Birmingham City Football Club

• Nickname:Blues
• Founded:1875
• Manager:Lee Clark

• Ground:St Andrew's
• Capacity:30016

Blues owner turns on fans

20 Aug 2007 - 11:57:18

Click To Enlarge

Birmingham City co-owner David Sullivan has revealed his disappointment at the level of season ticket sales and hit out at the club's "armchair fans".

Sullivan launched his outburst after revealing the Blues had sold just 13,700 season tickets during the summer despite winning promotion back to the Premier League.

"We are competing with many clubs who are bigger in terms of capacity and season ticket holders," he said.

"The reality is that most of our supporters are armchair fans unless it is a big game and what we have sold is simply not enough."

Referring to the 24,000 gates which the Blues have witnessed for their opening two home games of the season, Sullivan added: "Many Championship clubs get bigger gates than us.

"The other promoted clubs - Sunderland and Derby - have 32,000 and 28,000 season ticket holders respectively.

"We all know that we have one of the biggest fan bases in the country and, if they turned out and supported us every week, we would need a 60,000 capacity stadium.

"But the reality is we have not sold enough, even though our season ticket prices and match day admission prices are the second lowest in the division."

Meanwhile, Sullivan claims he will only sell his stake in the club along with chairman David Gold "if we think someone can do a better job of running Birmingham City than we have."

Earlier in the summer, Carson Yeung bought a 30 per cent stake in the club and rumours persist the Hong Kong businessman will shortly launch a full takeover bid.