I do like a graph. Must be something in my chromosomes (the ‘X’ and ‘Y’ bits probably) And, for reasons that will become clear, I like this one very much.
It shows a comparison between the average home attendances for Norwich City and Ipswich Town since 1992. As you can see, City’s attendances have been flourishing faster than Mourinho’s grey hairs, while Town’s have been sliding down the table clumsier than a drunk at a barn dance.
But that’s being unkind. After all we all want both local teams to do well. Don’t we?
The Premier League era started off with Ipswich, managed by John Lyall, playing in the top division. Three consecutive poor league finishes attracted average home gates of 16,000 – 18,000 and with relegation the following season they plummeted to 12,000.
The inspired appointment of George Burley turned things around on and off the pitch and he more than doubled average attendances to over 24,000 during his eight-year tenure. His replacement Joe Royle kept the momentum going for four consistent seasons of around 25,000, but then the rot set in.
Jim Magilton, Roy Keane, and Paul Jewell each chipped a thousand off average attendances each season until they eventually stood at 17,000.
Then – rather surprisingly – a green knight turned up on his charger and turned things around. Yes indeed, it was the much-maligned but decent Mick McCarthy.
His first three years showed considerable improvement and garnered a place in the play-offs while average attendances rose to over 20,000. But it couldn’t last and lack of player investment impacted league position and attendances dribbled back down to 16,000.
Jock McTurncoat arrived and before long he was once again achieving something extraordinary at an East Anglian club. Not only were team performances worse than they had ever been in my lifetime, but he managed to get Ipswich Town relegated to the third tier of English football.
But that’s not the extraordinary bit. The extraordinary bit is he (Paul Lambert) managed to massively increase average attendances while doing so, up 1,500 in his first year, then increasing to almost 20,000 this year, virtually a ten year high. Extraordinary, Brian. Or in this case, Paul.
Incidentally, while we’re on the unpleasant subject of League One, Norwich’s average home gate during their brief visit to that division was almost 21,000 – well over a thousand more than the boys in blue. But, who’s counting.
(Me, that’s who).
Moving on to Norwich’s performance over the same period, some interesting facts emerge.
Early all-seating stadia didn’t attract many fans. Mike Walker’s early 1992/93 exploits only attracted 16,000 regular watchers. I’m gonna get the ‘E’ word out again – extraordinary. (There, I warned you).
My memory of the Martin O’Neill management era was one of a golden dawn prematurely cut short by a bulbous grey cloud Chasing across the sky, but look at it – only 14,000. Bless his confusing verbal cotton socks, but facts is facts.
Mike Walker (again), Bruce Rioch, and Bryan Hamilton all huffed and puffed and unconvincingly nudged the crowds up to 16,000, but then, once again, it was a green knight in shining armour who came to the rescue.
I’ll be honest, I didn’t mind Nigel Worthington but thought his tenure was unremarkable. But just look at what he did. He revitalised the crowds, gave them sniff of the Premier League, and they came flooding back into the stadium, increasing in numbers from 16,000 to 25,000 in only six years.
And the momentum that Nigel generated never really died away. I can see now why Delia was so fond of him – and perhaps the rest of us should be too.
After Nigel, Peter Grant and Glenn Roeder floundered around in the lower reaches of the Championship until dismal relegation to League One, but both amazingly managed to maintain 25,000 regular attendees over that period.
Bryan, bless him, had a shot (as a Gunn might), but he must have been relieved to be relieved by an irascible Scotsman called Paul. Paul did rather well and crowds slowly warmed to the pleasing sensation of racing up the table faster than a haggis with a rocket up its @rse, and he spikily increased crowds to 26,000.
And that’s where the numbers have stayed ever since, wobbling elegantly between 26,000 and 27,000 – through the Chris Hughton and two Neils era (Adams and Alex) – before settling comfortably into the 99%-capacity-sold arms of Herr Farke. Das ist nett, ja?
So, where will we be in ten year’s time? Will Ipswich ever fill their stadium? Will Norwich build a bigger one to take all those queueing up to go? Will there ever be a – cough, pardon me – joint stadium enabling East Anglia to genuinely compete with the Premier League giants?
Who knows.
But in the meantime please continue to park your bot on your shiny yellow or green plastic flap and watch this space, because it could get interesting…
Something seems to have gone badly wrong with the timeline in the final graphic for 2013/14, 2014/15 and 2015/16.
