Despite some moaning..........

[AndyJR 0]

Great to see the Norwich faithful will be turning up in our droves, keep the faith!!!Sold out'' signs expected at Carrow Road

CHRIS LAKEY, EDP SPORT

18 August 2008

Norwich City are confident of filling Carrow Road after Saturday''s opening home game of the season fell well short of capacity.City

sold 23,727 tickets for Blackpool''s visit - the lowest for the home

opener since the Premiership campaign started with a 1-1 draw at home

to Crystal Palace in 2004 - when there were 10 fewer tickets sold.Carrow

Road currently holds just a little over 25,000 and, with Saturday''s

turnout of 90pc of tickets sold the actual number of fans inside the

ground at the weekend was approximately 21,355.But City''s

director of sales and marketing, Andrew Cullen, says seasonal trends

suggest it won''t be long before City are hitting the marks that have

made them the second-best supported team in the Championship.“The percentage turnout on Saturday was 90pc, which suggests that 10pc of our season ticket holders weren''t here,” said Cullen.“That''s a fairly common theme at this time of the year because people have booked holidays for August and are away.“But

once we get to September we expect that things will start to take off

again. However, it is something we are constantly monitoring.”A

year ago, Southampton brought 754 fans to help swell the gate to 24,004

- 92pc capacity. At the weekend, Blackpool brought 513 fans.“Compare

like for like because they were on matching Saturdays, and you might

also argue that Southampton are a bigger draw than Blackpool,” said

Cullen. “They brought more fans and the percentage was higher and I

wouldn''t suggest the crowd on Saturday was actually that much different

from the same Saturday last year.“We monitor other aspects of

match day and programme sales were on a par with last year while

catering was up. Giving away scarves to the first 10,000 fans meant we

had people in the ground earlier and with household budgets getting

tighter and tighter, you want to make sure you can persuade people to

spend the money for food and drink inside Carrow Road.“We have

also opened the players'' lounge on match day - it''s things like that we

have to be very aware of and we have to continue to make sure we offer

a really good service.”The Canaries have sold their maximum

20,000 season tickets, but a year ago foresaw the impending credit

crunch - and acted quickly to avoid any side effects by increasing the

nine months interest free credit for buyers to 12 months.“When

we calculated our pricing policies last year, people were talking about

the credit crunch being a year away and we looked at how we could put

together our packages,” Cullen said. “That was part of the reason we

introduced the 12 months interest free credit. Fans are spending

upwards of £900 and spreading it over 12 months rather than nine eases

the burden.“We had about 9,000 fans who took up the interest free credit option last year - this year it''s 11,000.”