woeful attendance

[PeterWithe]

Of course appointing McLeish is going to have an impact on crowds, it sent out a very clear message that we were no longer looking to compete at the very top of the table

[villa_oldie]

A lot's been mentioned on this thread about the varying reasons fans aren't, or don't seem to be attending.

I've had a season ticket consecutively for over 20 years... must admit, this season I probably wouldn't have renewed if GH was still in charge.
I was a tad dismayed by AM's appointment, however, those 500-1000 idiots (making our great club look as pathetic as Newcastle) protesting like oiks swung my decision to renew, as I support Aston Villa, always have, always will. Not the manager, players, owner or any variable that sits in whatever hot seat in the Aston Lower grounds.

Saying that... I totally understand and agree with any fan that doesn't wish to attend VP at the moment.
And why should they? Even if said fan has adequate income to sustain both a season ticket & a life, why should they either a) spend £500ish on what is going to be a shit season, or b) £40+ expenses on a match by match basis for what is going to be, more often than not this year - a shit game.

Every club, would go through the same. We can't really compare ourselves with Manure, Arse, L'pool etc. as their added support comes from a world wide plethora of tourists and the fact that they've saturated the English footballing history books since the 1970's. Whereas, in reality - apart from ten years spanning '75 - '85 our success has been, well... nothing short of a distant memory since 1910.

Yesterday's disgusting attendance was helped (no doubt) by the ko time. 12.00 (unless we're playing the Chernobylised morons from Small Heath) is a pitiful time to kick off any game.

But as for a decrease in attendances this season, i'm neither surprised nor can / will I blame supporters who stay away.
Football's too expensive, it's being destroyed by Sky, arab sheiks, impatient Russians, greedy agents etc. and will continue to implode. This is just the start.

[MarkM]

I think we have to look more widely at the relative success or failure of the Villa marketing dept.

We have had a few dropped bollocks recently... the delay in last seasons kit launch, another new kit this year, a hardly inspiring letter from the club detailing our ambition to be in the top 20 revenue generating clubs, the delay in getting the new sponsor in place before the kit was sent out to be sold...

Not to mention the complete arse the club looked over the manager appointment (last season and this!)

Added to that the departures of our better players.

The club also completely fail to Market properly our achievements, if you have been on the stadium tour you will find that thier is NO trophy cabinet showing the FA Cups, League Cups, European cups etc... Why not??

It's all well and good to Market ourselves in the far east, but in reality how many of those people will attend a atch in person? So the objective of the far easy tour was not to generate revenue via ticket sales but through other means.

I live in Telford (only 32 miles from Villa Park) and Villa are pretty much invisible, which is a shame as thier are allot of Villa Fans who live over this way.

If he club wants to increase attendances with keeping to the current spending reduction policy then they need to attract new followers to Villa Park to replace those that don't attend any longer. We are loosing potential new supporters to Man United / Liverpool / Man City / Chelsea. You only have to look at the shirts bring worn by the Aston local kids on match days to see that we have failed to appeal!

I think the Villa marketing dept really needs to look at how it's operating and a change of objectives is needed

[villa_oldie]

The club also completely fail to Market properly our achievements, if you have been on the stadium tour you will find that thier is NO trophy cabinet showing the FA Cups, League Cups, European cups etc... Why not??

Perhaps the most 'hit the nail on the head' point I've read...

Addition to this, why are our honours restricted to a 2x4" column in the match programme. Just below the VP staff list and above the contact numbers???

Surely the 4th most successful club in England should proudly display this fact in it's matchday souvenir programme a tad more noticeably???   

[pauliewalnuts]

Chris you include a number of factors but don't include McLeish as being a single one of them.  Surely he has to be included.  Whatever way you decide to use stats, the fact is our average attendance across the last 5 seasons has been 38,000.  Two games in and we are at 31,000.  It's a worrying sign whichever way you look at it.

"McLeish isn't a factor" is a pretty naive way of looking at it.

The biggest factor is the downscaling of ambition of the club over the summer. McLeish being appointed manager is one part of that, so of course it is a factor.

When we started looking for a manager, we were talking about Ancelotti, Benitez, managers of that level. A short while later we were surprised to find we'd been turned down by Roberto Martinez of all people. Then we end up with AM. Tryi shifting season tickets on the back of that.

Now, personally, although I think it was a bewildering appointment, I'll give him a go, not get on his back and hope he proves me wrong, but it strikes me as utterly head-in-the-sand stuff to think his appointment isn't something to do with the collapse of our crowds.

I have to say, also, throwing in things like the 20/20 cricket, the school holidays etc etc sounds a little bit like what we'd take the piss out of the noses for when they got shit crowds. Pretty soon, someone will mention the Rover closing.

When there was ambition shown, we got 40k plus regularly. Now we're showing less ambition than anyone in the market this summer and we're not getting the crowds. To pretend there's no connection is daft.

