Positive News as Villa Fan Arrests Drop
The Home Office released its football arrest figures last week. Aston Villa fan arrests fell from 73* in 2024/25 to 35 last season, an over 50% drop. Villa were 5th in the arrest table last season, and encouragingly dropped to 11th despite having a full calendar of matches to draw upon from their Europa League-winning campaign.
MOMS flagged the 2024/25 rise at the time as a concerning spike. A full season on, the detail behind that number explains the jump. The FA Cup semi-final against Crystal Palace alone accounted for 12 arrests, and boozy Wembley days out have previous with Villa; during MOMS’ time on the Fans Advisory Board, the club informed us they had received a letter of complaint from Brent Council about civil disorder following Villa’s 2019 Championship play-off win. The Chelsea game in February added seven more.
Strip out the Wembley semi-final and the Chelsea game, and last year’s total begins to look a lot less alarming. So the 2025/26 figure is an encouraging drop.
Villa Fan Arrests Compared to All Premier League Clubs
| # | Club | Arrests 2025/26 | vs 2024/25 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Manchester City | 102 | +5 |
| 2 | Chelsea | 76 | −1 |
| 3 | Manchester United | 67 | −60 |
| 4 | Arsenal | 66 | +20 |
| 5 | Everton | 62 | +6 |
| 6 | Leeds United | 59 | +23 |
| 7= | Liverpool | 52 | +7 |
| 7= | Tottenham Hotspur | 52 | +11 |
| 9 | West Ham United | 41 | −36 |
| 10 | Newcastle United | 39 | −3 |
| 11 | Aston Villa | 35 | −38 |
| 12= | Sunderland | 26 | −11 |
| 12= | Crystal Palace | 26 | +5 |
| 14 | Wolverhampton Wanderers | 23 | −6 |
| 15 | Nottingham Forest | 22 | −8 |
| 16 | Burnley | 21 | +3 |
| 17 | Fulham | 10 | −12 |
| 18 | Brighton and Hove Albion | 8 | −6 |
| 19 | Bournemouth | 7 | 0 |
| 20 | Brentford | 6 | −10 |
Arrests and other police actions by club supported, England and Wales, all competitions, 2025/26 season vs 2024/25. Source: Home Office. Leeds, Sunderland and Burnley were promoted from the Championship for 2025/26; their “vs 2024/25” figure is their arrest total from that Championship season, not a Premier League one.
The Most Impressive Drop
While other clubs’ arrest figures are relative to their crowd sizes, the only club that saw a bigger drop in arrest numbers to Villa was Manchester United, down 60 – no great surprise for a side sitting out Europe entirely last season. Even so, the Red Devils’ figure worked out at a 47.2% drop, still less than Villa’s percentage shift of 52.1%.
The only two clubs with bigger percentage drops were working off a much smaller scale: Brentford’s 62.5% came from just 10 fewer arrests, Fulham’s 54.5% from 12 fewer. Neither club had European games to add to the tally either.
For local context, Birmingham City, playing in the Championship, racked up 51 arrests last season. Even with smaller crowds, on average, the Blues tend to consistently rack up more arrests than Villa in recent seasons.
Offence Type Breakdown
Aston Villa’s 35 arrests from last season break down as follows:
| Offence | Police actions | % of total |
|---|---|---|
| Class A drugs (entering/inside stadium) | 15 | 43% |
| Public disorder | 15 | 43% |
| Violent disorder | 4 | 11% |
| Alcohol offences | 1 | 3% |
Class A drug possession now accounts for 43% of Villa arrests, level with public disorder. Nationally, drugs account for 17% of football arrests. This offence only entered the Football Spectators Act in November 2022.
The pattern in the match-level data shows that of the 19 Villa fixtures with a Class A arrest since the law came in, 17 were away days. Villa Park has recorded ten Class A arrests in four seasons, and eight of those were visiting supporters. Whatever this is measuring, whether it be cocaine culture on away trips, or which turnstiles have the sniffer dogs, it is not a Villa Park problem. It is the away-day economy meeting a new law and, at some grounds more than others, an enthusiastic search regime. Brentford away alone accounts for three of those fixtures.
Banning Orders Rise
Villa’s 36 banning orders in force is mid-table within the Premier League, less than a third of West Ham’s 121. The 16 new orders in 2025/26 is the highest annual total since 2018/19, the promotion-winning season, up from nine the year before. Part of that rise is bureaucratic: the Home Office changed its recording window from ten months to a full 12, giving every club a mechanical boost. The likeliest explanation is simpler with banning orders lagging arrests by months. The 2025/26 orders are, in large part, the 2024/25 Champions League season arrests completing their paperwork. If that reading is right, the number should fall back next summer.
Premier League Banning Orders
| Rank by new banning orders (2025/26) | Club | New banning orders (2025/26) | Total banning orders (league rank) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Liverpool | 37 | 81 (5th) |
| 2 | Everton | 31 | 73 (6th) |
| 3 | West Ham United | 30 | 121 (1st) |
| 4 | Arsenal | 26 | 70 (7th) |
| =4 | Chelsea | 26 | 86 (2nd) |
| 6 | Manchester United | 25 | 84 (3rd) |
| 7 | Manchester City | 24 | 82 (4th) |
| =8 | Aston Villa | 16 | 36 (11th) |
| =8 | Leeds United | 16 | 48 (9th) |
| 10 | Sunderland | 14 | 26 (17th) |
| 11 | Tottenham Hotspur | 13 | 57 (8th) |
| =12 | Newcastle United | 12 | 45 (10th) |
| =12 | Nottingham Forest | 12 | 32 (T-13th) |
| 14 | Crystal Palace | 10 | 34 (12th) |
| 15 | Burnley | 9 | 32 (T-13th) |
| 16 | Fulham | 4 | 15 (19th) |
| =17 | Brighton & Hove Albion | 3 | 29 (15th) |
| =17 | Brentford | 3 | 20 (18th) |
| 19 | AFC Bournemouth | 1 | 8 (20th) |
| =20 | Wolverhampton Wanderers | 4 | 27 (16th) |
What to Watch
These figures measure policing, not behaviour. An arrest count reflects who was policed, searched and nicked, not some objective misconduct index.
What the specific data does support in terms of Villa is their record is unremarkable by Premier League standards. The growth area, which is common across English football, is a drugs law acting on away end culture. The next thing to watch is already on the statute book, with tailgating and jumping turnstiles became a criminal offence in March this year, generated 45 arrests nationally in ten weeks. Next year’s headline numbers will inflate just from that.
Overall though, the Home Office’s own preferred metric, arrests per 100,000 attendees, puts the national picture at 4.0, down from 4.2 (and 5.5, the season before that), which shows a big picture trend of largely better behaviour across English football.
* 2024/25 figures revised. When we covered the 2024/25 rise at the time, the Home Office’s initial release put Villa’s total at 71, Manchester United’s at 121, Manchester City’s at 94, and Chelsea’s at 76. This year’s release revises all of them slightly upward — 73, 127, 97 and 77 respectively — with the rankings and the story unchanged. Historical football arrest figures are routinely revised in later releases; treat any season’s most recent published figure as the current best estimate, not a fixed record.
Get MOMS in your inbox every Friday, free. Sharp, smart, informative Villa writing for supporters who can spot the clickbait from the back of the Holte. No spam. Join the astonvilla.wtf newsletter →
Follow MOMS on Twitter/X & Facebook & Threads & Bluesky & Spotify