Sun Aug 07, 2011 7:53 am
As the below article highlights (from 'Knees up Mother Brown')
It is my opinion that clubs like West Ham have only been percieved to be bigger than us over the last 50 years or so due to status. If we maintained top flight status for the periods they have we'd be in a bigger stadium than them by now, and have a bigger fan base.
We need Malky to start the progression to finally realising our clubs potential. Hopefully we'll witness the start today...
There are just 3,500 tickets left for West Ham's Championship opener against Cardiff at the Boleyn this weekend.
Despite the game being carried live by the BBC, Hammers fans have snapped up tickets in their droves in order to see Sam Allardyce's new look sides take on last season's play-off semi finalists, themselves under new management having replaced the outgoing Dave Jones with former Hammer Malky Mackay during the summer.
As of this afternoon (Friday) just a handful of Band 4 tickets - the cheapest in the stadium - were still available, whilst little more than a thousand Band 3's remain on sale. It is a similar story for the two most expensive zones - Bands 1 and 2 - with approximately 950 and 1500 remaining respectively.
In addition to the healthy match day sales, West Ham have also sold in the region of 18,000 season tickets for the forthcoming season - a number considerably lower than last year's figure of circa 24,000, but less than feared given the drop in standard of opposition.
Meanwhile calls from Cardiff supporters to boycott the game due to severe restrictions placed on travelling fans by the Metropolitan Police and West Ham United's Safety Advisory Group have been largely ignored.
City have a reduced allocation of just 1,250, a figure imposed following crowd disturbances between Bluebirds fans and Chelsea fans at Stamford Bridge last February.
However some travelling fans have managed to pick up tickets by alternative means; one Welsh fan posting on the Cardiff City Forum tonight boasted that "a few of us are going by train, got tickets via WHUFC!".
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