in League One 82/83-91/92: 4 seasons in the Premier League, 6 in The Championship 92/93-01/02: 3 seasons in the Premier League, 7 in the Championship 02/03-11/12: 5 in the Premier League, 2 in the Championship, 3 in League One 12/13-21/22: 5 in the Championship, 5 in League One *Using current names for divisions.
So, on average we're a mid to lower Championship team overall, but seem to be a team in a decline over the last decade. For a club our size this simply isn't sustainable and if things continue as they are there will come a point when it simply isn't viable to have a 27k stadium and we will have to cut our cloth accordingly or we could find ourselves with the stark reality of the club going belly-up forever. Worrying times are still very much with us.
Sorry for a rambling post, but boredom sometimes gets the better of me.
I was listening to the ‘My New Football Club’ podcast with David Earl and Joe Wilkinson which for those of you who haven’t heard it, it’s hilarious!
In there episode with Ellis James, he talks about the kids growing up in South London , where he lives, who you see walking around with a PSG shirts on “when you would expect them to be supporting Crystal Palace or Millwall”. That really hit home how insignificant we have become.
TBF, there are kids you see walking around south london that look like someone you hope is a palace or Millwall fan rather than a charlton fan though wearing a PSG shirt probably reflects certain players at that club and nothing to do with supporting the team itself and will likely be replaced with a another club’s as those players move on
Fair point, I suppose I was just trying to say I took offence to Ellis James’s individual theory.
Also - palace and millwall share a different part of south London than we do - depends where the programme was based - inner south east London is probably shared more by millwall and Chelsea than palace who were a bit of a non entity when traditional areas were defined - we only lay claim to Greenwich and Bexley really - not sure where palace think they are from but anything much further in than where there ground is is probably wishful thinking - Chelsea mainly I’d say - they can have Bromley - sone right odd bods there as we know
Think @DOUCHER has correctly identified the top ten. Even when Aston Villa , Leeds and Newcastle have been in lower Divisions I always felt that they could pierce the Champions League given the right circumstances. Everton are another sleeping giant and the city of Liverpool is big enough for them to regrow probably when the new stadium is built.
Of the others Villa because they are by far the biggest club in Birmingham, Leeds the same for Yorkshire ( Wednesday suffer because they share the City with United) although when I worked in the area I discovered that there is a bigger passion for Rugby League. Likewise Newcastle in the north east. I always felt that they were bigger than Sunderland.
We are in the next tier in that we have a ceiling of the top half of the PL and a floor of roughly where we are and as others have said there are probably 40/50 clubs in that category although I accept that the likes of Sunderland, Wednesday and Forest are probably ' bigger' than us.
Man Utd Man City liverpool Arsenal newcastle Chelsea spurs everton Leeds Aston Villa
there’s probably another category actually who r deffo bigger than us: sheff wed ,Sunderland, forest etc but is their potential any bigger? Probably not - the London factor closes that gap
I was with you up until the London factor bit, which I think is often overstated. Sure it must help recruitment that it's one of the World's best known cities and that its famous for its culture, but there's a couple of big buts. It's a city with an overabundance of clubs. Three of which are huge, and half a dozen are, at least for the moment, on par or doing better than us. The other thing is that most of the provincial clubs come from single (or at most) two club towns and cities. We are never going to get the same levels of local support as them because there's too much competition and the population is too fluid.
Also over half the population of London were not born in the UK. So we do not have a demographic that has historical al links of family watching Charlton
They will have come here with allegiance to the team in the home country they have come from, And the big 6 prem teams they watched on TV. So it will be a struggle to build a fanbase for us.
Man Utd Man City liverpool Arsenal newcastle Chelsea spurs everton Leeds Aston Villa
there’s probably another category actually who r deffo bigger than us: sheff wed ,Sunderland, forest etc but is their potential any bigger? Probably not - the London factor closes that gap
I was with you up until the London factor bit, which I think is often overstated. Sure it must help recruitment that it's one of the World's best known cities and that its famous for its culture, but there's a couple of big buts. It's a city with an overabundance of clubs. Three of which are huge, and half a dozen are, at least for the moment, on par or doing better than us. The other thing is that most of the provincial clubs come from single (or at most) two club towns and cities. We are never going to get the same levels of local support as them because there's too much competition and the population is too fluid.
but there is a much bigger local floating support - which explains why fulham, brentford and even ourselves managed to sell out in the prem - wycombe or bournmouth or exeter would struggle - a one city club will have a much more consistently sized support - norwich and ipswich's gates don't change much regardless of division
Also over half the population of London were not born in the UK. So we do not have a demographic that has historical al links of family watching Charlton
They will have come here with allegiance to the team in the home country they have come from, And the big 6 prem teams they watched on TV. So it will be a struggle to build a fanbase for us.
I was going to make that point. Greenwich for example has a large African community, who are much more likely to be Arsenal supporters. Hence Kent being a fertile area for us, with the competition of Gillingham or non league clubs being far less strong than the London clubs.
