By Tony Attwood
Last weekend Ian, his sons and I went to watch Corby Town play Leamington in the FA Cup. Corby play in the Bet Square North (or some such name) – effectively the sixth division of English football. Tickets for the ground were £10 for adults, somewhat similar to Arsenal’s last night.
Of course that won’t stop people writing stuff about Arsenal being the most expensive ground in the country. Indeed we had a hilarious piece here the other day where someone was shouting away about this supposed fact, and when I said no it isn’t, the writer sent in a link.
Dutifully I read the piece – which is probably more than he had ever done – for I found that within the article he had linked me to was the comment that as I had thought, Tottenham is the most expensive ground in the country.
But I digress – the prices were great, and as always a lot of people at the game were those who do not normally attend. (I don’t know if they still do it, but Man U used to insist that season ticket holders pay for league cup matches on top of their season ticket fee, whether they want to attend or not. As a season ticket holder at Arsenal I get the choice to buy my seat for a 6th division type cost, or allowing someone else to have it.)
As for the game, quite amazingly it seems we only had 56% of possession, but we won the shots on target bit 14 to 2, which seems about right. Six of the 14 went in. Not a bad ratio.
All the goals were fun, but could I take you back to the Oxlade Chamberlain affair. There seemed to be no run up, no back lift; he just stood there and kicked the ball into the net from about six miles out. Amazing stuff – as indeed were Theo’s goals. Maybe he is right. Maybe he is a centre forward who like Henry plays on the wings.
The other great thing was the team – just look at it…
- Damián Martinez,
- Martin Angha,
- Johan Djourou,
- André Santos,
- Ignasi Miquel,
- Nicholas Yennaris,
- Andrey Arshavin,
- Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain (Serge Gnabry, 72),
- Theo Walcott,
- Francis Coquelin (Emmanuel Frimpong, 72),
- Olivier Giroud (Marouane Chamakh, 72)
The brand new (Martinez, Angha) the up and coming (Miquel, Yennaris), the returnee (Frimpong), the new sensation (Gnabry), the the old timers (Arshavin, Chamakh). And at last a goal for Giroud.
Really, what more do you want from life? A couple of streakers – well yes, we had them too.
Coventry brought their new manager, Mark Robins, and 8,000 fans – good on them. By half time they probably thought they might even manage to get a win – especially after the penalty save.
Does it mark turning points for Arshavin and Giroud? Who knows. Somehow some of these league cup games look to be the making or re-making of players, but then it never happens – but let us hope it does help both players. The depth of the squad is something to behold at the moment and a return to form of Arshavin could give us even more depth.
Next up, we play the Spectacles* away. Let’s hope for more fun.
* Spectacles, glasses, next round – geddit?
Finally someone who is spot on about the most expensive tickets myth. i am a season ticket holder and i am on the away scheme. my home season ticket cost me £985 which is for 26 matches. 19 league and 7 cup ties. it does not include capital one cup matches until the semi final stage. so my ticket for home matches costs me an average of £37.89 per match. now i went every away match last season and not once did i pay less than £40. so for me as a home and away fan arsenal actually is the cheapest club to watch in the league. now i may be wrong here but the majority of seats at the emirates are in the lower tier and if you break it down still further certainly the majority of the seats in the ground are at the lower price. i personally think the club has it spot on. the wealthy pay the higher prices and those of us that are less wealthy there is the satisfaction of payibg less to watch our great club cheaper at the emirayes than at awful places like stoke qpr and west m
* Spectacles, glasses, next round – geddit?
Classic.
In the same sense as ‘my P-reg SAAB 900 is a classic’.
Geddit. Thanks for the report
The ‘most expensive’ tag is just lazy journalism. It’s worked out by dividing average match day income by attendance – which I admit looks bad.
UNTIL you look at the fact that corporate level at the Emirates makes more on a matchday than the whole of Highbury (factoring in inflation). Or looking at it another way, a massive proportion (40% at a conservative estimate) of the matchday income comes from just 9,000 people.
It’s certainly true that individual tickets are probably more costly than anywhere else. Membership of the Diamond Club costs (I believe) £25k per season – although Raymond Blanc does cook you dinner and probably does the washing up too.
It’s all about value for money and the fact that once again the season tickets (around 45,000 of them) are sold out for the year points to the fact that the journalism is not just lazy it’s also ill informed from a marketing point of view.
£10 for adults and £5 for children is certainly very good value and I too cant believe the lazy / negative journalism that we get.
A freind of mine who lives in Leicester travelled up to Old Trafford last night as his season ticket covers Cup games, his ticket averages out at £36 per game.
The only shame is that we were drawn away in the next round, had we been at home i would have taken my 2 sons as the game falls within half term.
I also believe there were 8,000 Coventry fans at the game last night which is just under half what they normally get for a home game. Interestingly Coventry were charging £22 for adults at their last home game against Carlisle.
I am not against highly price tickets, I don’t care about it, because I am overseas fans that never came to Europe and watch in stadium.
I am just curious, how much maximum Arsenal can take from big big big game?
I am proud of “expensive” Arsenal tickets, because its means Arsenal game worth to watch!
http://espnfc.com/uk/en/preview/345785/preview.html?soccernet=true&cc=5739
At a guess, the derby matches (at least the big two) are expected to have no season ticketed seats available (or maybe a handful if the holder is unavailable) whereas many holders would release their seats back to the club for West Brom or whatever.
So obviously there aren’t going to be many seats available anyway. Most of the seats are presold for ~£40 as part of a season ticket. Simple maths (40k season ticket holders?) says that the average ticket price for the Chelsea match is going to be much closer to £40 than to the £62 minimum that article quotes.
@Ong Bing, I came across the article earlier today & couldn’t stop laughing. It’s journalism at its worst. He was supposed to write about the match but his first 3 paragraphs deal with the prices of the tickets. It’s ESPN, you couldn’t have expected more from the clowns over there.
@ong bing and espn also magically transforms a quote by arsene wenger on drogba to a trivia.
@Arun, @AmericanGooner
But I agree with his prediction, we will win that game. With bad luck, draw. I can’t see why Chel$ki can win it.
So far they have a good run because fixtures.
Back to topic that I want to know, can Arsenal get 6M from tickets in 1 game?
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