A short and not very sweet rant from Clarkeonenil today. Yesterday’s news that we have a 8500 allocation for the Emirates doesn’t disguise the fact that the league Arsenal play in the away fan is a leper. What has become clear is that the Premier League think travelling support is something it should muscle out, hence this seasons rule that the away allocation in all grounds is 3000 (disguised as a minimum of 5% up to 3000).
Not withstanding the short-sightedness of that policy for atmosphere and excitement, it also points to a problem for Leeds United fans, one being experienced by Newcastle United fans this season. Basically, taking the 6000 we took to Coventry City as a baseline, half of you who go to away games now will be excluded when we visit the bigger stadiums! Pathetic really but all so typical of a greedy game.
It is not just promotion will limit the allocation, it is what the club do to distribute whats left of it. Given the present 85-15% is already causing problems, when 3000 tickets maximum (or more likely 2300 because at least 700 people are the lucky ones by holding away season tickets, the Leeds United equivalent to gold dust) you can see that 15000 season ticket holders fighting for our Old Trafford or Eastlands seats will be problematic. You also know the club will look to maximise income from this state of affairs, so it will be thus; only home and away season ticket holders will get away tickets, it will probably be disguised as “Platinum Membership”. So £800 for your home season ticket, £800 for your away season ticket and £500 cost of Platinum Membership. There will be no point applying for single tickets, they simply won’t be available.
Now I could go on at length about this but there doesn’t seem to be much point, either all this is a bit premature (and it is a bit) or the situation will be worse if/when we get promotion as the greedy PL clubs squeeze the away allocation further (you can see the “they insist on standing so we wipe 1000 off the allocation for “safety reasons” being used a lot with us). Basically it boils down to this, if you can manipulate a situation where you will always get a ticket, well done you, if you can’t then like another 40000 members club card holders (can you see Bates keeping that system for home game tickets, £35 a shot and all, yes so can I….) you need to get your LUFC fix elsewhere.
by CLARKE ONE NIL visit the blog at http://clarkeonenil.co.uk/
No comments:
Post a Comment