Aston Villa Stops Plans To Expand Villa Park

Villa Park Stadium will not be renovated in the near future (Instagram/@avfcofficial).

JAKARTA - Aston Villa has made plans to expand their home, Villa Park. The renovation is expected to increase the number of stadium seats to 52,000 or up 10,000 seats.

The restoration plan costs 100 million pounds, or around Rp. 1.9 trillion.

However, recently Aston Villa thought about realizing the plan. There are considerations that the addition of seats was too fast.

Aston Villa's Presidential Business Operations, Chris Heck, is not sure that 2024 will be the right time to expand the stadium.

No wonder, finally the draft expansion of the northern tribune was temporarily postponed. You see, renovations are estimated to take two years.

This will certainly disrupt Villa Park supporters and capacity, which currently amounted to 42,600, which will decrease by around 34,000 during renovations carried out for two seasons.

"We (now) have 42,000 seats. A large number. Adding 10,000 seats at this time seems impractical to me."

"We talked about Villa Park as a fort. It's true. I thought it would be a bad idea to knock down one of the stands for two years while we play like this."

"In the future, I think everything should be about all the fans," Heck said on the club's official website.

In fact, Aston Villa has a reason to expand the stands. They already have more than 30,000 supporters on the seasonal ticket waiting list.

This is clearly the reason the club officials initially decided to continue the expansion plan.

However, Heck assessed that the expansion could not be balanced with infrastructure around the stadium and local areas. As a result, he saw that the renovation of Villa Park actually caused new problems.

"It was a very ambitious idea. During the summer months I was worried we added too many seats in too fast time."

"I believe it is important for us to take a step back and re-evaluate what is best for our fans."

"I mentioned transportation and a parking situation (cannot support)," said Heck again.

Aston Villa currently sits third in the 2023/2024 Premier League standings. They are only one point adrift of Arsenal and three points from leaders, Liverpool.