Aston Villa have the most football-related arrests at home out of West Midlands teams last season

Aston Villa recorded the most football-related arrests at home games in the West Midlands for the 2021/22 season.

Data released by West Midlands Police shows The Villans tallied up 24 arrests out of the 57 made last campaign, which makes up 42% of the whole total.

Villa had almost double the number of arrests compared to fierce rivals Birmingham City, while they did have double the total of fellow Premier League outfit Wolverhampton Wanderers.

West Midlands Police also published figures on the maximum number of police officers deployed on home matchdays at each West Midlands club.

Despite having the most arrests, Aston Villa only had the second highest number of police officers deployed at home fixtures last season, with 1,200.

Wolverhampton Wanderers, despite having half the number of football-related arrests compared to Villa, had 100 more officers at Molineux, so do more police need to be distributed at Villa Park to see the number of arrests fall?

Head of Security and Matchday Safety Officer at Aston Villa Julian Bowran disagrees and says thorough planning is done with West Midlands Police, to deploy the right amount of officers on a matchday.

Bowran said: “In relation to policing, each game gets risk assessed, depending on who you’re playing which reflects on the police resources that are put into each club, the numbers aren’t far away between Villa and Wolves but the police list is proportionate to what we think the risk is for each match, with those factors taken into account.

“We have lots of communication with the police, pre-match we have planning meetings and decide on the resources, we then agree for West Midlands police to supply the club through our special provision measures and that reflects on the fixture, so a lot of planning goes into a football match.”

Julian Bowran also mentioned the work Aston Villa are doing to deal with occurring incidents, and believes topping the arrests table is a positive, not a negative.

Bowran added: “A lot of proactive work goes on at Villa, we’ve brought a new text system in so fans can report incidents via text message that are happening at the ground, which goes straight to match control, and is then dealt with by the club and West Midlands Police, the work for this is ongoing, we’re training more staff to work with this system and I think this action is a positive step taken as we look to be more inclusive as a club.

“On the amount of arrests, I don’t see the number as a negative, I see it as a positive across the club, because as the incidents get reported by the club, people are spoken to by the police, then they’re normally dealt with through the courts or by a club ban, so I believe us having the most arrests means we’re dealing with the incidents as effectively as we can which from my point of view, can only be seen as a good thing.”