By Paul Nicholson
January 6 – English football turned its attention away from league matches to the venerable FA Cup and its third round last weekend. But it seems there is a lack of respect for age amongst the fans as well as some of the Premier League managers.
Premier League clubs, riding on a big high after stunning Christmas and New Year crowds that saw almost all stadiums over 90% full and more than 1.1 million fans attend 30 matches in 10 days, reported a mixed bag of attendances.
11 Premier League sides were drawn at home with five matches being all-Premier League match-ups.
Of a total of more than 612,000 seats available across 15 fixtures involving Premier League clubs, 433,440 seats were taken (includes the games where Premier League clubs played away to non-Premier League oppostion).
In comparison to the last home fixtures of the same clubs during the holiday period, that is a drop of almost 109,000 fans going to watch FA Cup matches compared to league matches (see table below).
Traditionally the FA Cup is viewed by clubs as an opportunity to have their day in the sun against big league opposition and to benefit from the financial uplift that match. But even that didn’t seem to convince fans of Middlesbrough and Nottingham Forest who pulled in more supporters for the last home league matches than they did for the home FA Cup ties against higher ranked opposition – in Forest’s case 12,500 more fans.
Interestingly the so-called big clubs – Arsenal, Manchester United and Liverpool – all filled over 97% of their stadium. While Derby of the Championship were at pretty much full capacity for the visit of Chelsea. In contrast, Manchester City’s visit to Blackburn Rovers didn’t excite in quite the same with the crowd being pretty much the same as the previous Blackburn home game.
The biggest gaps in the stadia were seen at Sunderland, Aston Villa and Southampton who were all hovering around the half full mark. The Aston Villa attendance figure would not likely have been helped by the remarks of team manager Paul Lambert who suggested that the Premier League clubs could do without the competition. His team went out to an act of giant killing by League 1 Sheffield United – much to the fury of those Villa fans that did turn up.
Generally season ticket holders have to buy their seats again for FA Cup matches which may explain some of the dips in attendance. Also, while the FA Cup undoubtedly captures the hearts and minds of English football fans generally (if not always specifically) ticket demand will increase as the knockout rounds progress and clubs get realistically closer to the final prize of a Wembley appearance.
FA Cup Round 3 Attendances
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