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Let's be honest, support for both Bristol clubs is quite poor considering the size of Bristol, catchment area and lack of competition, City are making progress in increasing support due mainly to the facilities at AG (certainly not the football over the last couple of years). I think Bristol in general has plenty of football fans but not so many football supporters, unfortunately a lot of those fans wear shirts from clubs over 100 to 150 miles away, really pisses me off to be honest.

2,500 pages. That's more pages than they have fans. ?

I for one am prowed that we have.

Yorkshire and the North West also big Rugby areas. I get what you’re saying but I’m only talking about the here and now. ? Anyway, back on track. ’MASSIVE’ ?

Lots of Baggies fans come from the wider Black Country area. Places like Stourbridge, Halesowen, Redditch and Amblecote and also parts of the West Midlands conurbation that are identifiably Black Country, like Wednesbury, Oldbury and even Smethwick. They reckon the Black Country has a population of 1,2 million, so it's not surprising it can support two big clubs in Wolves and WBA as well as one smaller one in Walsall. They all pick up fans from Worcestershire and parts of Staffordshire as well, where there are no professional clubs. All teams draw lots of support from the hinterland areas surrounding the towns, cities and suburbs they are named after, as well as "exiles" from that home region. Sunderland always struck me as a very well-supported club, given the size of the town they are based in. However, you have to factor in that they pick up the vast majority of support across Wearside, something that doubles their potential fanbase.

Fair play though, 47 percent of Nailsworth watch Forrest Green Rovers. ?

There's a huge problem using average attendances against population size as a stick to beat clubs with. You'll be amazed to learn for example that 32% of the population of West Bromwich (78,000 people as of 2018) went and watched their club meanwhile a tiny 1.41 of Birmingham's 1.1 million population watch Birmingham City. If the population of Wigan or Barnsley was to quadruple overnight their attendances wouldn't suddenly by increase in line with their percentages. Their percentage of population attending would get smaller.

Sports teams are singular in American English, but in British English the emphasis is on whether you are talking about the collective body together (in which case it's singular) or as a group of individuals (it takes plural). Sports teams, pop groups and the police are classic plural group verb forms in UK English, but there are others. "A committee has been appointed to look into corruption...." has a group emphasis so is singular, but "the committee were unable to make a recommendation" is a partial sentence where individuals in the group are obviously highlighted, so we go plural. If you wonder why I give a **** about all this, it's because I sat on the humorously named "style council" of our national broadcaster and drew up its grammatical rules in conjunction with a team of sub-editors from the main national broadsheets and the former editor of the OED. One thing you learn when you delve into grammar is that half of what you think is established English, has no formal basis, but is just someone's opinion that has become taught as established grammar. Split infinitives are a good example. We were all told at school to avoid these, but there has never been an agreed grammatical prohibition of them and classic English literature is full of them. They're just a bad English teacher's definition of what bad English looks like. Anyway, not sure why I'm discussing this on a thread about the Blue Few. They're prowed of their bad English.

@Batman - hopefully the sleeping tablets will gradually regulate your body into normal sleeping habits again. Don't add to your stress at the moment by worrying about how long you will need them for. It's amazing how a much loved spouse/partner can change in such a short space of time. I experienced the same with my ex, I've since found out that he lied on the financial declaration when we divorced, as he was actually buying the property he lived in, which he said was rented. We'd lost our marital home when his business failed - I was stupid enough to sign it over to guarantee a business loan. When he left we were living in a privately rented house, and I moved in with my parents, so that I could save a deposit to get back on the property ladder. I never wanted my son to be homeless again - the ex tried to have his child support payments reduced, as my outgoings were reduced due to living with parents! At the point of divorce, he'd built a considerable amount of equity in his new property, as he'd been in a position financially to buy when the property market bottomed out. I would never have believed it possible that he could behave like this after 18 happy years together. I try to get solace from the fact that everything I've achieved since has been done off my own back, and I have a fantastic relationship with my son, who appreciates the fact that I went without things in order to get us where we are today. I hope that your wife sticks to what she has said, and the divorce can come to an amiable conclusion. If she is using a solicitor, I fear that they may push her to get what she can - hope that I'm wrong on that one.

