Former Aston Villa defender Stephen Warnock has said that fans will be extremely crucial in the race for promotion the Championship this season. After failing to secure promotion to the top flight, Leeds United have been spending big money on players this season.
The presence of players like Warnock is expected to make them extremely strong in the coming season. Leeds United have been averaging one of the highest gate attendances in the Championship, but it is still significantly lower than the crowd they used to bring in when they were playing on the top levels of football.
Their recent attendance of just over 20,000 is a testament to the bad times that the club has fallen in, but Warnock reckons that they can recover soon. Leeds United were able to break the 25,000 attendance mark last season only on two occasions. On both occasions, they were helped by a large visiting group. The club will be opening the new season with a home match against Brighton and Hove Albion, who managed to make it into the play-offs last season. However, the arrival of new manager Garcia is expected to lower the expectations amongst the Brighton fans.
This game has been categorised as a category C game.
“That is what everyone wants and why the club is so big. If we can get that (30,000 crowd) for the first game of the season, it will give the lads a lift and hopefully the fans can keep coming. You want to go into the first game of the season and start well and we need to. Hopefully, we will start as brightly as we can, so we can go and climb the league as quickly as we can. You have got to get the momentum going as quickly as possible,” said Warnock.