Wallsendmag

Off to Berwick v Tranent on Saturday. Absolutely massive game game for Berwick.

Great to hear. I know we sounded brilliant from where I was right behind the goal in the lower tier and that we couldn't hear them but I'm also aware that the acoustics at Wembley are absolutely shite so good to know we sounded loud from a more neutral area.

Should be chased out and told they aren't welcome. Looking across at that Liverpool end on Sunday, that would kill me if it ever happened to us. Zero passion, zero enthusiasm, zero noise. Just there to take some photos before pissing off to whichever far flung place they arrived from. The genuine Liverpool fans must be gutted about it.

But that would be rubbish. Ashley didn't build the stadium from a crumbling wreck to what was at the time one of the best in Europe and the 2nd biggest in the Country. In fact he left it in a bit of a state of disrepair. He didn't take the club from a nothing Division 2 team to a top PL team which challenged for the title and played Champions League, breaking the world record transfer fee in the process. He didn't increase our attendances by nearly 200%.

And after all that KK only comes back because of John Hall. He wasn't coming back to work for McKeag and his lot who would have sold any emerging talent from under his feet as soon as an offer came in. We also had the worst ground of us, Sunderland and Boro who at least both had covered home terraced areas. The 21,000 average gate you quoted in 1988 was down to 16,000 by 1991 which was 17th highest in the Country and less than the mackems and even Middlesbrough! If John Hall didn't come in we don't have the club we have today. Simple as that.

Whilst he sat in the Gallowgate iirc.

It's hardly extreme, also I suppose in this day and age some people could think it is. I think of extreme as being someone who wants to bring actual harm to others because they aren't the same religion or race as they are. Lots of people of his generation will think the same tbf.

Tbf the bond scheme was a Freddie Fletcher initiative. Ultimately I'll always hold SJH in high regard. Couldn't care about his political views. Labour aren't exactly much better and over the years as I've got older I've learned to tolerate and respect people with different views to mine, whether that be political or otherwise, as long as they aren't extreme! What I do know is that without him we don't have the Newcastle United that we have today. We were on a one way road to oblivion when he stepped in. I was a season ticket holder when the Magpie Group which he headed, managed to oust McKeag and his cronies out. The ground was a crumbling wreck, we got drenched when it rained, any good players were sold, the team was shit, the crowds were down to 10, 11, 12k for some League games. He spotted the potential, more importantly he brought in Kevin Keegan and the rest they say is history but no doubting that the club we have today is due him and that decision to bring back Kevin Keegan. It changed the course of history for us for ever. He was hoodwinked by Ashley but I don't hold it against him. He had us all fooled for a while. Offering us free beer if we got into the ground early or buying everyone in Blubambu drinks, going in with the fans in his NUFC top, whatever, his charm offensive early doors did a real number on us until his mask slipped. Plus we were getting into the day and age of Chelsea being Russian owned, The Middle East and America were wanting to get involved and SJH and Shepherd just didn't have the means to come close to competing with them. On the face of it, selling to a British born Billionaire with a background in sport didn't appear to be a bad choice. Aside from that I've met him before and thought he was a lovely bloke!

Had 48 hours to digest everything and not sure what I can say. Our crowd was absolutely incredible. Proper spine tingling support. The whole day had a completely different feel to last time. Chalk and cheese. People were up for it right from the off. Our end looked unbelievable. Everyone in black and white and just about everyone stood up for the entirety, unlike last time when most the top tier sat for some bizarre reason. It wasn't just the singing. It was the constant roars of encouragement and sheer intensity coming from our end. Our crowd wanted it so much more than theirs, and fortunately so did our players. The noise must have given them such a lift! Was talking to an elderly(ish) Liverpool fan in the pub afterwards. Whilst I thought their support was really poor on the day they were very friendly in the pubs pre and post match and magnanimous in defeat. He said that's the best support he's ever seen from an opposition support at Wembley and that was his 14th visit! He thought that our noise was the reason they were so quiet and that competing felt like it would be a waste of time. Also bemoaned the amount of tourists in their end and said how much their support has changed in the last decade. Something I pray doesn't happen to us. Just a perfect day/weekend all round.

The last one we went to in 2023 out of the 4 of us who went 2 had tickets and 2 didn't. The 2 who didn't have tickets ended up having a better time than the 2 of us who went to the match.

They like a drink. Probably pretty similar to us in that respect. Pubs are all packed well before the match and of course you can drink in your seat there. That's not something that's particularly bothered me though. If you're sat at the match with a pint in your hand you can't clap the players when they do something well for example. I can take it or leave it. Can't say I've really noticed any alcohol related violence though. Only real crowd disorder ive noticed in the 20 years we've been going is when they lost 5-1 at home to Ajax and last season on the last day when they'd won the league and there was a pitch invasion. When the pitch invaders tried to get back into the stands it all went up between them and those who'd stayed where they were and took offence to them running on. They do have a pretty bad reputation but I'm not sure how justified it is. Think they've had a few issues when playing in France over the years and we booked our Eurostar and hotel in October for PSG away and a week before the match the French authorities banned the PSV fans from travelling so we had to scramble around for tickets in the home end. It was one of those occasions where not being Dutch or having a Dutch address came in handy as Dutch residents were blocked from buying them! You notice more of a difference when watching football in places like Italy, France, Spain and Portugal where there isn't really a big pub/drinking culture.

