Coventry City’s gates have been holding up reasonably well, considering the team’s fixture in the bottom three and the poor home fayre, especially before Christmas.
There were only 12,309 at the Reading home game in September and I predicted the Ricoh low (12,292 v Doncaster last season) would be broken at the midweek game with Blackpool three days later, but it wasn’t.
Between then and last Tuesday against Crystal Palace, there were six sub-14,000 gates, four of them sub-13,000 and it was only a matter of time before the record fell. Only large away followings from Southampton, West Ham and Leeds have kept the home average as high as 14,500, but that is still over 10% down on last season’s final average of 16,307.
If the average doesn’t improve between now and the end of the season the home gates will be at their lowest level since 1993-94 when the average was 13,352.
The lowest average since then was 14,632 in 2003-04. 1993-94 was the season that Highfield Road was only open on three sides as the East Stand was being built and with the capacity reduced to just over 17,000 the other three sides of the ground seemed fairly full most of the time.
The biggest home crowd that season was 17,009 for the visit of Manchester United.