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More likely they were sold because of the strategy.

 

Again, I see no alternative to the strategy. By nature it is likely to be a three steps forward two steps back thing as someone else mentioned earlier. We're currently on a step back. If the worst came to the worst we'd go down much healthier financially thanlast time and with a squad of players that should thrive at that level.
If we stay up we have a young squad that have developed together, mostly on 3 year deals and ready to kick on next year.
There is no army of untapped support. The alternative to the way things are now in my eyes is someone with very deep pockets.

 

I'm glad you put should.

if we do go down and then come back up we will time it nice to lose all players again in Jan 2020

I think that there is a decent size of untapped support.

 

Where is it? When we went up to the top flight attendances only went up late in the promotion season.
If we went up again they might peak for a season or so. The facts are that we never have tapped into the levels of attendancethat exceed what we get now unless you go back to the 40s and 50s.
I constantly get caled out by one certain poster for settling for owt. The cold, hard reality of history is that the club have spent the majority of it's existence at this level but has only on very rare occasions had concerted campaigns where it looked like going higher. The vast majority of the time we've been mid to lower table.
That's not negativity. It's fact. I'd love us to be able to burst through that glass ceiling. But its a massive ask and i resent being called negative for dealing in reality while hoping for better.

 

If we could be "better" consistently we could maintain 30k crowds

 

I just don't see that. That would require 5000 away fans and 25k home support. Where is the extra 14 to 15k home support going to come from? That's more than double what we get now.
When we do discounted ticket offers we only get about 14k.
I'm not having a go at you but I just can't see where it adds up.

 

We had 23k in the Prem. That was a sell out. The away end is bigger now for a start. We could do it

 

Last season Stoke averaged 27k, Swansea and Hull 20k. They're all much bigger towns than us.

What I will agree on is that getting attendances up should be a priority. We should be trying to do what Bradford have done. That would mean the club taking a hit financially in the short term but would, hopefully, grow the fan base longer term.
That would mean less money for the team and god knows how that would go down on here. So we're back to needing someone with deep pockets and the long term interests of the club at heart to fund it.

 

Both clubs have had sustained (relative) success.

 

If we went up I'd guess at gates peaking for a couple of seasons til novelty wore off then a fall back in gates. Stoke have been up there for years and are on 27k. How do we get to 30?
Anyway thanks for a reasoned debate...I'm getting told to put the bloody light out!

 

To be honest I half agree with a lot of what you and Conan say, but (to me) it comes across in a way which seems overly critical in the context of the club's resources. It also (to me) seems to ignore the wishes of the players concerned. I also notice that on the odd occasion we have a good result (I agree not often enough) many over critical posters seem to be strangely quiet, including you and Conan.

Regardless of opinions, which agree we're all entitled to, the one thing that annoys me is the abuse that players get during matches and on SM. I just can't see what the point of it is? It can only make things worse.

At the end of the day I'm going to keep putting my views on here, and I know they'll get challenged. As you say that's what the board's for.