Empty Seats My Lord?

Empty Villa Seats - A Comparison

As fans we want the best players and we want to challenge for honours. Ideally we would like to do this playing attractive football. This doesn't happen that often.

The Arse play attractive football but are not winning anything. Chelski won the League under Mourinho, but it was deemed to be unsexy football.

We would all like it to be at an affordable price. I have just looked at the average attendance of all clubs in the Premier League in comparison to the size of the ground. This gives a truer reflection of a clubs power in bringing in audiences rather than the simplistic way of just looking at attendances.

In terms of simple average attendance we are 7th behind Manure, Arse, Man Citeh, Redscouse, Chelsea and Sunderland.

However the real way of looking at attendances is empty seats.

By doing it this way we are the 7th worst supported club in the Premier League. We failed to sell 9% of our potential capacity.

The others worse than us were Wigan 39%, Bolton 24%, Blackburn 19%, Sunderland 17.5%, Small Heath 16.5%. In order throughout the rest of the division the percentage of empty seats was Burnley 9%, Bluescouse 8.5%, Fulham 8%, Pompey 7.5%, Redscouse 5.5%, Wet Spam 5.5%, Stoke 5%, ManCiteh 4.2% and Hull 4%.

We will have the normal excuses of cost, awkward kick off times, recession etc. These are issues that affect supporters of every club. However some fans will complain about the manager and use that as their excuse not to go. For those that use that as an excuse would they rather have Pulis, McCarthy, Laws, Zola, Brown/Dowie as a manager?

Each of these clubs had a smaller percentage of empty seats than we did? Wolves, Manure, Chelski, Arse and Spuds all had less than 1.5% of empty seats and this can be accounted for in away fan allocation. Some fans will complain about the style of football. I can say I would much rather watch us than Stoke, Wolves, Redscouse, Burnley, Pompey, Hull and others, but these clubs sold a higher proportion of their tickets than we did.

There are moans about who plays at right back, formations, lack of flexibility, poor substitutions, some poor performances. However we came 6th, have great owners, got to Wembley twice, beat our local rivals, have the best young player in the country and are amongst the best priced in terms of ticket prices.

So why are we the 7th worst supported club in the league?

The fans that come are brilliant (usually). The booing against Wigan was a disgrace imho though.

But why do we have so many empty seats. We complain we want better players. We moan when players want to leave. Unfortunately until we fulfill our side of the bargain by making Villa Park a desirable venue, with fans who support the club in good times and bad and who fill the ground every time, we are destined to be nearly men.

Our fortunes on the pitch are mirrored by our support off it.

We are Ok, but not good enough.

voiceoftheholte

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