I'm more the traditional 4 separate stands type rather than the wraparound bowls that are more commonplace. I just think they hold the atmosphere in better. A bigger version of PSV would be quality. Ridiculously steep stands (theirs is 2 tiers) plus being close to the pitch so it seems like the crowd are on top of the players. A huge 1 tiered home end with safe standing which can fit in 20k would be tremendous. It would piss all over SJP for noise levels from that stand alone. One of the best stadiums I've been to was actually the Millenium stadium for the Semi final. Huge 75k capacity but still close to the pitch and the steep stands still gave it that intimate feel. No coincidence that our atmosphere was off the scale that day. It's a far better stadium than Wembley in my opinion.

It's just one body blow after another for the mackems like. If the roles were reversed I'm honestly not sure how I'd deal with it. Probably just come off social media and try to pretend they didn't exist most likely. What I wouldn't do is completely obsess about them to the point I'm near to a nervous breakdown which sadly is the route many of them seem to have taken. Reducing themselves to made up scenarios which are never going to happen as a kind of coping mechanism is pretty tragic really.

Football is getting ever more popular. Attendances now are crazy compared to what they once were. I think other than Southampton and Leicester every other PL has been sold out for every single game. It's pretty much unprecedented. Take it to 70k. Personally I think we'd fill it without any issues. Even if there was a couple of thousand empty seats on the rare occasion what difference does it make? Or put it onto public sale like we used to, to shift the last few seats. 65k, taking into account the extra corporate capacity, is still leaving a lot of disappointed members imo taking into account the current 25% or so chance they currently have of getting tickets. As I say, let's see what their final plans are though.

Tbf the Allianz has been sold out and massively oversubscribed for every single Bayern match since it was built so the argument there would be that it's too small for Bayern. Spanish football is a bit different. Barca can't fill the 55,000 Olympic stadium they're currently playing in and Real hardly ever fill the Bernabeu. Obviously their worldwide fanbase absolutely dwarfs ours but gloryhunters in far flung corners of Asia don't fill seats at a football stadium. A lot of comments I've seen on twitter rightly say that we could have taken SJP up to 60,800 so is it really worth losing all that history for 4k seats, the majority of which will be probably be swallowed up by corporate anyway? I do think 70k would have appeased more of those fans who don't want to leave SJP more than just going for slightly more than we could have got in a renovated and extended SJP. Anyway it's still only newspaper rumours at the minute so I'm hopeful that when the plans are released officially they've shown a little bit more ambition than building stadium we'd already be filling every week right now.

Agree it was a miserable era for new builds. Mackems, Boro, Stoke, Derby etc all look so bland and dated now. Very little imagination went into building them. Boro and Derby are identical other than the seat colours.

We already have a huge fanbase up past the borders and right into Edinburgh. Remember a good few years ago I was in Edinburgh visiting a mate and got the train back down for the match and it was absolutely jam packed with NUFC fans. Really suprised me and you're right it's definitely an area we should be targeting. I think we've already started actually. A lot of these kids teams we see at the matches these days are Scottish based. Going in the opposite direction we already have a huge following south through Durham and into Teesside and Darlington. The catchment area to pull fans is really sizeable. Huge potential.

The fanbase certainly isn't going to shrink in size over the coming years. The exact opposite is far more likely. A shit West Ham are averaging 65k to put things into perspective. Our fanbase is far bigger than theirs is.

That would only take us to around 51k season ticket holders. We'd sell that no problem. We sold out all our season tickets in 17/18 under Mike Ashley (44k) and also during the Bobby Robson era.

I think a good barometer of the potential crowds was Wimbledon at home. Early rounds of the league cup, midweek, played at 1 weeks notice and still oversubscribed. Could probably have sold 60k+ for that had capacity allowed so there'd be worries for Burnley at home in the Premier League. Also you'd expect the fanbase to continue to grow in the coming years. It certainly isn't going to get smaller.

Tbf mine is much better than that bit I know some who's isn't as much as that. I'm sure the club said last year that your ballot success chances were about 1 in 4. It does appear that it's even less than that this season for many though. A modest increase such as this means there's still going to be many fans still locked out. Maybe that's what the club want, but really it's akin to throwing money away when you're locking potential customers out.

In their own words a members chance of ballot success is around 1 in 4 so it would seem an extra 8/9k extra non hospitality seats will still be undercooking things a fair bit. This means that they can keep ticket prices high with supply not increasing all that much.

Bit underwhelmed with 65k. In reality that's probably only 8/9k more general admission seats than we have now and would already be well oversubscribed for every game this season. Looks like they want to keep the high demand, low supply that they currently have in place. Should really have been 70k.

Initial cost when it was first built was only £15m. Cost a further £7m to extend it from its original 42k capacity to over 48k. It's looking very dated now mind and hasn't aged well at all.

Impossible unless your a season ticket holder or PSV club card holder. Even then you need to get an away card which has your photo on before you can go to an away match. All for security reasons. Had to go to a designated pub yesterday where someone from PSV scanned our voucher, checked our ID and then gave us our match tickets. We've got season tickets and they sell away tickets on a loyalty point basis. Think last night sold out on 6 points. We were stood right on the divide between home and away fans. The Arsenal fans next to us spent most of their time with their phones out videoing the away end.