Wallsendmag

Easily. Never known such a buzz around the place as there is now. We went into town on Saturday. Parked at SJP. The amount of people just milling around in their replica shirts was unbelievable. Shearer's was packed. Loads sat outside in their new shirts. Club shop absolutely mobbed. Walking around town I couldn't believe how many people there were going around in NUFC clobber. Wor lass even commented that it was like a home game! Literally everyone wants to be part of it. It's brilliant!

Think the club said "just over 30k season ticket holders" when pressed back in February when deciding on how to allocate Cup Final tickets.

And plenty agreeing with me. Like I said before most on here disagreed with me when I said Vurnon Anita wasn't very good, so I'd take that with a pinch of salt anyway. It's fine though. Football is a game of opinions. You have yours and I have mine. My opinion is that he's nowhere near good enough for the PL but good enough for the vast majority of Championship clubs, such is the huge gulf in quality between the 2 leagues.

09 must have played nigh on 200 games for them in the last few years and the kid is worse than shite bless him. That's the level they are currently operating at.

There's no better set of fans than Sunderlands for bigging up absolutely bang average players and making them out to be far better than they actually are. Think a few on here have fallen for the hype. Ultimately they sneaked into the Play Offs of the worst Championship in years on the last day courtesy of Preston being on the beach and Millwall collapsing and even then that was largely to do with a player who wasn't even theres!

No I think he's shite

With all due respect to many people on here I'd back my opinion against most. On the subject of rating midfielders, I still think back to the many hours I wasted trying to tell people that Vurnon Anita was actually no good when most people disagreed with me Not saying Jeff Hendrick is a world beater as he isn't. But he's made a career out of getting into better teams than Sunderland currently are.

Sheff Utd finished top 2. Did you watch much of them last season? They were so, so poor. As I said back in September. The standard of that league was truely abysmal last season.

There's loads of ways of defining how good a player actually is. Your average Sunderland fan thinks that players like Cattermole and Kevin Ball are good footballers because they can go round kicking lumps out of people. I don't. I'll never let a Sunderland fan lecture me about anything football related because more often than not they are clueless and have a history of overhyping bang average players just because they play for them. Hendrick walks into your team. End of.

I'm not saying he's particularly good but he's more than good enough for the vast majority of Championship teams. Look at the teams that were up the top last year. Sheff Utd, Luton, Coventry, Sunderland, Preston, Millwall etc. In years gone by teams with the quality of players they have wouldn't have got close to being promoted. It was such a weak league. I do think it'll be stronger next season though.

You underestimate how bad the Championship is. A player with over 100 PL appearances and 79 caps for Ireland gets into most teams in that league as things stand.

My football knowledge is spot on. I called it back in September after watching half a dozen or so Championship games on Sky that it was the worst standard Championship in years and was proven right. Watched your last game v Luton Town and it was embarrassing how (no disrespect to Luton) a bunch of hammer throwers were able to completely dominate you and beat you so easily. Your midfield looked so weak. Hendrick would walk into your team 100%.

Certainly would. No debate about it. He'd probably be your best player as well now that kid from Man Utd has gone back.

Yes he'd walk into your team. No doubt about it. Reading only got relegated due to a points deduction but even so just because a team finishes higher than another, it doesn't automatically mean that every single player in the higher placed team is better than every single player I'm the team that finished lower.

You had a League One standard plodder in Luke O'Nien as a 1st team regular last season man

Under Ashley we had the 4th highest average standard season ticket prices in England, behind Arsenal, Spurs and Chelsea. Slightly dearer than Man Utd and Liverpool and quite a bit dearer than Man City. Sure Level 7 was cheap as chips but the £811 for an East Stand or Milburn Paddock seat or £679 in the Gallowgate or Leazes was dearer than all the other teams except for the 3 London clubs I mentioned. Of course there were lots of people on long term deals which brought their ticket price down but in order to take full advantage of that those people had to sit through 2 relegation and years of having the piss taken out of them knowing that if they did cancel they'd lose their deal and would need to pay full standard prices if they wanted their ticket back.

He'd walk into your team man

67 for me. Got mixed up between Swindon and Blackpool.

I've never ever known demand for tickets being anywhere near what it is now. Even during the Keegan era, whilst home games were always sold out, it wasn't too difficult to get hold of away tickets and under SBR home tickets were usually still on sale a week before the game apart from for the really big games v the likes of Man Utd and Liverpool.

£65m seems a tad on the high side for a player who's just been relegated with 1 year left on his contract mind. I would have thought somewhere in the £45m bracket.

It's why their crowds look far smaller than the official figure they give out, especially for midweek games. They sell 1000s of £48 season tickets and because they are so cheap it's hardly a big deal if you miss a few matches but obviously you are still counted in the attendance figure.

Still fantastic reading stuff like that and knowing it's 100% true as well!

There's a huge gate in the NW corner to transport equipment in through. It's certainly no smaller than the equivalent access area at the SoL for example. In fact it looks bigger to me.

No but they are exactly the same sized lorries of thise who do. One of your arguments was that it is difficult to access SJP by articulated lorry which is incorrect.