Attendance for Newcastle United FA Cup clash a clear sign of progress for Sheffield Wednesday

All things considered, there’ll be a very good, strong attendance at Hillsborough this evening for Sheffield Wednesday’s FA Cup third round clash against Newcastle United.
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The Star understands there will be somewhere in the region of 27,000 and 28,000 fans watching from the stands at S6, a monumental rise on the 20,000 or so that sat through a 1-0 defeat to Manchester City in the fifth round of the same competition back in March 2020.

Both ties have plenty in common in that they were chosen for live BBC television coverage, which will of course always heavily impacts attendance but has netted both clubs a not-to-be-sniffed at £85k. That’s not-to-be-sniffed-at for Wednesday at least.

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A young Owls fan holds a home-made trophy ahead of the English FA Cup fifth round football match between Sheffield Wednesday and Manchester City back in March 2020.A young Owls fan holds a home-made trophy ahead of the English FA Cup fifth round football match between Sheffield Wednesday and Manchester City back in March 2020.
A young Owls fan holds a home-made trophy ahead of the English FA Cup fifth round football match between Sheffield Wednesday and Manchester City back in March 2020.
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Take television out of the equation and there is a feeling at Wednesday that they would have sold out the match with ease.

These pages posed the question of what the paltry Manchester City crowd meant for host club Wednesday – that the likes of Sergio Aguero, Riyad Mahrez and Bernado Silva played in front of large clumps of empty seats clearly visible on the TV coverage.

Despite their newly-found wealth and high-flying top tier status, the fact is that the City side was surely more of a pull than tonight’s Newcastle.

Tonight’s steep rise in numbers is surely a reflection on a number of things, not least Owls’ form that sees them unbeaten in 90 minutes for a remarkable 95 days.

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Back then, Garry Monk’s Wednesday were in the midst of a post-Christmas decline that saw them nosedive from third in the table to mid-table obscurity. Just a few years after promises of Premier League, it was a tough time to take.

And Wednesday should be praised for a streamlined and reduced ticket pricing structure. A cost of £30-per-ticket back then, wrapped in a complicated tiered points system, seemed bloated. This time round, £20 feels far more palatable. And the numbers show it.

Yes, it’s a bit of a shame that Hillsborough won’t be packed to the rafters for the visit of Newcastle. But it was never going to.

Given the fact it’s on BBC, given the financial pull on so many households just 13 days since Christmas, a forecast of 27-28k with £85k in the pocket feels like a win for Sheffield Wednesday.