by Bristol Paul »
21 Feb 2009 20:43
winchester_royal Bristol Paul winchester_royal I think the main difference between us and Charlton, is that we have the potential to be bigger than just a medium sized club. Yes, at the moment we are a small club with small (and rightly so) ambition, however we are situated in a large, and fairly empty catchment area of fans and youth players alike. With the likes of Southampton soon to go into administration, and Pompey won't last much longer in the Prem, we could potentially become the biggest club in Southern England outside of London.
But for the moment you're right, baby steps are the way to go.
Deluded, we are 25 miles from the biggest city in Europe, how the hell is our catchment area bigger? We've been doing well for the last 4/5 years, and struggled to get much more than 23-24k crowds even at the best of times. No way are we ever going to do more than Charlton and other similarly sized clubs - we are at the top of our game more or less, and quite honestly I'm more than happy given where we were when I first watched Reading in the early 80's.
LOL at that post. First of all, how are expected to get crowds larger than 24k when our ground only holds 24200?
Second of all. Charlton is situated bang in the middle of 'the biggest city in Europe' with all the big teams no more than a couple of miles from them, of course out catchment area is bigger.
LOL at that reply. We got sell outs because of away allocations, not because of 24k home crowds, as borne out by this seasons attendances. You're clearly the most optimistic person you know if you think we are going to get people who have no interest in Reading FC travelling 40 miles to watch us in that "fairly empty catchment area". You can apply that stupid argument to virtually any championship side to the west of, and south of London.
