FIGURES have revealed attendances went up at both The Valley and Selhurst Park this season, although there was a fall at The Den.

Charlton returned to the Championship for the first time in three years and their promotion back to the second tier saw their average gate increase from the League One title winning-campaign of 2011-12 (17,485) to 18,499.

The highest gate of the season in SE7 was 26,185 for the visit of Barnsley on October 20, although this was mainly due to it being a Football for a Fiver game, with the lowest attendance of 15,585 coming in the previous home match against Watford on October 2.

Unsurprisingly, promotion-chasing Crystal Palace produced the biggest increase in average gates from our trio of Championship clubs.

Life certainly hasn’t been dull in SE25 this year with the impressive form of Yannick Bolasie, Wilfried Zaha and the prolific Glenn Murray, as well as a managerial change thrown in for good measure, attracting an average attendance of 17,280, up from 15,219 in the previous campaign.

A 3-2 victory over eventual champions Cardiff under previous boss Dougie Freedman on September 22 saw the lowest turnout (12,757), compared with the final day 3-2 success against Peterborough under Ian Holloway (22,154), which was the highest of the regular season.

However, the news was not so encouraging from The Den.

Millwall may well have sold out their allocation for the Wembley FA Cup semi-final with Wigan, but it is frustratingly a very different story when it comes to filling their own ground for league fixtures.

Average attendances last season were 10,559, down from 11,484 in 2011-12, with only Peterborough (8,215) and Barnsley (10,207) producing lower average figures in the division.

The visit of Charlton on December 1 saw 18,013 come through the turnstiles, although this was partly explained by the arrival of 3,394 Addicks fans who were accommodated in both tiers of the away end.

Millwall’s lowest gate of 8,607 came towards the end of a disappointing campaign against Blackburn Rovers on April 23.

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