Attendance issues

[myf]

Everton only got 32.5K against Newcastle this season, despite being contenders for the Champs League.

[Holte L2]

But even under MON the atmosphere was rubbish.  Infact, its been rubbish since the Gregory era

[supertom]

We've been average at home for the best part of a decade, probably more. O Neill never sorted it out, it was decent away form that helped us to three top 6 finishes. We always drew far too many games we should have won.  A fortress this is not.

[PeterWithesShin]

Everton only got 32.5K against Newcastle this season, despite being contenders for the Champs League.

A Monday night game. And their 4th match of the season, a bit generous to call them CL contenders after 3 games.

[Risso]

Very interesting Adam.  In the North West it must be to do with success, as obviously in Liverpool and Man U they have the two most successful clubs from the 1970s onwards.  I'd put part of it in the North East down to a sort of tribalism.  There's huge rivallry between Sunderland and Newcastle, and the two teams are an extension of that.  In the Midlands, here is neither the recent success nor inter-city rivallry to get fans going.  Of course we hate our neighbours, but that isn't the same thing as when it's city v city like Liverpool and Manchester or Newcastle or Sunderland.  Have you got the London figures as well, as a mater of interest?

[Walmley_Villa]

Decent crowds are generated by a combination of winning, entertainment and decent 'star' players. Considering we have none of these 33k is pretty good. Our critics are eager to state how fickle we are but considering where we are now compared to the team we had with the England midfield we are not as fickle as many would think. However, the pricing against the big boys is ridiculous especially as we need a decent crowd to get behind the team. Not many armchair fans are going to part with £40+ to see their team played off the pitch are they?

[Ad@m]

Very interesting Adam.  In the North West it must be to do with success, as obviously in Liverpool and Man U they have the two most successful clubs from the 1970s onwards.  I'd put part of it in the North East down to a sort of tribalism.  There's huge rivallry between Sunderland and Newcastle, and the two teams are an extension of that.  In the Midlands, here is neither the recent success nor inter-city rivallry to get fans going.  Of course we hate our neighbours, but that isn't the same thing as when it's city v city like Liverpool and Manchester or Newcastle or Sunderland.  Have you got the London figures as well, as a mater of interest?

Afraid not.  I was doing it over lunch and London would take ages to pull together given the number of clubs there.  If anyone else has time to sort I've given my sources for the info.  If not and I have time tonight I might give it a crack.

If I was a betting man however I'd suggest London will have a lower percentage than the West Mids.  It's a much bigger population and they have more going on in life than football.  That's all I can think of at the moment - people in the North East have nothing else to do other than watch football and as you say, the North West has generally been the centre of footballing success in this country for the last 40 years.

[myf]

Our attendances have often been flaky. We dropped under 30K a number of times under JG, had a few under Mr Fickle and even under MON we had 27K against Bolton plus a few others that only just crept past the 30K mark.

...but averaged 40k+ I seem to recall one season under MON.  Have Everton come close to that in recent years despite being a consistently good team for the past decade?

Doesn't change that we had 27K for a game under him.
And Everton have a smaller ground which will drag the average attendance down. And about 10% of that is restricted view seats IIRC.

No it doesn't but the average attendance is a much fairer reflection of support than any one game.  The main post is suggesting that Everton's support is much better than ours - I don't buy it - take last season where our average was 33,900 and theirs was 33,300, despite us witnessing probably the worst football at VP in probably 20 years.

[onje_villa]

I think performances haven't helped. Unfortunately you will always have a decent proportion of the crowd who are resolutely silent (like where I sat in Trinity on Saturday) but it's the rest who normally help keep the atmosphere going, if they're quiet then you really notice it.

I tried singing myself in the trinity on Saturday but it's bloody hard work and embarrassing being the only one in the whole stand.

When I used to go to Trinity as a kid, they didn't sing much but would normally make some noise, bang their feet or something, it might as well be a theatre these days.

I like to think that with a bit more excitement (ie: more than 0) people will get more involved.

[myf]

Everton only got 32.5K against Newcastle this season, despite being contenders for the Champs League.

A Monday night game. And their 4th match of the season, a bit generous to call them CL contenders after 3 games.

You're missing my point.  Its being alleged here that Everton are better supported than us yet their crowds are not all that dissimilar - this is but one example (in a season when the press are touting them as CL contenders and after having beaten Manure)

[andrew08]

It's just the way it is now. Away fans make the noise. You get the teams with 'Anthems' like liverpool and West ham who artificially join in before kick when prompted by the PA, but by and large home teams don't sing until they score.

Another factor is an away crowd tends to drink more, for that is our footy culture :-), and so is more inclined to sing. Having taken my son to Southampton and Fulham and  been sober, you don't half notice how boozed up people are.

As I will be tomorrow when the atmosphere will be rockin in the away end.

[Trinitymiddle]

I really don't care about win ratio nor the fact that Liverpool apparently have a massive fan base.
Newcastle win no matches or have won  honours in the recent history than we have done  and they have much higher gates than us.
Liverpool may well have a massive worldwide fan base but they live in a city about the 1/3 the size of ours.
So it is shameful that people of Birmingham can not turn up in decent numbers to fill a 40K stadium.

