Hughesy

Don't know about anyone else, but I'm delighted with pot 4. Would love to have a group packed with some big names for our return.

Still astonished that the job he's done doesn't attract more praise in the press. I get it - sportswashing etc. But it is truly astonishing. It was a miracle we stayed up when he took over. To then follow that up the next season with a cup final and potentially a top 4 place is staggering.

Surprised people were so convinced he wasn’t good enough. Always thought he’s looked positive on the ball, with good upper body strength. Certainly good enough to be in and around the squad at the moment.

Personally, I don't think we should go much over 60,000. I'm sure we could fill 80,000 seats for big games and/or if we are doing well, but you only need to look back at some of CL campaigns under Robson - quite often our attendances were in the high 40,000s rather being full sell outs. I'd much rather have a packed 60,000 stadium than risk having a 80-90% full 80,000 stadium.

The stadium design is a massive issue. The pre-expansion SJP was far louder than the post-expansion SJP and one of the factors is the loss of noise from the design.

Still haven’t quite come to terms with the fact that I’m not going to be there with my dad and brother. That said, I can’t wait. Got a weirdly positive feeling about this. Bruno and Joelinton are going to have blinders.

We've got a far far better chance of winning this than we did in 98 or 99. The situations aren't even comparable as far as I'm concerned.

Not sure how anyone thinks Anderson is to blame for this. Real shame though as Liverpool look pretty average.

Ha ha - I'm a lawyer. Small print is my day job... I mean - it is what it is. I can't do anything about it now, but I'll know for next time. To be honest, it didn't even cross my mind that cup attendance would be a factor until I saw something on twitter the day before the semi about what Liverpool did. It didn't cross my dad's mind or my brother's, so I don't think it's that uncommon. And I don't recall it being a factor for the two previous finals I went to (albeit I was a kid then so I wasn't buying the tickets!).

I think people are probably allowed a day or two of airing their frustrations with the process, given how long people have been waiting for a cup final.

That's fine - the policy could be literally as vague as "cup attendance will be a determining factor in obtaining tickets to any related cup final". That would leave everyone better informed than they were.

I don't know if any other club do it. My point was that it wasn't clear that you needed to attend cup games to attend a cup final - there's a whole heap of both confirmation and recency bias in assuming this was clear to fans or that fans should have guessed that this was the case. As I've said before my family and I live in Kent, so travelling up for midweek cup games wasn't necessarily that doable, but given we've had 3 season ticket for over 30 years and each season ticket has nearly 100 loyalty points on it, I thought we had a decent shot. Had the ticketing policy been made clear, we'd have bought tickets for cup games and just not turned up. Quite frankly the club could have used a variety of different criteria - loyalty points, length of time you've had a season ticket etc - and any criteria they choose would have had its merits. I don't think it would be arrogant to create a policy in the ST T&Cs to make it clear how cup final tickets are allocated, but we can agree to disagree on that one.

Unfortunately that's exactly what will happen.

I don't think it would be strange to inform season ticket holders how tickets will be allocated before a season starts. Could literally include a line in an email - not a particularly onerous undertaking. Not everyone is going to reviewing the ticketing allocations of other clubs and extrapolating NUFC's policy.

Is that right? I don't recall attendance in a particular tournament ever being a determining factor for cup final tickets. I'm not saying that shouldn't be the case, but I don't remember this being the case before. Nor was it publicised. My biggest issue is that club never made the criteria clear - doing so would have saved a lot of annoyance.

Are there really 32.5k people eligible for pots 1-3, all of whom will be going? I'm not convinced that there will be (but I appreciate you will need to deduct whatever corporate allocation is allotted from the 32.5k number).

Given my vested interest in the allocation reaching pot 6, I'm probably deluding myself, but there must be some people in pots 1 to 6 who can't go and/or don't want to go? I know it's a cup final, but there's bound to be attrition of some kind. Or so I keep telling myself...

Not every game - probably 10-12 games a season I'd say.

Yep - did tell my dad he should have gone up for the semi final! Any method they used would annoyed someone, but surprised loyalty points don't factor in beyond the first set of tickets.

Been absolutely screwed by that - 3 season tickets and each has over 90 points, but all live down south so haven't attended mid week cup games.

Not the guy I was referring to, but looks promising.

Some analyst who is a Watford fan seems to rate Pedro really highly. I think he’d be a very good addition.

You're probably right from a technique/skill perspective, but they're just such different players I'm not sure it's an easy comparison to make.

Still can't quite believe how good he is and that we have him. I was pondering where he fits in our best midfielders of the last 30 years or so - I'd say he's a level or two above Cabaye from what I've seen so far. I think people tend to forget how good Rob Lee really was at his peak - he's one of those players who is a bit forgotten about (certainly outside NUFC fans). I don't know if it's simply the passage of time or if his type of central midfielder has fallen out of fashion a bit?