Table published showing average away followings of Leeds, Newcastle & Aston Villa
Who takes the most away fans to matches?
The Championship had a boost this season when both Newcastle United and Aston Villa dropped down, with both clubs certain to take away more than the average second tier club.
So with only one game remaining, which Championship club has taken the most away fans on average?
The table below has been published by the Birmingham Mail, which claims to show the exact figures for all Championship clubs.
They don’t say if they got the table from elsewhere, or whether they generated it themselves, but the figures seem a little dubious…
According to the table, Villa are to with an average of 3,413, Leeds then second with 3,305 and Newcastle third on 3,140.
Newcastle have sold pretty much every away ticket they have been given.
I can think of only Norwich, Cardiff and Wigan where Newcastle away fans didn’t sell out, all three games being night matches through the week.
Even then, Wigan saw well over four thousand travel and only a few hundred of the 4,800 tickets were unsold, whilst Newcastle away fans set a new record for the Cardiff City stadium – the biggest ever domestic travelling support at the ground with Newcastle given a far higher allocation than any other Championship club. So only the Norwich match saw any significant shortfall.
The odd other factor also went against Newcastle.
For example Sheffield Wednesday/South Yorkshire Police chose to give Newcastle less than both Leeds and Villa, though this was only around 1,500 tickets less.
Another disadvantage was that Newcastle gave more tickets to Leeds and Villa, than they gave NUFC fans for the games at Elland Road and Villa Park, Having said that, Villa only managed to sell 1,707 tickets for the game at St James Park from the 3,200 they could have brought.
The fact Villa could only sell half their allocation for the trip to Newcastle, making the figures below look even more dubious.
The table below suggests that Villa took 273 fans per match on average more than Newcastle, which adds up to over 6,000 supporters in total over the course of this season.
Even in the Premier League, Aston Villa hardly ever sold their full allocation at St James Park but bit of a shame that likes of Leeds and Sheffield Wednesday (1 in 4 chance in play-offs) aren’t in the top tier instead of likes of Bournemouth, Stoke, Swansea and many others, none of who bring atmosphere/anything like a full away end.
Table published by the Birmingham Mail of average away fans taken by each club over the course of this season:
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