Normally stated as 23,009 Thinking before the draw last night, and wondering if we drew Man Utd at Oakwell, what would the likely crowd have been? I believe that the away stand capacity has been reduced to below 5,000 from it's 6,000 limit, and some teams have been given only 4,700 (Wednesday springs to mind) Furthermore a whole section of the East Stand lower next to the away end is unavailable for high risk or high attendance games, guessing 2 to 300 seats? Also half the West Stand seems unavailable, not sure how many seats that reduces capacity by but I'd guess 1,500 so in fact our real capacity would have been as low as 20,100 if not more I don't think we'll ever see a crowd above this figure in Oakwell again, not even when we get back into the Prem
The last time we played Man Utd in the League cup 10 years ago is the last time we got over 20000 to my knowledge. The situation with the west stand is a real atmosphere killer. The issue needs resolving badly. I get there isn't a demand for it, but if that half of the stand is unsafe for fans then we need to just re-build the whole thing.
They've also stopped folk sitting in the top right corner of the ponty, We don't like noise at oakwell anymore...……. Siiiit daaaarnnnn
Barnsley Man Utd L Steele, R Kozluk, S Foster, D Moore, A de Silva (J Campbell-Ryce, 71), E Hallfredsson, A Hammill, J Gray, R Colace (J Butterfield, 77), J Macken (I Hume, 65), D Bogdanovic B Foster, G Neville (s/o 63), W Brown, J Evans, Fabio Da Silva, Rafael Da Silva, Anderson, M Owen (R de Laet, 65), G Obertan, D Welbeck (Z Tosic, 53), F Macheda Subs not used:D Preece, B Hassell, O Thompson, M Devaney Subs not used:C Evans, M James, B Amos, J King, J O'Shea Referee: Chris Foy Attendance: 20019 Stadium: Oakwell
Then surely a new West Stand with those that normally use it spread over its full length would give a better atmosphere than that with one half devoid of human life completely, if you get what I'm saying!
Maybe, the atmosphere at Oakwell is very poor and really the stadium is A- too big for our current fan base. B- too spread out to create any kind of atmosphere.