I'm an American who has been watching a lot of football over here in the states for a while.

I happen to see 2 games today: Chelsea at Wigan and Middlesbrough at Mansfield City.

Both home teams had pretty small stadiums (25000 for Wigan I believe, and only 10,000 for Mansfield)

But both had a good number of empty seats.


Can one of you give me some insight from your side on why this is? I would think that the Wigan supporters (even though the team is not playing great this year) would still be pretty fired up about being in the EPL. And, espically when one of the big 4 come to town, I would think everyone would want to go to the game.

For Mansfield, I have no idea. They are in the 2nd league I think, and they have a premier team coming to their little stadium, and they can't get their home supporters to buy 7000 tickets?

Can anyone give me some perspective on this? Is the FA cup not as big of a deal as they make it out to be? Has effect of promotion to the EPL warn off on the wigan fans?

Just trying to understand things more... thanks.