Aston Villa fans who have bought tickets in the Manchester City end at Wembley will have their tickets cancelled for safety reasons.
A group of Villa fans – thought to be less than 20 – bought tickets for City’s midweek game against West Ham in order to be eligible for a seat at the Carabao Cup final next Sunday.
City last week reduced the criteria for purchasing a ticket to allow fans with a purchase history to buy up to three tickets for the final, which is the Blues’ third appearance in a row.
Villa had already sold out their 33,666 tickets – a smaller allocation than City’s 33,889 – and some enterprising fans bought tickets for the midweek Premier League game at the Etihad Stadium.
It is believed that less than 50 tickets have been sold to Villa fans in the City end, but the club believes it knows who the purchasers are and will cancel the tickets on security grounds.
City recorded an unusually low attendance of around 52,000 for the Hammers game, which was re-arranged after being postponed ten days earlier, but was still hit by bad weather - many fans turned around and went home as closures to the main Oldham Road and Rochdale Road thoroughfares, and a gridlocked motorway system to the north and west of Manchester - caused by a series of accidents - caused chaos.
The Blues have around 1,600 tickets left for the final, of which 1,400 are for the higher tier of £125-150.
The club is understood to be happy with that level of sale, as this will be their 16th appearance at Wembley in ten years, not including a league game against Tottenham, who made the stadium their temporary home in 2018-19.
