Wallsendmag

Shittest left back ever that has played 10 times for his country at the age of 23. This forum, man. Most pessimistic fans ever. Aye but in this case international caps shouldn't come into the equation when like Wallsendmag said, they have no one else at left back, and were even relying on van Bronckhorst recently (who no one here would be thrilled with). I would be canny p*ssed off if we tried to get Feyernoord's assistant manager out of retirement like. That says it all then. We are going for a player who was kept out of the Dutch National team during last years World Cup by the Feyenoord assistant manager! Class!

If he is that s***, how come he gets called up to the national squad?? One for ponder raptor. Not so sure but according to the lads I know across in Holland there isn't a decent left back in the country at the moment (that's why they were still playing Van Bronkhorst last year at 35 years old). I really don't want him here based on what i've seen of him (around 20 games) but more worrying is that if Enrique leaves today we could be a Premier League club without a recognised senior left back at the club which is ridiculous.

I've watched quite a bit of Erik Pieters over the past couple of seasons as I have friends in Eindhoven who are PSV fans and get to a few of their games every season and I have to say I don't rate him at all. He's a very poor left back and his tackling and especially his positional sense leave a lot to be desired. I went to watch Middlesbrough v PSV the other week and he played left back then and was awful, even against Championship players. He went walkabout on numerous occasions with Wilfred Bouma who was playing centre half keep having to cover for him. In the end they switched and Bouma went to left back and Middlesbrough got no more joy down PSV's left side.

We had a good record against the traditional top 4 last season, beating Liverpool and drawing with Man Utd, Arsenal and Chelsea. SJP can be a very difficult venue for opposition teams when the crowd are right up for it and I think we will be on Saturday and will hopefully get a draw. 1-1.

Still plenty left in the Gallowgate Upper. We got 6 together no problem at all this morning.

Would have went to this one if they had priced it sensibly but there's absolutely no chance i'm parting with £20 to watch a pre season kickabout.

Rangers will get a dodgy penalty to get them back to 1-1 then score towards the end and win 2-1. It's what usually happens.

Just another way of getting a further £20 out of the fans otherwise they could issue away memberships for free or alternatively they could sell general sale tickets to personal callers only so if you want to buy a ticket on general sale you would need to go to the ticket office in person with some form of photographic ID.

Looks good on the face of it but a quick glance at this picture suggests that the Bangor goalkeeper had put his legs on the wrong way round. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/14175004.stm

Well that's me finished with it all now. Season ticket holder for over 20 years up until 2009 when I couldn't afford to renew due to moving house and since then i've just bought tickets for (nearly every) home games match by match. If i'm not welcome at away games I won't be bothering to line his pockets by attending the home ones either and will copy of the Mackems and watch them in the pub. He could have issued an away membership free of charge which would have been just as effective as a normal membership but yet again he's came up with another idea to exploit the paying supporter. No more for me now (well until he's gone anyway!)

Suprised we never seem to send a first team to Gatehead for a pre season friendly. Remember during the 1990's when Keegan was in charge we played a friendly at Gateshead and there was an 11,500 sell out crowd there. Must have made them a fortune and that was when Gatehead would have been in the Northern Premier League I would imagine. Might go to watch them play Carlisle tomorrow depending on the weather.

Suprised we never seem to send a first team to Gatehead for a pre season friendly. Remember during the 1990's when Keegan was in charge we played a friendly at Gateshead and there was an 11,500 sell out crowd there. Must have made them a fortune and that was when Gatehead would have been in the Northern Premier League I would imagine. Might go to watch them play Carlisle tomorrow depending on the weather.

I'll be parking in Park Place car park near the train station and pubs but it is about a 25 minute walk to stadium. Free parking after 5 or 6 i think. Don't think youre allowed to park in the nearby residential streets because fo the matchday scheme for resident parking. The stadium parking costs and is a nightmare to get out of after the match. Correct and on the rare occasion Darligton host a big game (5000+) gate the traffic wardens come out in force. Remember something in the local news a few years back when a team of legends including the likes of Gazza, Beardsley etc turned up to play Darlington in a fundraising match around the time they were in administration. Over 10,000 turned up and hundreds of fans had tickets slapped on their windscreens whilst they were watching the game. Don't risk it.

Aye. Not really that well, just to say hello to. He used to sit along from me in the Leazes Upper , towards the Milburn Stand side before the stadium extension in 2000. Then he moved up to Level 7 and then into Leazes Corner. Seen him at the West Brom match funnily enough.

Hope standing up isn't an issue Got a feeling it might be unless you're in the back few rows.