[stevenjos]

It's called the Mcleish factor. The board didn't listen, the fans voted with their feet. The drop is alarming 25% is a huge amount and huge dent in our ticket revenue.

People don't want to watch 0-0 draws all the time afraid.

Bet Randy wished he has listened now.

WDWM

best post for ages!!

[Jimbo]

Football's too expensive, it's being destroyed by Sky, arab sheiks, impatient Russians, greedy agents etc. and will continue to implode. This is just the start.

This has to be the bottom line. I can take Villa being rubbish. We've been rubbish for most of my life. I'm now totally inured to selling our best players - it was painful getting rid of Dwight Yorke; Barry and Milner going was a mild blow by comparison, but by the time Ash and Downing went I was completely numb to it.

I can now live with the fact that we will never win the Premier League (in its current format) and almost certainly will never qualify for the Champions League. I'm conditioned to accept that the domestic cups are our only hope - but will not be taken as seriously as Premier League survival. And I'm totally used to the fact that we will never get any real recognition from the national media.

I can live with all that, and would still be more than happy to turn up and support my club week in week out. But I simply can't justify it at that price. The die is already cast. It is an uneven playing field - the game is rigged. And very little will change until football either implodes or reinvents itself.   

[Chris Smith]

The club also completely fail to Market properly our achievements, if you have been on the stadium tour you will find that thier is NO trophy cabinet showing the FA Cups, League Cups, European cups etc... Why not??

Perhaps the most 'hit the nail on the head' point I've read...

Addition to this, why are our honours restricted to a 2x4" column in the match programme. Just below the VP staff list and above the contact numbers???

Surely the 4th most successful club in England should proudly display this fact in it's matchday souvenir programme a tad more noticeably???   

I'm not sure that the lack of a trophy cabinet makes much difference when deciding whether to go the game or not.

[Chris Smith]

I have to say, also, throwing in things like the 20/20 cricket, the school holidays etc etc sounds a little bit like what we'd take the piss out of the noses for when they got shit crowds. Pretty soon, someone will mention the Rover closing.

I know people who had tickets to the cricket yesterday that might otherwise have gone down the Villa.  Also I know it's difficult to fathom but I know people who are away on holiday at the moment, making their attendance at VP difficult. That's why crowds are always lower in August. My point was that there were so many mitigating factors yesterday it is wrong to draw any firm conclusions.

[MarkM]

not having a trophy cabinet does not on it's own effect the attendance, but it does show a symptom of the failure of the marketing dept

[TopDeck113]

The points that villa-oldie and Jimbo both make are spot on.  To my mind the amazing thing is not so much that attendances appear to be heading south, but that they have remained as high as they have, for as long as they have.

I, too, am now immune to seasons of mediocrity, selling out best players, uninspiring managerial appointments, etc, etc.  I've seen it all before.  However, what I find increasingly difficult to take is the sense of just making up the numbers.  If you're a Villa, Everton or, to a lesser extent, Spurs, all ever-presents in the Premier League, but for most of that time an also-ran, really what is the point? Nine months of forking out £40 every other week to see an ever changing cast of itinerant millionaires huffing and puffing their way to an eighth-place finish. 

[olaftab]

Clearly one way to put this right is for McLeish and our millionaires to over achieve. Hang around 4/5/6 till xmas and fans will return the gloom will lift and we will all be  happy.

[pauliewalnuts]

I have to say, also, throwing in things like the 20/20 cricket, the school holidays etc etc sounds a little bit like what we'd take the piss out of the noses for when they got shit crowds. Pretty soon, someone will mention the Rover closing.

I know people who had tickets to the cricket yesterday that might otherwise have gone down the Villa.  Also I know it's difficult to fathom but I know people who are away on holiday at the moment, making their attendance at VP difficult. That's why crowds are always lower in August. My point was that there were so many mitigating factors yesterday it is wrong to draw any firm conclusions.

It's not "difficult to fathom" at all, clearly people will have been on holiday, and clearly some of your mates were down the cricket, but what's plain to see is that we had our lowest league crowd for five years, a week after what was probably another one of our lowest crowds for five years.

We've also got 21,000 season ticket holders, not the 27,000 we had last year.

[luke25]

The thing is were most probably going to finish between 8th and 12th, if we did it by playing entertaining attacking football then I think the majority would accept that, however it looks as if were going to be taking the well organised way and picking athletes over technically gifted players, its just so uninspiring.

[TheSandman]

27,000 was the year before last. Last season I think we were at around 24,000 at most. Still a 3,000 season-on-season fall.

To blame or to excuse any one individual factor is very wrong. People are unhappy with the managerial appointment and the financial retrenchment. To say that is the only factor or not a factor at all is wide of the mark as the people who have given up their season tickets who have posted on this thread have quoted it as a reason. However, equally some of them quote other reasons such as the cost as being far more important.