Villa Park

My take, as a visiting supporter, of Villa Park.

Villa Park is the home of Aston Villa in Birmingham, with a capacity of 42,657 across the Doug Ellis, Holte End, Trinity Road and North Stands.

If you arrive before the roads close there is ample coach and car parking opposite the ground on Witton Lane. You’ll find the program sellers dotted around there too. £3.50 is amongst the cheapest programs in the Premier League this season.

The stadium is surrounded by food vendors, including at the expansive fan zone in front of the North Stand. There was even a wee concert going on there while I explored around the stadium.

My advice, as a travelling supporter, would be to get food and drink at one of those vendors - Smokey Joes have a number of stalls around the ground that looked really good.

Once you gain access to the Doug Ellis Stand, the concourse is really disappointing. In fact concourse is stretching it, the facilities in that stand could be politely and more accurately be described as a corridor.

Food and drink is served from a hatch in the corridor, a Mill Town beef and onion pie, it was fine - a gentrified steak bake at best, and costs £5.30. Which means that my Bovril must have cost an extraordinary £3.20. For a mug of hot water and a stock cube. Not the worst pie or pricing this season, but disappointing all the same.

The toilets are just grim, and there is nowhere to eat and drink in the corridor, so you might as well just head through to your seat and eat there.

Don’t bother entering early, enjoy the facilities around the ground, even take a stroll around Aston Hall Park. Avoid booking seats 1–17 of the Upper Doug Ellis Stand, especially below row GG - unless you want to stare at the back of a television. You can thank me later!

The pre game fire and light show was perplexing. The fire was nice, and you could feel the warmth from the jets. But it was not dark, why the light show?

The stadium itself is excellent, a large classic ‘proper’ football stadium. Not a soulless bowl. The steep terraced seating really adds to the atmosphere in the ground.

The facilities for visiting supporters though are easily the worst that I have seen so far in the Premier League this season. Given that Villa might well make the Champions League next season, are cultured Barcelona and Monaco supporters really going to be greeted with that? I suspect so.

Images

Lee Perry