Matt Maher: Season of goodwill? Not judging by Aston Villa's ticket prices
It wasn’t just a much-improved Villa performance which caught the eye against Brentford on Wednesday night.
So too did the Villa Park attendance. The crowd, officially announced as 37,890, was the lowest for a league fixture since the club was promoted back to the Premier League in 2019.
Not since 36,263 watched Dean Smith’s team beat Middlesbrough in March of that year had there been so many empty seats for a fixture where the stadium was fully open to the public.
There were undoubtedly a few factors involved. Brentford’s travelling support, for one thing, numbered in the low hundreds. A couple of matches against Wolves in the past few seasons where the attendance dipped just below 40,000 maybe saw fewer home fans in that number.
