Boro chief calls for support
06 Sep 2007 - 07:58:24
Middlesbrough chairman Steve Gibson has issued a rallying cry to supporters after seeing match-day attendances at the Riverside Stadium drop by 5,000.
Last weekend a crowd of just 22,920 saw Boro defeat Birmingham City 2-0 in the Premier League and Gibson has launched an appeal to those fans who have drifted away from the club.
Gibson has admitted his astonishment at the fall in attendances in recent seasons after success under former coach Steve McClaren, but claims the club is doing all they can to make itself more appealing under new boss Gareth Southgate.
He told a fans' forum: "If somebody had said to me four years ago when we had average gates of 32,000, 'You will win the Carling Cup, you will have two excellent journeys into Europe, you will get to a UEFA Cup final and you will lose 5,000 fans', I would have said they were crackers.
"But it's happened and we have to deal with it - and when I say we, I mean all of us.
"Gareth is doing his bit, he is doing it with the players, he does it in the way he conducts himself.
"What we have done is we have tried to reduce the age of the squad, increase the passion of the squad, increase the pace of the squad and the technical ability of the squad to a level that allows us to perhaps nick another trophy in that five years, get us into Europe perhaps more often than we are not and to entertain the fans.
"That's our vision for the next five years. If we look back over the last 10 years, we have had 10 years of Premier League football - that has not fulfilled our ambition, it has fed our ambition.
"We want to achieve in the next 10 years more than we achieved in the last 10 years. That's what we would hope to do."