IPSWICH Town are in talks with Aston Villa about the possibility of purchasing more tickets for the FA Cup tie at Villa Park in January, the club have confirmed.

Mick McCarthy’s side travel to the Premier League outfit for the third round tie on January 5 backed by a travelling Blue Army of 2,900 – the maximum number of tickets the club could take on a sale or return allocation.

The last of those tickets were sold this morning on general sale – 200 going in 35 minutes – after season ticket holders and members had already snapped up the majority of the tickets.

But the club have now confirmed they have requested more from Villa.

“We have spoken to Aston Villa and they have been impressed that we have sold out so quickly,” said Town’s ticket office manager John Ford.

“We have asked if they will consider providing us with more tickets but that will be dependent on their stadium configuration as they have been selling tickets for the game for two weeks.”

Supporters yesterday criticised the decision taken by the Suffolk club to secure just 2,900 seats for the match at Villa Park, whose capacity is 42,788.

If the club had gone for 6,000 – which it is entitled to under Football Association rules which give visiting teams 15 per cent of the host club’s capacity – and not sold them, it would have been left out of pocket.

“We could have taken 15 per cent (6,000 seats) of the stadium capacity but we would have had to pay for all of those tickets regardless of whether we sold them or not,” added Ford.

“Our current average travelling support is 646 and we have had much less than that - 419 to be precise went to Leeds on Saturday and this is one of the factors we based our decision on.

“It would have been naive of us to look at taking 6,000 tickets and risk being considerably out of pocket so we took the maximum we could at sale or return.

“Season ticket holders and silver club members had until yesterday to purchase their tickets and there were steady sales throughout this period.”