It’s that time of year again when the BBC like to release their Price of Football stats and we get our annual clobbering in the media for having “the most expensive seats”, “the most expensive season tickets” and generally get blamed for all that is wrong with football.

So I thought I’d arm you all with some facts that you can shut the numpties up with rather than buy in to their story.

The most important thing is that little asterisk that goes next to our Season Ticket prices which denotes that it includes 7 cup games. No other team does this, I wish in a way Arsenal would give a pro rata figure just for Premier League games so a fair comparison was drawn.

Let’s start there, taking away the 7 cup credits the price of our Season Tickets are as follows:
Cheapest £741
Dearest £1,471

So the cheapest is cheaper than Chelsea and Tottenham, and only £31 more than Liverpool. Whilst I’m sure it will be pointed out that we are still more expensive than the Manchester clubs it should be noted we are in London and as such our club have a different wealth to tap into, and that is why we should only really compare ourselves with the London clubs.

The most Expensive is cheaper than Tottenham.

So it is in fact Tottenham who have the most expensive season tickets, and when did they last win a trophy? And some of their tickets are still spoilt by looking at stadium roof supports.

Then there is the match day prices, cheapest and most expensive, on the most expensive tickets there is nothing much to say we are bang to rights the most expensive seat, however as I have stressed many times before we are talking about a very small section of the ground.

But the cheapest ticket well I personally think that’s where we really shine as a club, and where no one will focus.

Cheapest match day ticket £27, only half the clubs in the Premier League offer cheaper. Some of the clubs that charge more: Burnley £35, Chelsea £50, Palace £30, Everton £33, Liverpool £37, Man City £37, Man Utd £36, Southampton £32, Swansea £35, Tottenham £32.

And those cheapest tickets are quite plentiful, admittedly they are for Cat C games, but for a fan like me who travels infrequently to the Emirates these are the games I choose, all the lower tier behind the goal are at this price and they are not difficult to get hold of in the Clock End or on the Ticket Exchange as these tend to be the games that Season Ticket holders choose to miss.

So there you have it my take on the figures announced today and hopefully some ammunition for you to fire back at the media today and anyone else who decides to tell you that we pay the most expensive prices. Blah blah blah. It’s simply not true, don’t feed the hype.

Gooner in Exile