Another Carrow Road sell-out on Sunday will take Norwich City's Premier League home gates past the half-million mark for the season.

Crowds for the first 18 home league games have totalled 478,706, giving the Canaries an average attendance of 26,594, their highest for nearly 40 years.

With all stadium tickets sold for the final match, the visit of Aston Villa (3pm), that total is set to go well past the 500,000 mark. City's average gate is the 12th highest in the Premier League, putting them ahead of Wolves, Fulham, West Bromwich Albion, Bolton, Blackburn, Swansea, Wigan and Queens Park Rangers.

From the three divisions of the Football League, only West Ham's home attendances are better than Norwich.

City's gates are also nearly five per cent higher than their Championship average of 25,386 last season – though the fact that there were 23 home league games rather than 19 means the aggregate attendance was much higher in 2010-11 at 583,886.

Every home league gate at Carrow Road this season has topped 26,000, with the attendance for the Liverpool game a fortnight ago setting a new all-seater record of 26,819, the biggest home crowd in all competitions since 1983.

This season's gates are the best since 1972-73, when the club's first season in Division One brought 601,757 through the turnstiles for 21 league matches at an average of 28,652.

City's 19 Premiership home games in 2004-05 were watched by crowds totalling 462,653, an average of 24,350.