What has happened to our away support?

[Kitchandro]

8,000 at your biggest rivals, there's absolutely zero excuse for it being shit and trust me I often have reasons. We weren't dreadful but for the numbers we were very average.

The home game with Forest last year killed my enthusiasm for football about as much as anything, the 0-0 anyway.

So was it shit or very average?

It wasn't great for 8,000 as I said, but I think people saying it was shit are going way over the top. Had it been 3,000 and we'd made that amount of noise we'd have said it was good.

I honestly think if we'd had 3,000 (or the usual capacity of about 4.500) it would have been better. We don't get 8,000 singing at home remember.

[I blame Wellens]

This is the club we are. It is very easy to romanticise the atmosphere. Particularly as far as I'm concerned, back to the Brian little days. But football has moved on. Very different people go to the games now. How many people go to games now just for a good old sing song? Credit to those who try and get the atmosphere going. I often slagged them off for their naff little chants but obviously a great deal more difficult these days to get the crowd going. An example is that a couple of days on this forum someone was saying how they hated night matches because of the naff crowds and flat atmosphere. I used to love the night games, was often the thing you most look forward to. Just please don't suggest we take a bloody drum to away matches.

[Dan]

So was it shit or very average?

It wasn't great for 8,000 as I said, but I think people saying it was shit are going way over the top. Had it been 3,000 and we'd made that amount of noise we'd have said it was good.

I honestly think if we'd had 3,000 (or the usual capacity of about 4.500) it would have been better. We don't get 8,000 singing at home remember.

Very average for a club that had 8,000 away at somewhere, so it's below average for us because it happened to be at our rivals.

To be honest even when we have 4,500 sometimes we're pretty mediocre...

This is the club we are. It is very easy to romanticise the atmosphere. Particularly as far as I'm concerned, back to the Brian little days. But football has moved on. Very different people go to the games now. How many people go to games now just for a good old sing song? Credit to those who try and get the atmosphere going. I often slagged them off for their naff little chants but obviously a great deal more difficult these days to get the crowd going. An example is that a couple of days on this forum someone was saying how they hated night matches because of the naff crowds and flat atmosphere. I used to love the night games, was often the thing you most look forward to. Just please don't suggest we take a bloody drum to away matches.

Good post this to be fair, how many go for a sing song? Very few, and that for me is a very bad thing.

Football's become that focused around what happens on the pitch and that, IMO, is a bad thing for a lot of clubs. I tell this to people my age and I get funny looks because I've grown up in an era where we don't know any better, but when there was less emphasis (but still a fair bit) on what happened on the pitch, you wouldn't get so much negativity with shit displays because when the football was shit, people would still have a great day.

The type of fan has changed due to this too, as well as the price. New people who come along to football now naturally just focus on the football, no fault of their own. That's wrong to me. Stupid H&S rules have completely killed the balance and you actually find at 99% of clubs in England, if the team ain't doing well, it's pretty appalling at home games, and it's even filtering through to our away IMO.

Seriously don't know if I'll do Middlesbrough, I probably will knowing me but that's just the kiss of death to another 2-1 loss and a wank away end to boot.

[Guest Bilo]

People are getting a bit panicky without good reason.

We've had Charlton, Blackburn and Wolves away. None of these are fixtures we'd have been looking for before any others when they were released in June. If Forest, Palace, Peterborough and Sheffield Wednesday are terrible then we can start worrying. I don't think for a second they will be though.

[Shrenchel]

People are getting a bit panicky without good reason.

We've had Charlton, Blackburn and Wolves away. None of these are fixtures we'd have been looking for before any others when they were released in June. If Forest, Palace, Peterborough and Sheffield Wednesday are terrible then we can start worrying. I don't think for a second they will be though.

No reason why we shouldn't have made a racket at Charlton though. London away, decent crowd, good acoustics in the stand, no bother from stewards, plenty of seats free to go stand at the back. But it was pony apart from a couple of points in the second half. Outsung at Charlton, laughable really. No idea what's happened, seems like people just can't be fvcked anymore.