January 31- Premier League managers may have taken the opportunity to give key players a rest this week with the Fourth Round of FA Cup matches, but fans were in no mood to to take a week off. Five of the eight Premier League clubs with home matches sold out more than 95% of their capacities.
Manchester United, Spurs and Chelsea were sold out, while Liverpool and Southampton were were as good as full. But the comparison with Burnley, Crystal Palace and Middlesbrough was stark. Palace only just managed to sell over 50% of their capacity for the visit of Manchester City. 3,600 of them were travelling fans. Burnley sold just over 65%.
Middlesbrough struggle to get over 90% capacity for the Premier League so their 69% figure for the visit of League 2 Accrington Stanley was perhaps less unexpected.
There were 12 clubs from the Premier League in FA Cup action. They will all play again this week on Tuesday and Wednesday in Round 23 of Premier League matches – so the turnaround time from FA Cup to Premier League is short.
Round 22 matches saw nine out of ten clubs report more than 90% of their stadiums full, while Middlesbrough were at 88%. There were just 12,480 seats unfilled at Premier League grounds – in comparison Crystal Palace had almost that number unfilled for their FA Cup match.
For their Premier League match in Round 22 Palace had just 715 seats unfilled.
Insideworldfootball data is taken from the official ground capacities and the official reported attendances. No allowance is made for any seat kills dues to media to safety requirements.
Source: Insideworldfootball
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