Well it has been a lost decade (2010-2019) for us and arguably a lost 25 years given the fighting chance we had of establishing ourselves as a perennial big team in the mid-90s.
Come on Villa announce the rebuild of the North stand. Take the capacity up to 50,000. The time has come.
Let's fill the ground and keep it full before worrying about any of that. We had a whole tier closed for nearly 3 years
It was closed for some of those three years. It was open nearly as often as it was shut last season and we averaged over 36,000 despite loads of midweek and occasionally piss-poor away followings. There are hardly any midweek games in the Premier League and our average, excluding midweek games, and was just over 38,000.
We could go up to 50,000, I reckon. Better that than have it so that people who want to attend matches can't get tickets.
In any case, the North Stand looks a bit shabby compared to the rest of the ground and the Witton Lane Stand isn't fit for purpose in terms of facilities, and so on.
Come on Villa announce the rebuild of the North stand. Take the capacity up to 50,000. The time has come.
Let's fill the ground and keep it full before worrying about any of that. We had a whole tier closed for nearly 3 years
Same old arguments though, isn't it? I counter with, why wait til we're assured of 50k to do it, when at which point we'll have to lose an entire stand for a year, and have to reduce capacity to a little over what's now STH levels? We don't have the luxury of being able to borrow Wembley while we're having the work done. Yeah, there's maybe the possibility of the new Alex, but unless that's being designed around some future use as a football ground, I can't see it being big enough.
The Alexandra Stadium could provide a 40,000 seat stop gap if there was big development going on at Villa Park - but that won't be until 2022.
Next summer will be our last "full" summer to do it until 2024.
2021/22 season will likely start early and 2022/23 season will probably finish late to accommodate the Qatar World Cup and we have the Commonwealth Games in 2022.
Our last game of the season is away. If we start building the day after our last home game we could have it ready for very near the start of the 2020/21 season, especially if we request a couple of away games to start the season, as has become common practise among clubs rebuilding their ground.
Didn’t I read that the North is getting a bit of spit and polish this summer?
Come on Villa announce the rebuild of the North stand. Take the capacity up to 50,000. The time has come.
Let's fill the ground and keep it full before worrying about any of that. We had a whole tier closed for nearly 3 years
Same old arguments though, isn't it? I counter with, why wait til we're assured of 50k to do it, when at which point we'll have to lose an entire stand for a year, and have to reduce capacity to a little over what's now STH levels? We don't have the luxury of being able to borrow Wembley while we're having the work done. Yeah, there's maybe the possibility of the new Alex, but unless that's being designed around some future use as a football ground, I can't see it being big enough.
There has never been a time in my 48 years when we've ever looked like needing a 50k stadium and i doubt there ever will be.
Just pure vanity.
I can't think of anything much worse football wise than having a ground that's too big for 80% of the season and banks of empty unsold seats.
No need. 45k would be more than ample and we're close to that already.
You could say the same about loads of clubs that now have capacities that 10-40 years ago you'd have thought they'd rarely need and yet now fill or near fill them. I hope we start thinking and acting like a big club, it's long overdue.
Agreed. 50,000 should be the minimum we are looking at.
In the long run if we want to compete with the big boys I would have thought we’d need to be filling 55k plus. But that would only ever be likely after a sustained period of success. I think the ground is plenty big enough for the next few seasons, particularly when the novelty of promotion has worn off. But if we’re pushing top 6 in a few years and still selling out regularly then we can look at the next level.
It’s increasing our corporate sales thats the important thing in terms of revenue.
Leicester are now averaging double what they were 20 years ago.
We've never had 30,000 season ticket holders or as few as 8,000 match day tickets per game. But that will be the reality, with all 19 games being sell outs, away crowd dependent.
This will more than likely lead to an average attendance of 41,000 plus, our highest since 1950. So greater demand now than at any point in all but a handful of users life time.
From Norwich to Bournemouth, supply has decreased by 50%, while demand will have increased.
There's been 50,000 attendances in lots of people lifetimes, before the capacity shrank.
You build every facet of the club; we are rebuilding the academy, rebuilding scouting, analytics, coaching, management, purchasing, so re-build the North. The decrease in elasticity of supply is going to make tickets a valuable commodity.
Take us to 52,000 and see how we get on.
Take us to 52,000 and see how we get on.
And when we're still getting gates of mid 30k's in the main and say 45k every now and again what then?
The only way the club would ever consider increasing the capacity by so much is if we continually fill what we already have week in week out for a sustained period i'm sure. And surely that's exactly why we haven't despite having those plans all drawn up years ago.
It'd be far more logical to get a new North Stand built taking us up to 45k max IMHO.
I don't see how that's logical. If you knock down the North it's pointless rebuilding it to add a few thousand to capacity and then have to start again to go to 50K when you could just go to 50k in the first place.