Wallsendmag

We'd have been on the same buses many times mate. Done well over 100 of my away games with Barrett. Visited towns and villages all over the country that I never knew existed!

Whilst our cheapest season tickets are really cheap (level 7) our average prices are on a par with Liverpools and dearer than Man Utd. Man Utd is £570 in the Stretford End, which is their equivalent of the Gallowgate and our East Stand season tickets (standard price £811) are dearer than their equivalent seats. Man City's season tickets are quite a bit cheaper than ours. Then we have the Platinum Club and 1892 at around £1k a season. Where Man Utd and Liverpool really pull away from us is having 1000s of tourists from all over the planet visiting every home game spending an absolute arm and a leg on merchandise and an enhanced matchday experience. They deliberately cap season ticket numbers at well below capacity to facilitate this, with Liverpool having around 28k ST holders and Man Utd 55k. There's still much more they can do with the Milburn Stand. We did a tour not so long ago and there's still loads of unused space on all levels and you'd also think a revamped East Stand would be prime for some hospitality.

He's a well known twitter WUM mate. Not even sure he's a Newcastle fan.

Tbf that's all Liverpool have done with Anfield. Extended 2 stands, which is exactly the same as what we need to do. Even just extending the Gallowgate moves us more or less level with Anfields capacity and that's before we touch the East Stand. Surely bringing the Gallowgate up to the heights of the Leazes/Milburn and maybe cantilevering the East stand/giving it a steeper rake, should get us up to 65k which puts SJP back into 2nd place behind Old Trafford.

Tbh you speak like someone who's never been to an away game before. It's always been about much more than the football. I've been to 150+ aways and looking back at my fondest/funniest memories, they are all from what happened away from the ground.

That's something I've said for a while now. They should keep 10% of our away allocation exclusively for supporters aged 21 or under. Think Man City do something similar for U18s. Gives them a chance to build their loyalty points. Anyone older than that has had a chance to build points up so if they chose not to go when we were hopeless that's on them.

It only became a problem because a lot of people suddenly decided they fancied away games now we had a good team and they were more likely to see a win. People never complained about being unable to obtain away tickets when we were shite! I'd rather have kept it the same and allowed the lads and lasses who'd been filling away ends all over the Country when we've been worse than shite to enjoy the better times as it's them who deserve it, not the JCLs. Away games have always been more Ad hoc. 70s and 80s it would often be decided in a pub on theFriday night and groups of lads would pile into Transit vans the next day to wherever we were playing. Then the 90s came and games became all ticket so ways were found around that by ticket sharing, a mate sorting you, or a mate of a mate etc. It's basically what our away support has been built on. Just a real shame that so many people, people who made our away support famous throughout the county and further afield for their noise and passion, now aren't allowed to go.

Valentines Day today. That can only mean one thing. Happy Birthday to the King!

Do NUFC actually get a record off the home club that the ticket has been attempted to be scanned? I've heard they don't off someone who was refused entry at a match earlier in the season (Sheff Utd). They ended up missing the match but the original ticket holder was never contacted.

From what I'm hearing this is exactly it. The risk of getting caught is very low and even if your ticket doesn't work it's just a case of sitting in the nearest pub whilst the match on which people are happy to do. If you don't turn up to collect your ticket and the club flag it up you can just say your car broke down or something came up at the last minute and you couldn't go. For games like Blackburn for example, a 7,500 allocation means that you are extremely unlucky to get picked out whereas the likes of Luton away with only 1,100 meant people were less likely to risk it. All about weighing up the odds really, and if they're in your favour people more likely to risk it. Certainly Blackburn and Man Utd in the cup appear to be the 2 games where ticket sharing is happening the most.

Used to do it 20 odd years ago at Northumbria Uni at Coach Lane. Piles and piles of them just to help yourself to. A lad I used to know would grab fist fulls of them and hoy them straight in the bin outside. They'd still have been counted in the attendance though

Results help but Sheff Utd was quite muted and we won that one 8-0! The last 3 away games have been great from the off with the scorelines at 0-0. Apparently ticket sharing is rife again which may explain it.

Added to the 9,000 £60 season tickets they've sold. There's clubs in the Championship getting 20 odd thousand every week who are taking in more at the gate than Sunderland.

Their attendances are their only real boasting point. The rest of the club is pretty much farcical. If they gave out the true figures they'd be below Leeds and just ahead of Leicester and Southampton so no bragging rights. You've seen how obsessed RTG are with crowds numbers, doing trackers to see how many tickets have been sold, with accompanying charts and graphs. It's obviously something that just runs through the club.

Still remember that FA Cup replay against these in the 91/92 season. I was at the first game that got abandoned due to heavy fog during the 1st half and they let everyone in for half price for the rearranged game which saw a crowd of over 25,000 turn up, our average being 18,000 at the time. Lost on pens, still remember Alan Thompson getting sent off rightvon front of us, and I'm pretty sure that was Ardiles last home game in charge.

Sunderlands home atmosphere has been non existent since they moved the away fans. Problem when you make the tickets too cheap/too easily accessible you get a lot of people turning up just for the sake of it. A mackem on twitter earlier berating the fact that there was only 10k left in the ground at full time yesterday.

Good to hear the atmosphere at recent away games (Fulham/Villa/Forest) has been getting back up to the levels of old these last few games. Obviously winning helps but in all those games the away crowd sounded great from the first whistle.

Made 16 appearances, scoring 6 goals.

Should do OK there hopefully. Think he had a spell in League 2 with Mansfield iirc, where he did ok without pulling up any trees.

Tbf most of that is simply moving with the times. Stadium development was forced onto clubs in the aftermath of Hillsborough and whilst football has always been a very popular sport the massive rise in its popularity has driven broadcasters to pay more and more for it. I wouldn't necessarily says that's a case of Premier League football trying to copy the NFL, more just natural progression.

Such as? At the moment it doesn’t appear to replicate any American sports. When they're stopping the game to squeeze in adverts, in game shows or time outs, then I'd say it's starting to go down that road.

I'm hanging by a thread these days, what with ticket ballots, ticket prices, kick off times all over the place, FFP, VAR etc etc. Think replicating parts of the NFL would be my breaking point!

Ticket prices in American Sports seem to differ dramatically depending on where you sit. A couple of years ago we went to watch Miami Heat (basketball) and a court side seat was well over $1000 whereas we paid €25 to sit up in the gods. Was much the same story when we watched Orlando Magic last year so I assume that's how it is across the board.

Bought one at Stan a few years ago during the COVID times. When the football resumed alll crowds were restricted to 150 and then 300 and their crowds were higher than that so it made sense. Remember a fair few times rocking up at 14.55 through a big crowd of disappointed people outside who'd been locked out and flashing my season ticket to Gary on the gate and walking straight though with a smug look on my face. £45 for 10 games is excellent value mind. I paid more than that for my Fulham ticket in the paddocks in December!

Blyth v Scunthorpe should be a cracker!