Or does it....as gates rose from sub 4000 at the start of the season to over 5000 by Christmas........a winning team playing exciting football brought in 25% more fans?
5128 home fans v Accrington Stanley on 28th December and 4755 v Barnet on 2nd January...back to back home games that season too! 10% higher gates though.
I think the key word in your reply is 'winning'. Cobblers were in the top 3 come those Christmas games and had been in and out of the automatic places for a couple of months before that. Before yesterday we were 9th in the table. If the team was sat in the top 3 then I agree with crazycobbler that the attendances would be much higher than they are now and the style of football for 99% of the fans wouldn't matter one bit.
For the home game following the January 2nd game against Barnet in 15/16, we hosted Morecambe. The home fan attendance for that game was 4556. That's only 195 more than attended yesterdays game! Before that Morecambe match the team were in 2nd place and only being kept off the top due to negligibly inferior goal difference, but had a game in hand - they had also won 11 of their last 13 matches! After the game they were top, 11 points clear of third, and had a game in hand on the teams in 2nd and 4th.
If the team was in top spot having got 11 1-0 wins in 13 games, while doing nothing but hoofing it up field and hoping for a lucky deflected goal, then the attendances wouldn't be dissimilar to those in 15/16 IMO.