Wallsendmag

Celtic aren't historically a particularly well supported club. This massive support is a bit of a myth. Their historical average attendance throughout their history is around 26,000 which makes them the 11th best supported club in the UK. In the years Rangers were out of the SPL they rarely attracted more than 30k to their home games and we're reduced to fiddling their attendance figures to make it still look like they were getting 45k+ when at times it was only half that. Something that was exposed by the Daily Record a few years ago. It also needs to be remembered that their fanbase has been largely built by success and their numbers are swelled by glory hunters from across Scotland and beyond. If they played in England and went 10-20 years without winning anything a lot of those would stop attending games. Yes, they're a big club but nowhere near as big as they're made out to be. They're not even the biggest club in their own city.

That sounds remarkably illegal. aye, absolute weapons grade horse-s**** from Stfiler like. He's right. The match in question was against Charlton Athletic at the SoS in 2003. They scored 3 own goals in the first half hour and were 3-0 down and 1000s of them tried to leave but they refused to open the big exit gates to let them out and made them stay until the 60 odd minute mark before allowing them to leave. Chris Kamara was doing the match on soccer Saturday and couldn't speak for laughing. They ended up losing the match 3-1 and finished the season bottom of the league with a miserly 19 points.

The points return from that awkward looking September now looks pretty good. Now we've got to go and win the games in October that we expect to be winning.

I'd agree with that. Richie is a class act but because of the position Shelvey plays in nearly everything we do as an attacking force wither starts or goes through him.

Our most important player and someone who I don't think will be rotated too many times. Colback was fairly anonymous last night which made his performance even more impressive as he was needing to cover more ground than he would have liked at times. I'd imagine he prefers Hayden beside him and hopefully Rafa will try Diame alongside him as well in the future because he's a waste of a shirt playing in his current position.

This is true- had a quick look at their match thread last night, just to see the reactions to the extra time goals came across some bitterness about the size of the crowd- One asked is it a full house, and someone replied -is it ever these days. 2 sell outs for us already this season and a 50k average whilst Sunderlands last home game was played in front of 10k empty seats and we won't mention the 13k they pulled in for the league cup. They thought we would have deserted the club after relegation, as they would have theirs, and it kills them that we've all stuck by them. No wonder they're bitter.

Agree. I don't rate him and he's not particularly good but he gives opposition defenders something to think about, which Diame doesn't. We did look better in the final third when he came on last night although anything would have been an improvement on Diame.

First of all he's clearly not a number 10 and is being played out of position. If he plays he needs to play deeper, next to Shelvey. However this doesn't excuse his disgusting attitude last night. Jogging aimlessly around the pitch doing absolutely nothing of note and his part in their 3rd goal was a disgrace. Lost the ball and made no attempt to win it back. It happened not far from the dugouts and it's fair to say Rafa wasn't impressed. He was taken off a minute later and certain sections of the crowd booed him off which was totally deserved because that lack of effort he showed last night isn't on and he needs to know that. On the subject of the crowd they were fantastic last night I thought. No getting on the players back and the support was excellent. The noise during injury time was deafening. For some reason our crowd seems to have a totally different mentality on nighttime games compared to 3pm Saturday games.

Looks like this has stopped already. Not enough volunteers.

We've always played our midweek home games on a Wednesday. Not sure why the cup games are on Tuesday nights now.

Big hardman mentality, always gets a section of our fans onside. I heard from many he would rip this division apart. i like him but wasn't confident he'd thrive under rafa and would basically need the team built around him for it to work Don't think he's good enough to build a team around tbh.

Thought Clarke was personally, but he was a close 2nd. Aye Clarke had a very good game as well.

Never understood the backing he gets on here. He hasn't really done anything to justify it. He's probably received more cards from referees than he has scored goals.

MOTM yesterday. Game changed when he went off.

He's been very poor and is rightly being criticised for his performances. Defenders clearly have no confidence in him. Sorry if this upsets you.

His defenders clearly have no confidence in him. Our whole back line looks far more assured with Darlow behind them. He just looks all over the place whenever the ball comes into the box and doesn't even redeem himself by being a good shot stopper.

Won't ruin mine that's for sure, mate.

Just under 16,000 posts = "rarely post" I've nowhere near that amount of posts on there. On average you post on there about 14 times a day. ?? A few on here have found him to be a snidey, sycophantic t*** and wonder why he has been so reluctant to reveal his RTG identity when he claims he hardly ever posts there. However his "fan club" always seem to spring his defence. Don't know how this was found out but hardly a surprise to those who have seen through his phoney, even handed demeanour. So who is he really ? Dangermarrows ? He's clever enough to fool the more docile people on here but quite a few have picked on certain things he's come out with, especially in recent weeks when we've been going well and they've been hopeless. If he's still around when we play them next and beat them I'd expect a full scale meltdown and for him then to disappear never to be seen again. Wouldn't be surprised if he's one of the more rabid mackems on RTG let's put it that way. I don't think we see the real him on here and his mask does slip every so often.

Wouldn't be surprised to see Pardew gift them 3 points tomorrow.

I'm still of the opinion that 1 man up front is a bit unnecessary at this level. I feel the same about us playing 3 centre halves.

Suits me better it being on a Tuesday this time because I'm off work on Wednesday and back in at 6am Thursday but I don't like this break in tradition of playing Tuesday nights instead of Wednesdays. Fair enough when we were in Europe and UEFA told us what night we played on but playing our League Cup games on Tuesdays now must be down to NUFC.

There was an "in the know" sunderland fan on RTG last week stating they give away, on average, 9,000 tickets for every home match and a few others backed him up on this as well. They regularly get sub 15k crowds in the cups because they aren't permitted to give away free tickets as the gate receipts are shared with the opposition club. Im not sure people actually realise just how many free tickets and ridiculous cheap offers for multiple tickets that club actually do In the past theyve even sent free tickets to schools in Newcastle. Mackem support is nothing special They averaged 43k last season but in their last set of accounts their gate receipts were dwarfed by the likes of Southampton who averaged 13k less and Southampton aren't exactly one if the most expensive teams in that league to watch. Typically for league games sunderland have around 33k paying supporters and even those who do pay get in dirt cheap (£370 for adult season tickets behind the goals compared to £520 at Newcastle with the difference being even greater for seats along the side). Take away the TV money and they'd hit administration almost immediately because that is their only decent revenue stream.

There was an "in the know" sunderland fan on RTG last week stating they give away, on average, 9,000 tickets for every home match and a few others backed him up on this as well. They regularly get sub 15k crowds in the cups because they aren't permitted to give away free tickets as the gate receipts are shared with the opposition club.

Excellent draw! Home against a fellow championship team and lots of the big teams playing each other. Hope we don't blow it!

chance now can you imagine the coppers faces, night game I'll be taking the day off for it. And the day after.