Although that attendance of 19,472 was 12th best in the country when we finished mid-table in the second tier (we were 30th in the league structure as a whole), so it wasn't too bad. Would, say, Spurs, who got just over 7K per game more (fifth in the attendances table) when finishing mid-table in the division higher and having the feel-good factor of a run to the FA Cup final, have matched that if they'd been mid-table in the division below? Villa, for example, were in our division that season and won automatic promotion - and their average gate was over 1K per game less than ours. Forest finished third in Division One and reached a Cup semi-final; they averaged 19,670. In that context, I don't think our crowds were actually too bad that season.
I'd forgotten that. Great timing, given that Billy (who, I strongly feel is much underrated as a City boss) walked out because he felt that making City great in the near future was pretty much a forlorn hope. Though his wlaking out for another club probably explains to some degree why he's underrated.
Definitely. Go back 30 years and we were in the season after Heysel, various other notable hooligan incidents (the infamous Millwall riot at Luton, for instance) and the Bradford fire. English teams were banned from Europe, which meant that so many games in the second half of the season were meaningless. Sterile long-ball football was the norm, in crumbling stadia and in front of often pitiful crowds. If someone had been able to magically transport you forward to show you how things would be 30 years later, you'd have been absolutely incredulous in a way that I don't think someone shown the difference between the football climates of the three decades between, say, 1946 and 1976 would have been. (I think someone shown the difference between 1956 and 1986 would have been a little shocked at just how miserable spectacle it had all become).