The Voice - Match preview Gillingham vs Bradford City Saturday 16th December 2023 @ 3:00pm

Personally I can't see what potential Carlisle has at all. The lake district is populated by farmers and tourists, the border if 10 miles away and anyone in Scotland will have a Scottish team rather than Carlisle, Workington & Whitehaven are rugby towns and (as you say) anything 10 miles east will be going to either Newcastle or Sunderland.

To progress they need a new ground because theirs is in a flood plane and the PL wouldn't take kindly if they were flooded out again. It seems quite a bizarre club to be bought by someone thinking they can get into, and stay, in the PL. At absolute best, the bottom end of The Championship is their glass ceiling.

The same goes for Wrexham, they are within the catchment for Man Utd, Man City, Liverpool & Everton. Gillingham may be different as they are the only FL club in Kent (excluding the bits of Kent that fall within Greater London) but even so, I doubt they have the potential to be a PL team.

We may have competition on our doorstep, but the population of West Yorkshire is around 2.5 million so plenty to go around. We have a ground that could be bought for a fraction of the cost of a new one, and with a bit of help from the local planners and another fraction of the cost of a new ground could easily get that up to 30,000.

Didnt BFG have plans to do that building round the corner and replacing the Bfd End, and that's before you consider what could be done if we got our hands on the houses on Rock Terrace and filled in the NE & SE corners.

 

Their form has definitely been up and down and 10 wins and 9 losses from 20 games (only 1 draw!) definitely says something.

Maybe Saturday will be their second draw? This isn't a match we want to go behind in. Quick start please.

 

Or their 10th loss to balance up the record to date....

 

I don't think size of the club/fanbase or proximity of bigger clubs negatively impinges upon how far a club can go these days. Look at Bournemouth and Brentford, no real pedigree, don't pull big crowds but can survive in the Prem despite that. All that matters these days is money, whether it's spent well and not frittered away and the club being operated in a manner that allows them to get to a level where they can survive in the Prem for multiple seasons [and if it does happen, a relegation to the Championship doesn't threaten their very existence and they can rebuild and try and get promoted again].

I don't see how either Bournemouth or Brentford are any bigger than Carlisle really? If the new American owners are intelligent/talented and can employ the right people and set the club up to gather momentum and progress through the leagues, there's no real reason why they can't do what Luton's just done. Admittedly, Luton have more of a footballing history, but they've been further down the pyramid than Carlisle and have successfully fought their way back up. Even a decade ago, if you'd said Luton will be an EPL club within a decade, I bet few would have taken you seriously. A club like Burnley has far bigger clubs less than a hour away, it's a town that has a similar population to Halifax, but frequently plays in the Prem.

 

They have a much larger catchment area Chris , so they are expandable. Carlisle would struggle that’s why it’s a bit odd to me . No scope to expand much over 15,000k gates unlike Brentford and Bournemouth . It’s not about local population size it’s the draw of being able to cast far and wide.

I can’t see how it’s a sustainable “ investment “ compared to the two B’s . I hope I’m wrong for their sake but the investment looks ill thought through?

 

There certainly were. I saw some artists drawings once upon a time.

 

I think its the 5yearly waterlogged pitch that puts them off.

 

That's probably true in Brentford's case, they have the whole of West London and its satellite towns to pull from. But Cumbria and South East Dorset are very similar in term's of population (500,000 versus 465,000). Bournemouth's conurbation is probably wealthier, but their attendances are hardly pointing towards a glut of people flocking to watch football, they're only pulling around 10,000 per game (although, unless the size of Dean Court expanded, there's not much they could do about it if there was).

I don't see any glass ceiling for a club with the cash, strategy and ambition to at least reach the Prem these days. Particularly when the days where attendance numbers were one of the most significant indicators of revenue (and therefore how far you could go) are no longer. If that was the case, we wouldn't have seen the likes of Luton and Brentford getting there in the first place.

 

Fair response Chris.

 

And to build in the corners between main stand and Bfd End and Midland Rd and Bfd End and re do the Bradford end and new offices and changing rooms-something approaching 35-40K capacity was it ? That would look bloody marvellous

 

From memory wasn’t that promoted by BFG when we got into the top tier Ade ? There were certainly drawings as I mentioned earlier.

 

Looking forward to this game which is probably fuelled by us having a blank weekend last Saturday, but it's normally the type of game regardless of who's been in charge I dread, but in all seriousness you have to ask ourselves why should we dread any game in L2? It's madness when you think about it. Anyhow for some reason this time around I'm looking forward to it and feeling confident, I'm thinking 2-0 to City and our recovery continues.

 

We could have done something with momentum from a win last Saturday, alas !.

Still going for a convincing win mind you .

 

We have a decent recent record against Gillingham including our best away performance of last season.

I know what you mean though about the prospect of facing them,

 

Maybe because Carlisle is near to Newcastle is rather easy to receive a delivery .


Amen
(Otis Redding)

 

Sitting on the dock of (Whitley) Bay

 

It's much nearer Gretna Green.

 

Tell me about it. I've walked it.

 

Looks like Gillingham fans are fairly confident for today. Full squad available today apparently, including a certain Mr Jonny Williams, who they reckon they have missed in the last few games.

Come on City.