Is the popularity of football in england increasing or decreasing?

What a strange thing to say. Why are you constraining this to the bigger clubs? Why would only fans of the bigger clubs put their club over country?

I'm not constraining it at all, merely saying that the view is more vocal from those supporters as it's them who 'lose' their players to international duty.

They don't though - the top two divisions don't play on international weekends, the lower divisions do though, and lose their players to international duty (admittedly for lesser nations/U21 sides).

was it worse than a 15 yard sprint and a deliberate, cynical jump/knee into the back (breaking the bone) of the world cups hosts star player?

it has effectively ended our challenge for the world cup.

also note how THAT challenge didn't even get a booking, while thiago silva got one for merely nudging the goalkeeper as he was about to take the kick.

2 of our best players out for the semi final, i have to congratulate both the referee and the colombian national team, for successfully sabotaging our world cup challenge.

i mean really well done, not just spoiled it for us, but for the watching world. the world cup, as a spectacle, has now finished. the entertainers, the great brazil, the neutrals favourite are defeated.

You've also got to look at the possible average attendance each season though - for instance, the 13/14 season: the 24 grounds in the division had a combined total of 42,081 seats less than the season before due to the changes in teams.

Just taking the last 2 seasons:

Average ground capacity:

2012/2013: 27,479
2013/2014: 25,725

Average attendance as a percentage of ground capacity:
2012/2013: 62.99%
2013/2014: 64.35%

It's all well and good saying the raw number of people going is falling, but if there's fewer tickets available, that's bound to be the case - but removing that effect by going to percentage of capacity attendance, the attendances rose last season.

That logic is flawed. Changes in stadium capacity would only impact attendances if stadiums were consistently full. In 2013/14 only four teams had over 80% attendance. Therefore stadium size clearly isn't a limiting factor.

I say it is decreasing, and it is being overrun with more cooperate people going to games but have no interest in the actual game of football.

The gap between the quality in the PL and the other leagues is ever-widening. If you can't get to see a PL game, very few people are interested.

Doubt there's any difference between Villa v Wba or Hull v Stoke compared to Forest v Reading or Brighton v Derby.

Is it though? If anything I'd say the gap is far smaller than it was five years ago. You rarely see promoted teams go straight back down anymore as there's so much dross in the bottom half of the league. Teams battling relegation are more likely to take points off Chelsea, United, Arsenal et al because those teams have also declined since 2009. There's a Championship team where I live and I go to the odd game, the quality isn't that bad tbf. Doubt there's any difference between Villa v Wba or Hull v Stoke compared to Forest v Reading or Brighton v Derby.

I beg to differ.

I go to around 7/8 Bolton games a year because of my family being fans and the standard is really below-par. Of course, it might be different in the upper echelon in the Championship but the games I attended last season (Bolton, Ipswich, Sheff Wed, Millwall, Charlton) were all massively worse than the standard I saw when I attended Bolton vs. Stoke when they were in the PL.