Liverpool may be smaller than Brum, but they've got huge support from all over the North West (well, left of the M6 mostly) including places like Runcorn, Widnes, St Helens, Wigan, Warrington, Birkenhead, Southport and even further afield like Chester and Wrexham.  All medium to big towns with traditionally no big football teams in them.  You add up the population of all those and it'll be huge.  Birmingham has big urban areas around it, but they've got their own decent sized teams, eg Wolverhampton, Sandwell and Coventry.  I know we get our fair share of supporters from places like Worcester and Cheltenham etc, but to be fair they don't strike me as being as football mad as run down towns like Widnes etc.

I've heard this argument bandied around a lot and never really believed it so I've just done some research.

The Government splits the country down into regions with populations as follows (taken from Wikipedia):

West Mids - 5.6m
North West - 7.05m
North East - 2.6m

League football clubs covered by the regions above are (from Wikipedia and a bit of common sense):

West Mids - Us, Blues, Cov, Stoke, Vale, Wolves, Baggies, Walsall, Shrewsbury, Burton A, Crewe, Cheltenham and Hereford
North West - Man U, Man City, Liverpool, Everton, Tranmere, Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, Wigan, Preston, Burnley, Blackpool, Blackburn, Macclesfield and Rotherham
North East - Newcaslte, Sunderland, Middlesborough and Hartlepool

The sum of the average attendances in 2011 for all the clubs listed in each region are (taken from European-Football-Statistics.co.uk:

West Mids - 186,253
North West - 329,221
North East - 106,931

If you then calculate a percentage of local population attending one of the local grounds each game you get:

West Mids - 3.33%
North West - 4.67%
North East - 4.11%

So we're way below those areas in terms of attendance.  If the West Mids could get to the North East level of participation there would be an extra 44,000 people attending each game across all our clubs.

I've said it before, for me the reason for the difference is cultural.  The North West and Newcastle are football mad (although a lot of the clubs in the North West are actually historically rugby league towns so they're changing the culture round there and arguably punching above their weight).  The West Mids however just isn't as fanatical about football.  I've no idea why.  It can't just be down to success as the North East has had no success for years.  Any ideas? 

This is a bit of a pet hate of mine, this myth that Geordies are ALL football mad.

For a start they are a one club town. But its not just one town, its Gateshead, North Shields, South Shields, Whitley Bay and so on. In fact the conurbation of Newcastle and surrounding areas (Tyneside) numbers 1 million people. So that is a city the size of Birmingham supporting one club. Whereas we have 3 clubs in our city limits.

Another crucial factor in my opinion is that Newcastle is 90% white whereas Birmingham is around 60% white. And lets face it, the vast majority of people who attend matches are white, disproportionately so in a city as racially diverse as Birmingham.

[PeterWithesShin]

Everton only got 32.5K against Newcastle this season, despite being contenders for the Champs League.

A Monday night game. And their 4th match of the season, a bit generous to call them CL contenders after 3 games.

You're missing my point.  Its being alleged here that Everton are better supported than us yet their crowds are not all that dissimilar - this is but one example (in a season when the press are touting them as CL contenders and after having beaten Manure)

I'd agree that the support of both clubs is pretty similar. If the clubs had near identical seasons I doubt there'd be much in it average wise. Unless both sides had very good seasons, then i'd expect us to be higher as we can fit an extra 3K in.

[Irish villain]

If the results were better and there was more cause for optimism I think we would be two or three thousand better off per game.

Villa Park hasn't been a particularly happy place the past few years. Like it or not, but every club has  what have been described as 'fairweather fans' but I remember last season even some of the most hardcore villa fans on this forum were finding it hard to summon the interest to go down to Villa Park last season.

[astonvillan]

Decent crowds are generated by a combination of winning, entertainment and decent 'star' players. Considering we have none of these 33k is pretty good. Our critics are eager to state how fickle we are but considering where we are now compared to the team we had with the England midfield we are not as fickle as many would think. However, the pricing against the big boys is ridiculous especially as we need a decent crowd to get behind the team. Not many armchair fans are going to part with £40+ to see their team played off the pitch are they?

This annoys me greatly. Opposing fans and some in the media will tell us how terrible we are (as a football team..) and then in the same breathe, slam the villa fans for a) being fickle, and b) all the empty seats at Villa Park. Doesn't make sense, does it? The fact that so many have turned up, particularly over the course of the last couple of seasons, should be commended. It also doesn't help that when there are empty seats at Villa Park, they're always very visible on TV coverage; front rows of the Holte, Lower Trinity Wings and the Lower North under the CF restaurant. Whereas, with Everton, because the majority of their 'restricted view' seats are in the upper tiers, the lower tiers sell out first. So your pundits and your everyday football fan that likes to make judgements based on six minutes of Match of the Day coverage will assume it's full. Going by the comments of opposing fans and pundits you would never think that, in fact, ours and Everton's crowds are always very similar and indeed under TSM, we finished with a higher average attendance than them.