By Paul Nicholson
October 5 – Aston Villa became the first Premier League club to dip below filling 80% of their stadium capacity this season. The Midlands club, often referred to as a sleeping giant, have struggled to fill Villa Park, apart from their opening game of the season. Results have been poor with the club equal bottom of the league on points.
Round 8 attendances saw an average capacity of 94.7% across the league with 354,427 seats available and 20,962 unfilled. 9,599 of them were at Villa Park.
Sunderland, also equal bottom of the league with Aston Villa and Newcastle United, have also had lower than club average percentages and had 6,068 unfilled seats for their home draw with West Ham – after which manager Dick Advocaat was fired.
Aston Villa and Sunderland between them accounted for more than 75% of the unfilled capacity at Premier League matches this weekend.
At the other end of the attendance table Swansea reported a gate of 45 more than their official capacity.
Chelsea were also at the top of the table of clubs filling theirs grounds with just 156 empty seats amongst a disgruntled home crowd that saw the title holders lose to Southampton.
Arsenal, Bournemouth and Norwich were also all over 99% full.
The Insideworldfootball stats are taken from the club’s reported attendance figure. They do not take account of tickets that might have been sold but the ticket holder did not turn up. Also, for some games stadiums will have slightly reduced capacities due to media and safety requirements.
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