Wallsendmag

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!

On the back of that I've ended up getting myself a part season ticket at Heaton Stan. Covers the remaining 10 games and was a very reasonable £45 (it's £7 on the gate). Means I can still get to watch some live football with me more or less giving up on trying to get tickets at SJP and although Gateshead is still an option with the bairn getting a free ST and allowing him to bring an adult in with him, it's just not a great experience watching football at the GIS. Football at that level should be about being close to the pitch and the players not sitting at the other side of a running track.

Watched Heaton Stan (8th) v West Auckland (3rd) yesterday. Stan won 2-1 with a 94th minute penalty. Strange refereeing performance. West Auckland scored to make it 2-1 even though there was clearly a push on the defender in front of the linesman in the build up. Linesman rightly flagged for the foul but the referee gestured fo him to put his flag down. West Auckland score and the referee goes over to speak to the Linesman before disallowing the goal. West Auckland also had a man sent of in the aftermath of the penalty incident. A very decent game to watch.

Surely they could just reform as Schalke 05.

Remember seeing people falling over in the stampede when they opened the gates around 4am and being trampled on. Was pretty horrific looking back.

Was an awful afternoon. Pretty sure it was a Sunday. Always remember we were in the Bullens Stand where the away fans are still put today but we were also allocated a large part of the main stand opposite. Had well over 6k there. Ruel Fox missed a sitter at the end.

Aye they won the league that season so it was as tough as it could have been. I was at Goodison for the QF as well. We were terrible that day.

Was there. Ended up getting a lock in, in a pub in Haslingden after the match. Didn't get home till about 5am. What a night! Been to a few cup games at Ewood. Was at the one when Roy Wegerle scored in the last minute and we all had to queue overnight for tickets and was also at the one where Hottiger and Lee Clark scored. I got chucked out of that one for running on the pitch after Clarks goal. I was 17 at the time, it was a night time game and I'd been on the drink all day.

They'd have fucking loved him if they'd beaten us. Let's not pretend otherwise here.

It's standard pricing for the Conference tbf (some clubs charge more) but agree that when you're sat there it feels expensive for what it is. If it wasn't for the bairn playing for their Academy and getting agree season ticket through that, plus he can take a parent in with him, I doubt I'd pay £20 if I'm being honest even if they are playing some attractive football.

PSV 45 minutes away from from breaking the Eredivisie record of 17 consecutive wins at the start of a season. Currently 1-0 up at FC Utrecht at HT. Watching it now and Utrecht surprisingly been the slightly better team.