And that is why the crowd was 8k

[houseboy]

My mistake I realised he didn’t as soon as I posted for some reason was thinking Tarks was captain. but point remains it was a strong side.

The problem I think mate is the balance was wrong (or the imbalance depending on how you view it). I saw a statistic recently that said 65% of our attacks that don't involve the long ball (i.e. wing attacks) come from the left. No McNeil. No Taylor. No normal left side. And that is where our threat mainly comes from. Our two 'current' strikers were there but they have to be fed and the main supply was cut off...by us. I don't buy this idea that Dyche tells them to somehow take it easy (although he MAY say don't take risks) but the changes he made on Saturday, although not wholesale, were important.

[superdimitri]

It's a bit pointless comparing attendances of lower league clubs, of course they get bigger attendances, the cup means a lot more with the possibility to earn a big and sometimes lucrative draw. To us it's nothing.

West Ham are the only surprise and still there's probably lots of tourists in London going just because they can.

[Claretforever]

You seem surprised that a team in a lower division (seen as we are ruling out another Premier league side that had a similar drop) in the 4th round of the cup had a bigger gate than we did but ignoring they were still below their normal average. What would the crowd have been had it been different opposition like Liverpool or Man Utd ?

No surprise from me by a team getting more, just that Portsmouth’s drop wasn’t anywhere near as steep as ours. Nowhere close. If you want to compare Man City to us then fine. We had 40% of our average League attendance. For City to be compared fairly they’d have had to have had 22,000 on. They got 39,000. Their drop was nowhere near ours.

Maybe we are just a poor town, and committing to Premier League season tickets takes its toll on finances? Years ago people used to pick and choose games, so attendances were up and down. Nowadays with all seater we are almost forced down the season ticket route, so you commit up front. Maybe what we got was expected?

[claretonthecoast1882]

No surprise from me by a team getting more, just that Portsmouth’s drop wasn’t anywhere near as steep as ours. Nowhere close. If you want to compare Man City to us then fine. We had 40% of our average League attendance. For City to be compared fairly they’d have had to have had 22,000 on. They got 39,000. Their drop was nowhere near ours.

Maybe we are just a poor town, and committing to Premier League season tickets takes its toll on finances? Years ago people used to pick and choose games, so attendances were up and down. Nowadays with all seater we are almost forced down the season ticket route, so you commit up front. Maybe what we got was expected?

You can take any fixture or stat and twist it to suit any point/agenda. You could have done this in the last round when Newcastle got 29k on yet 52k this round, Coventry 2k this time 22k, Southampton was down to 20k last round, Brighton 20k Man City got 52k last round as well so a huge drop a round further on, Sheff Utd had 11k picking out crowds in a cup which means less and less to most clubs then trying to make out it is just a Burnley thing is daft. It isn't that long since we had less than 4k on against QPR so you could argue our cup gates have doubled but again that would be daft.