Man Utd Man City liverpool Arsenal newcastle Chelsea spurs everton Leeds Aston Villa
there’s probably another category actually who r deffo bigger than us: sheff wed ,Sunderland, forest etc but is their potential any bigger? Probably not - the London factor closes that gap
I was with you up until the London factor bit, which I think is often overstated. Sure it must help recruitment that it's one of the World's best known cities and that its famous for its culture, but there's a couple of big buts. It's a city with an overabundance of clubs. Three of which are huge, and half a dozen are, at least for the moment, on par or doing better than us. The other thing is that most of the provincial clubs come from single (or at most) two club towns and cities. We are never going to get the same levels of local support as them because there's too much competition and the population is too fluid.
but there is a much bigger local floating support - which explains why fulham, brentford and even ourselves managed to sell out in the prem - wycombe or bournmouth or exeter would struggle - a one city club will have a much more consistently sized support - norwich and ipswich's gates don't change much regardless of division
A floating casual support though. Any "nice" London club in the PL will gain casual supporters, who like the home team, but aren't exactly going to stick around when we're playing Fleetwood in the 3rd tier.
The same will apply to corporate income, where the small local businesses will stick around, but the larger richer ones will want a certain level of football, and can get it elsewhere. A Norwich based business by contrast doesn't have much choice if they want a box or premium seats. Indeed Norwich is basically a one sporting club city, with no rugby or cricket alternatives either.
Comments
I think the only people who can / could consider us as a former big club were those that were going in the glory years of late 1930’s to mid 1950’s (which includes my late Dad) when we were definitely a big club, with big crowds, big stadium, and by and large a top half Div 1 club
It must have been very difficult to see the appallingly low crowds we got in the 70’s and 80’s in our massive stadium, if you had been watching Charlton in the 40’s and 50’s when on for a fair few matches there was over 50,000 or over 60,000 were in The Valley, especially when Arsenal came to visit - I can remember going to some matches with Dad late 70’s and early 80’s when he was very down about the crowd size, given what he had experienced as a boy / teenager / young adult
My son said even the academy facilities for Palace were upgraded when he went there for a match with Kinetic academy last season.
Selhurst may be a bang average stadium but the facilities at the training ground in Beckenham are Premier standard since they did a revamp.
Leicester's for example cost £100m and includes 21 training areas, 14 full-size training pitches and a 499-seater pitch for youth team games.
Also, is there really room to expand the stadium anymore? Thought it had mainly been sold off.
Agree about Leicester but the Juxtaposition is fantastic training facilities while they were relegated from the premier with the mandatory exodus of players.
I feel we are sinking to a new level in which future generations of supporters will aspire to "giving it a go in the championship for a few seasons" as some kind of success. I always thought we had massive potential after all we were once hosting 40k+ crowds in the top flight for many years, (long before my time). That ability to reach that potential has been removed over the last 15 odd years, parts sold off or removed or not invested in, key personnel not replaced or others of dubious quality brought in. We don't own a ground or training ground despite fighting so hard for it and some very good supporters stumping up money and time for them. We also no longer have owners who are Us or have or had much interest in soccer or our club.
We are currently an average size 3rd tier club renting big sites, from the richest owner we ever had, with not much of a future. As opposed to our nearby clubs, who I don't like mentioning, who appear to be all we are not. In fact we are well below the average size London club, 20 years ago we had ambitions at the top table and were the mid size club to aspire to. Absolutely no disrespect to Orient and Wimbledon but that the size and ambition of us now.
I'd say mediocre to mid tier in regards to Charlton
London on its own has the population and infrastructure to fill every ground, museum and theatre on cup final day and when England are playing Twickenham and still accommodate more people doing other things.
The Valley still has a large footprint. More creative use of the whole ground could see a far bigger stadium if the investment and interest was ever there.
In what world would we be in a 60k+ ground size bracket? It's not the 1950s anymore.
Man Utd
Man City
liverpool
Arsenal
newcastle
Chelsea
spurs
everton
Leeds
Aston Villa
there’s probably another category actually who r deffo bigger than us: sheff wed ,Sunderland, forest etc but is their potential any bigger? Probably not - the London factor closes that gap
I'd use QPR as a comparison, but plenty will disagree because we had 75k in a stadium 85 years ago.
Of the others Villa because they are by far the biggest club in Birmingham, Leeds the same for Yorkshire ( Wednesday suffer because they share the City with United) although when I worked in the area I discovered that there is a bigger passion for Rugby League. Likewise Newcastle in the north east. I always felt that they were bigger than Sunderland.
We are in the next tier in that we have a ceiling of the top half of the PL and a floor of roughly where we are and as others have said there are probably 40/50 clubs in that category although I accept that the likes of Sunderland, Wednesday and Forest are probably ' bigger' than us.
So we do not have a demographic that has historical al links of family watching Charlton
They will have come here with allegiance to the team in the home country they have come from,
And the big 6 prem teams they watched on TV.
So it will be a struggle to build a fanbase for us.
A floating casual support though. Any "nice" London club in the PL will gain casual supporters, who like the home team, but aren't exactly going to stick around when we're playing Fleetwood in the 3rd tier.
The same will apply to corporate income, where the small local businesses will stick around, but the larger richer ones will want a certain level of football, and can get it elsewhere. A Norwich based business by contrast doesn't have much choice if they want a box or premium seats. Indeed Norwich is basically a one sporting club city, with no rugby or cricket alternatives either.