You can't be 6 rows from the pitch if you're in Block D mate. Block D is the same height as the East Stand Upper and Gallowgate Middle Tier. Blocks A and B are the 2 blocks in the SE Corner at pitchside. I can tell you that i've been in Block D loads of times however and it's a cracking view!

The people in the back 2-3 rows of the SE Corner in blocks E and F were standing last season but as you moved further towards the East Stand into sections C and D it tended to just be the back row. I remember being in the back row of block D for the Blackpool game at the start of the season and the lad in front of me was sat down but the lad in front of him wanted to stand and they ended up nearly coming to blows during the 2nd half. Can see there being a few heated arguments next season as there's a few "confrontational characters" in there already and i'm not sure how they'll react to a few hundred fans who all want to stand up being in with them. The back few rows of Block B also stand up - Excellent section that one.

Just a quick word of warning to those of you who haven't got sorted with a new seat yet. I was talking to a lad who gets in my local last night and he'd been to the ticket office on Saturday as he'd still heard nothing at all from them and when he rang them on Friday he was fobbed off and told that they would ring him when they had worked their way through to him. Anyway he's managed to get himself a seat in the SE Corner after a brief argument when she was adamant she wanted to put him in the Leazes Lower Tier but the lass dealing with him did say that availability for the entire South East Corner was now "very limited".

As someone who sits there quite a bit what's the atmosphere like? Will we get scowled at by miserable old sods for having a bit of a sing song? Like Obi says it's the noisiest part of the Gallowgate. In fact it's the 2nd noisiest part of the ground after LC, or in other words the area least in need of an atmosphere injection. People in the back 2-3 rows tend to stand up but you won't get away with standing anywhere else. The view is excellent mind. A little tip for anyone still waiting for a phone call. Section B in the SE Corner, which is one of the front 2 sections always has a group of around 20 or so lads at the back of it who stand throughout the full game and tend to make a canny bit of noise as well. Don't think there's too many seats available there though.

Speaking as someone who packed in my season ticket after 19 seasons last summer and has been paying game by game for last season I can say that the SE Corner is one of the most populated parts of the ground when it comes to Season Ticket holders. I tend to buy my tickets as soon as they are released for online sale and the sections in there were always showing 'limited' or 'nearly sold out' whereas the SW, NW & NE Corners always showed 'good' availability when they first went on General sale. I reckon that there's a maximum of 400 free seats in there as opposed to well over 1,000 in SW and NE corners. Seems to me that they are putting people in there because with it already being quite full they can dot people about better whereas in the other 3 corners or the Gallowgate Upper people could have a better pick of seats and still end up congregating together. I was going to get another season ticket for next year after my year out but they can shove it now. Total disgrace how they feel they can treat loyal supporters like this and just get away with it time and time again. "We're moving you yet again next season. We'll tell you where you'll be sitting despite there now being 20,000 free seats available because we've managed to p*ss off so many fans over the past 4 years. Oh yes, and we'll be wanting an extra £110 off you now as well for moving you to somewhere you don't really want to go to!" F**k off man. Northern League for me next season. I'll walk along to Newcastle Benfield to watch my football. At least they appreciate my support there, and I hope those of you that they still haven't bothered ringing yet get sorted with half decent seats.

For some reason that made me burst out laughing and i've got milk and weetabix all over my screen!

Aye, that's true like but us and the Mackems both have around 30,000 ST holders each yet they have already processed renewals and have released theirs on general sale. My guess is that our ticket office is hopelessly under staffed which wouldn't be a suprise to anyone I suppose.

They seem to have made a bit of a pigs ear of the season ticket renewals this year like. The deadline was ages ago and apart from general renewals which surely don't take long to process all they had to do was to relocate 1,500 or so people that they have moved from L7 (probably 99% of whom just want moved into L4 below where they already are, which is made easier by the fact that L4 only has around 25% ST holder occupancy) and then relocate any other person that maybe wants to move seat. It should have all been sorted well before now enabling them to release season tickets for General Sale first thing Monday morning and bringing extra revenue straight into the club once the season has ended. Surely that can't be too difficult, I mean even the Mackems and Smoggies are selling their season tickets on general sale now.

I asked Simon Esland this a while back as i'm going to get one again saying how you can pay for them in installments and was told they would go on General sale after the West Brom game so that will be next week then. This should also mean that more or less all the L7 movers should have been allocated their new seats by now if they are being released for General sale next week.

Really looking forward to this after yesterdays performance. Seems strange to say considering we've spent most the season in mid table, but i've really enjoyed this season, seen some great games and watched 11 players giving their all for the club. It would be a fitting end to the season if we could beat them and sneak into the top half after the effort the players have put into this season. Should be a 50k+ crowd and a cracking atmosphere as well. Can't wait!