Sadly My sister was a hooker in Leicester she used to play for Leicester Ladies.

AS I said in a previous post, playing on a wicket that was already 3 days old didn't help, but we desperately need to find a spinner of quality from somewhere, especially if Van Buuren's situation is going to take time to resolve.

Thank you. That was the point I was trying to make in reaction to anyone (although it’s usually Gasheads) who accuse clubs like Fleetwood and Accrington of being ‘tinpot’ based on attendances. In a City with a population of around a million (when you take into consideration the surrounding towns where many City and Rovers fans come from) both clubs are poorly supported....Rovers especially so, which is amusing as they in particular have massive delusions of grandeur when it comes to their fan base. We can come up excuses about students and amateur football but those factors aren’t unique to Bristol.

Chelsea would be another perfect example

This proves my point though. The stat doesn't take into account where people live. You can't for example say, the West Brom stat is wrong because it's clearly skewed by fans attending matches who don't live in West Brom but say the Wigan stat is correct because every person who attends their games lives in Wigan. The figures for Bristol could differ vastly depending on whether you include just the city population (around 450000), the urban population (around 600000) or the area (around 1 million)? How many city fans live in North Somerset, Weston and surrounding areas? How many saggys live in the South Gloucestershire area? Don't get me wrong, anything to have a laugh at the Sags is a good thing but we shouldn't be beating ourselves up over play population attendances as it's just not a reliable figure to use.

Not sure what the problem is? If West Brom’s attendances are 32% of the population of West Bromwich then that just shows how much support they draw from surrounding areas away from other local clubs. If Barnsley and Wigan’s populations quadrupled overnight then obviously their attendances wouldn’t quadruple overnight....however the population of Wigan or Barnsley is NEVER going to quadruple overnight so it’s not really a valid point. What I could’ve done is doubled the percentages for Rovers and City to take into account that there are two clubs in Bristol. However Rovers would’ve still been lower than Fleetwood and Accrington even after that. 467,000 is the population of Bristol alone, for ease I didn’t include the surrounding areas where many City and Rovers fans come from like Yate, Keynsham, Nailsea, Portishead etc. Those areas easily outnumber the student population in Bristol. I agree it’s not a completely perfect measure and there are many different factors to take into consideration. However I think that using a clubs average attendance as a percentage against the local population is not useless at all, it’s a perfectly good indicator of how popular a club are in the local area because it tells you how many people are willing to part with money to support them.

What people also forget is that Bristol has a very big student population. 2 very big universities with people coming from all over the country, and whilst some may show an interest in one of the local teams, some won't be bothered with anything other than their "home" team, and a lot will have absolutely no interest in football whatsoever. Figures and percentages can be read in many different ways, but as you say @Midlands Robin, this particular stat is pretty useless.

The Welsh FA have had quite a bit of bad luck with their managers in recent history. He has been charged, that suggests sufficient evidence, but he has not yet been found guilty. I for one, will therefore reserve any comment on the man until the end of the trial. That is what everyone should be doing as a matter of course.

But City are/is not at home on Saturday, the season is over!

Coutts is a banker.

Had a colleague at work who had one leg shorter than the other. Which causes his head to bobble side to side. Do you know what his nickname is? The Snipers Nightmare

True facts. 1. In the 1400s a law was set forth in England that a man was allowed to beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb. Hence we have 'the rule of thumb.' 2. Many years ago in Scotland , a new game was invented. It was ruled 'Gentlemen Only... Ladies Forbidden'... and thus the word GOLF entered into the English language. 3. Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history: Spades - King David, Hearts - Charlemagne, Clubs -Alexander the Great, Diamonds - Julius Caesar 4. In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes. When you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. Hence the phrase......... 'goodnight, sleep tight.' 5. It was the accepted practice in Babylon 4,000 years ago that for a month after the wedding, the bride's father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer and because their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the honey month, which we know today as the honeymoon. 6. Since 1992, Rovers fans have said they are "coming for City" at the start of every football season, hence the phrase ‘deluded twat’.

Another reason why I am rapidly losing interest in the game.

Some good news to report for once. Wife (aka BigBitch) saw Specialist yesterday and they managed to remove all of the cancer. No further treatment required. Happy days