SteV

A scapegoat

Of course, it’s not really a question that most can answer (sensibly) without knowing the specifics of the alternatives.

I thought that Ekwah was their mainstay central midfielder? Why was he playing? Been injured?

100% and Eddie probably gave him more minutes today because, apart from the game effectively being up, the way Man City were playing there wasn’t a huge amount of ‘defending’ to be done. Whilst it’s obvious he has potentially massive quality as an offensive LB (I think his passing range could become Trippier-esque), it’s not hard to assume, even with the limited minutes we’ve seen from him, that he’s way behind Burn in the defensive aspect. As Eddie said recently, patience…

Well, yeah, but as is always the case in these situations, you have to trust they won’t do that if the risk is sizeable. We can’t just sack an FA Cup QF off because it’s a (very) hard game.

Why?

No thanks.

They won’t go back down that route as that was more or less the whole argument for having the ballot in the first place. You know exactly what would happen - someone would get tickets with their kids in the ballot, they wouldn’t get on the site in time (whether for good reason or otherwise) then wouldn’t be able get seats with their kids and the whole thing would kick off on Twitter or elsewhere. The club don’t want any part of that if they can avoid it. If they want to allow people to pick their seats (or a more specific area of seats) - which I do totally agree they should be looking to do - it’s going to have to be done pre-ballot draw.

How do you get round the issue of people (families being the main example) who have applied and been successful as a group and there not being seats together by the time they get on to the site?

Yes, but that’s your choice of whether to apply for there or not. At least you’re making an informed decision of whether to apply for the area you really want, or an area that gives you the best chance of getting in.

Totally agree. Allowing people to choose a specific block shouldn’t be that hard. Allow people to see the numbers associated with that block - 50 seats available - average number of people applying to that block is 400. Then people can make informed decisions over whether they want to go for the area they really want or an area that will give them the best chance of a ticket.

Because you’ve got people applying to the ballot in groups now. So let’s say a dad is successful in getting three tickets in the ballot for him and his two kids. Then there’s a window at X time when you’re supposed to go on and select your seats. Dad is busy at the time this window opens and can’t get on until later. By which time there’s no three seats left together. How’s that going to work for him? I do agree that they need to come up with some kind of way to let people have at least partial selection of where they sit. However, it’s not as simple as saying ‘just do what they did last season’ (assuming they’re keeping the ballot).

Unfortunately that’s now far from easy with the introduction of the ballot.

We can’t* just decide that because a player hasn’t worked out (so far), that it was exclusively Ashworth’s pick/fault. We signed Tino at the same time, and he’s been a success, so do we put that down to an Ashworth masterclass? *we can and will do that because we’re tribal football fans, but you know what I mean.

Tbf, the overhaul has already started, given the number of U16’s we signed at the start of the season. Unfortunately it’ll take at least a couple of seasons before that starts to have any impact.

For the three games they played together?

That’s a very good point. I have very limited experience of attending other European grounds, but it definitely stood out to me that it was often just noise for the sake of noise, that bore no real correlation to what was happening on the pitch, and thus has probably limited effect on changing what happens on the pitch. So even though you may not get the periods of ‘flatness’ that you often get at large English grounds, it didn’t feel like it does when you’re in SJP (or another English ground) and the atmosphere is ‘up’. I guess it’s just a question of what can be done to help get that ‘up’ more frequently without resorting to the monotony of the European ultra-style?

Eddie said in the post match presser there wasn’t a specific incident that caused it, he just felt it come on and get gradually worse. Watching on TV it looked like he pulled up chasing a ball towards the corner that Gusto cleared to touch after about 15 mins. Might have been feeling something before then like.

Ederson is miles better than Ortega like. Ortega is fine, and it probably won’t make any difference anyway, but it’s definitely a step (or two) down.

Surprising. I would have put money on that just being a dead leg, the way Nunez’s knee went into his thigh, but there you go.

I think the main thing is for them to be making a concerted effort to try and get like-minded fans together. However they think is the most appropriate way of going about that, more standing, singing sections, whatever. Obviously something to try and reduce the random seating nature of ballot ticket seating that currently could place a family with young kids next to a couple of absolute radgies. One other thing, which in fairness might not be totally appropriate, is something @TheGuv raised a couple of weeks ago. When away clubs return tickets, is that area safe standing when subsequently used by home fans? Because as he described in his post, the ambiguity clearly caused some friction.

They’ll be paper mate. Sounds like a scam.