F.A Cup Venue Confirmed as Villa Park

By Chris O'Brien
March 9 2004

The F.A Cup semi-final tie between ourselves and Arsenal will take place at the originally selected venue, Villa Park. Arsene Wenger had led a campaign from Arsenal officials to have the game switched to the Millennium Stadium, which would mean both teams would get a larger ticket allocation.

Manchester United have won the battle for where the F.A Cup semi-final against Arsenal will be played. The two sides will do battle at Villa Park, the originally selected venue, despite Arsene Wenger kicking up a fuss and asking for the mouth-watering match to be played at the Millennium Stadium.

The Football Association reached the decision following a lengthy meeting which took place after Arsenal enquired whether or not the match could be played at the 73,000 all-seater stadium in Cardiff, which has hosted the final since Wembley was knocked down for re-development.

Aresene Wenger had previously argued that the ground was more accessible for Arsenal supporters travelling from London, and the greater capacity would mean both fans would get a far larger allocation than if the match was held at Aston Villa's ground. Although judging by the turn-out of Arsenal fans at the Community Shield final, that wouldn't matter!

Manchester United have been adamant that the match would be played at Villa Park, the venue that we famously beat Arsenal 2-1 in the cracking semi-final of 1999, particularly with the club rightly assuming kick-off would be moved to noon on the Saturday of the semi-final weekend. This means travel with be much easier for our supporters, although the allocation is only likely to be in the region of 20,000 which would obviously be far less than the number of tickets we would get for a visit to the Millennium Stadium.

Personally, I have been in two minds about where the venue for the semi-final match should be since Wenger made the plea to the F.A following the draw. As mentioned above, the allocation would be fair bigger for the Millennium Stadium, and the game being played at Villa Park will mean season ticket holders who have attended both home Cup matches will miss out. However, it just isn't football to play the semi-final at the final venue, and I'd imagine it would remove some of the gloss from the final and the club outside the Premiership who achieve the accolade of getting there. Fortunately, the decision has been made quickly, and looking at the circumstances it's probably the correct one.

We'll make the journey to Villa Park on Saturday April 3rd, with the game kicking off between noon and 12.30pm. The realisation that our best chance of silverware this season will be the F.A Cup has sunk in, meaning this game could be our biggest of the season to date.