I’m so sorry, MGW. You are entirely correct. I’d slipped up adding an extra year to CH and removing one from AN. Have sent revised version to the editor. Hopefully the correct one will show soon. Apologies.
All sorted … blame the editor for not checking it!
Entirely my fault! Blummen charts took ages, and you eventually end up getting a bit too close to them to be objective. Thanks for fixing.
No problem at all, my bill for proofing will be in the post! 😉
Seriously, I did have a bit of a ‘moment’ when I thought that I had slept through an entire Hughton promotion season!
Would really laugh if, as the only self-funded club, Norwich were awarded the Premier League Title in 6 months’ time as all the other clubs had folded.
Ha! Yes. It seems whatever decision the authorities take, Norwich won’t be any worse off than the current position, so fingers crossed.
I get the irony and believe me it makes me giggle too.
But something tells me it ain’t gonna work out like that and I think we all know why, as in “you either got it honey, or you ain’t”.
A very good read although I always ignore stats graphics cos I don’t often understand them. Mea culpa.
Cheers Martin.
Fascinating piece but which year did the Andrew Cullen effect kick in or was that just season tickets. Love to see ST sales on those graphs.
Thanks Mike. Agreed, there are many more factors other than the team manager which influence attendance figures and it would have been fascinating to incorporate them all. Alas a task beyond me! Good comment though.
Great opening lines!
Some interesting data and what a contrast between these relatively unsuccessful Championship seasons
1999/2000 12th average 15k+
2000/01 15th average 16k+
and
2016/17 8th average 26k+
2017/18 14th average 27k+
11k up in 17 years despite being back where we started.
It is certainly true that the increase in crowds started in the Worthington era – his signing of one Darren Huckerby was no doubt a big help. Capacity was increased of course on the back of that success.
But it’s not just about the manager – if it was, crowds would surely have halved when Peter Grant was offering the direst football I’ve ever traveled 200+ miles to see.
I think efforts on the Commercial side are a big factor.
In the first few years of ownership Delia ad Michael achieved very little progress on the field. But along with Neil Doncaster and especially Andrew Cullen, they were much more successful at improving the whole experience of being Canary fans. Was there anything like Yellows, or the Gunn Club before they were took over? I believe contact with supporters groups was vastly improved from previously too.
There was even a club official message board for some years – with surprisingly little attempt to suppress anti-ownership remarks often bordering on libelous. Message boards hadn’t been invented in Chase’s day; had they been. do you think the club would have had one?
I think it was Cullen who drew fans in by introducing the likes of early season ticket renewals at generous discounts. Later, when we made it to the PL, came the hat-trick scheme for exiles, which merged into the membership scheme. Actually, something like the hat-trick scheme is exactly what we should have had this season.
I’d say that the work they did then had more much long-term impact than the reign of any particular manager. That work, which drives the style of club we are, is now taken for granted, if not forgotten entirely.
It’s just a shame it took them so long to get the football side right, which in reality (despite Worthington’s brief success) they didn’t really do for the first time until David McNally showed the way. Then they lost it again, until Webber came along.
Nobody knows what will happen next, but at least it looks as though there will still be 26k+ to watch it.
Fantastic comments, Keith B. It would be great to quantify all the soft and hard criteria of personnel, investment, football’s financial landscape at the time, internal and external sentiment, etc etc and somehow come up with a strategy to succeed and entertain. Far beyond the scope of my abilities, alas, but I thought the manager/attendance idea was an interesting snapshot – and perhaps a challenge to embedded perceptions. The off-field support from the club representatives and supporter groups in recent years has been fantastic too creating atmosphere and making a football match an ‘event’ again. Brilliant. Well done to all!
The way things are going with Covid-19, I think it may be a long time before 26,000 of us are allowed to get together again. I only hope that we still have a club to support, and other clubs to play against.
Sorry, I’m not normally a pessimist, but depriving me of my bowls, football, and Saturday night meals out with friends is getting me down. There’s only so much de-cluttering, gardening and decorating you can do, and the TV is getting worse with the proliferation of Mrs Brown programmes.
These are very odd times, Jim, but try and stay positive. Everything will be alright in the end with lots of good things to look forward to.
Thanks for the reassurance Chris! Thanks to all the MFW team for giving us something interesting to read.