Wandy

That's not even new info. Mehrdad said himself a while ago that they hoped to expand to 65K. I still think the feasibility study may be used as the reasoning to move/completely rebuild, rather than a modest expansion. On Wednesday the club moved up a gear, you could just feel it, and I bet NUFC gained a lot of new fans that night. Will a modest upgrade to a creaking stadium really cut it, as football enters a new age? Not for me it wont.

I didn't think that SJP would ever get near the heights of the 1990s again but it got very close on Wednesday. Not quite as good as Barca 1997, but pretty damned close. That's not a slight on the support, who were magnificent, but more to do with the fact that the SJP acoustics were simply much better back then. You could just tell it was going to be special on Wednesday though. In the streets around town before kick-off, everyone was singing on their walk up to the ground. And it seems most people were smart enough to ensure that they were in the ground early this time, what with all of the issues with ticketing. The bar has been set now though. Wednesday showed that SJP can still be a bear pit, like the old days. So anything less going forward is now on the crowd.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2023/10/06/newcastle-united-st-james-park-expansion-65000-capacity/ They can squeeze an extra tier onto the East Stand, but only if St James' Terrace bites the dust. Just build a new stadium man, it makes much more sense.

Are they aware how unhappy everyone is with all of the new ticketing policies, ie being unable to choose your own seat etc?

Which part of the ground did your friend get tickets for?

Exactly why a new stadium is required. Imagine what SJP will be like if they do somehow manage to extend it to 65K. I've been thinking about the extension though, and realised that even if they do somehow manage to stick another tier on the East Stand the chances are that the majority of the seats will be corporate. That leaves just an extra 7000-ish seats in Gallowgate Level 7. Not enough for the true demand of an NUFC being ran as an elite club, and with shite views and poor accoustics too. There needs to be a new stadium within the city centre. Or literally knocking SJP down, stage-by-stage, and moving the pitch north-west to allow a whole new design of stadium to sit on more-or-less the same footprint.

Exactly. It's a shocking system in so many ways and needs to be ditched, pronto. There is no other entertainment industry where the customer has no choice in where they sit within the venue and football should be no different. If the club are trying to attract a new audience to SJP then they are probably doing an awful job of it, as I imagine most people will be getting sick of the new system of chaos already. And a fair few long-term supporters might be considering jacking it all in and just watching on the TV too. Maybe this is their way of addressing the capacity issue. Piss enough people off so that 52k is actually enough.

Wasnt there today but was in L7 for the City match on Wednesday. There was a real log jam at the turnstile there too. Atmosphere was as shite as I feared up there and I thought the general atmosphere within the whole stadium was wank too. City fans embarrassed us for noise. I'm now fully of the opinion that we need a new stadium and I suspect that the feasibility study will show it too. SJP as it is is simply not fit for purpose as a state of the art stadium. Its lop-sided, has terrible views within a whole section and has poor accoustics. Rip it up and start again somewhere within the city centre.

Yeah mine too. It’s nice to see match footage of the old West Stand at the beginning. Watching that game reminds me how desperate those 8 years were between Keegan leaving and coming back. The club truly had no ambition, let 3 local lads leave to become superstars elsewhere and the ground was an absolute shithole. The Ashley years had their own kind of desperation but at least the club hadn’t slipped off the football radar altogether like it had by the time it got to early 1992.

Had no idea that his name was well known. Learning all these things nearly 40 years later.

I had no idea the ITV theme tune was even called that.

My memory is coming back to me now. I remember that I was actually at this game, but also taped it on the video recorder & then watched it when I got home. The firework definitely went off in the West Ham corner of the Leazes and I can remember the massive plume of smoke that came from there. No idea if it was the West Ham fans who actually set it off or if one of our lot threw it in there though. Someone can correct me on this if I'm wrong, but I'm sure it was mentioned at the time that this game was the first ever NUFC home match to be broadcast live on TV. Seems incredible that, since it was only late-1986.

Found it already. Goes off at 14:22, and aye it was as loud as I remember. Brian Moore talking about a firecracker in the "corner of the ground", smoke, photographers and ambulance men in attendance. Still sounds more like a f'king bomb to me even now. Ah, the good old 80s.

This is the game I was talking about. I will have to watch it when I get the chance to see when the bang went off.

I'm going to thoroughly enjoy this result, but won't get carried away by it in the slightest. In our 28 seasons of PL football that lot were by far the worst team we have ever played in this league. It was an utter embarassment from them, and like a training match. Should build momentum for us nicely though.

Fawning. Give over man. I couldn't care less about Bin Salman or Saudi policies one way or the other. The issue is far too complicated for me as a football fan to waste valuable time on. What I do know though is that, having regularly experienced the UK media at first hand, that I fucking loathe them, hence why I found Bin Salman's withering comments towards them amusing. I also know that the Saudis have been regarded as a key ally of the UK for decades by successive governments, therefore if their money and assistance is welcomed by our leaders then I'm not going to grumble or protest about investment from them into NUFC either.

Fucking hell, our lot had better not even contemplate such a system here. Makes you wonder how they have maintained a decent away following.

Man Utd fans started up FC United because of the parasitic nature of the Glazer takeover, nothing to do with them being a global brand...which they became long before the Glazers arrived. Scouse Liverpool fans do not complain about their global fanbase or LFC becoming a brand. They have largely appreciated FSG and only turned on them during the Super League debacle.

What? ? How exactly have I defended them then?

You still used the term "minority" though, which indicates that most of their support still feel the same connection. The truth is that "connection" with a club comes when it is doing its very best to fulfil it's potential. Who the owners are at that time is largely irrelevant to most fans.

They don't set the policy but they have the best chance of influencing it. I'm not saying that the Trust don't have a difficult job to do but unfortunately they need to do a lot better with this. Man Utd's plastic support is one of the drawbacks of their success and the last thing we should be trying to emulate.

Right. So what are the trust going to do about it?

You never hear Man Utd and Man City fans living in Manchester complaining that their success has resulted in them "losing" their club, and you never hear it from Scousers living in Liverpool either.

I have nothing against scrutiny but the whole concept of sportswashing is a load of bollocks. Its a term that was probably invented by a bored western-based journalist with a superiority complex, conveniently ignoring all of the ills of western society. If sportswashing was an actual policy by the Saudis then its doing a pretty terrible job. Instead of cleansing their image and helping people forget about all of the controversial policies they deploy, it's actually drawn far more scrutiny and criticism of those policies. The truth is that they don't give a monkey's what the west thinks of them, hence Bin Salman's remarks the other day. Their actions are all about power play, getting a strong foothold in world politics and securing the long-term future of their country. Whether people in the west like their methods of doing this is neither here nor there to them.

Saudi ownership doesn't bother me in the slightest but I would never try to defend their regime. Not gonna lie though, I chortled when I read that quote from Bin Salman about sportswashing the other day. Anyone who basically tells the western media to go fuck themselves gets a thumbs up from me.