OpenC

Nice one shame that as usual the telly gantry appears to be in the same stand as the fans so it will create the illusion of there being nobody there

FA Player is what the Manchester United was on. Had a cast option but could I fuck get it to cast.

Aye, would tend to agree. Amanda Staveley has got a lot to say about the women's team and seems to be there for the games more often than not, it's a shame they couldn't do something particularly given the difficulty of the location and the fact that the trains are off (I think). Maybe Luton told them they didn't want a big event.

That's amazing then @Wallace I'm proper looking forward to it, not so much to the drive mind

I got something about a station to ground shuttle bus service but that was it. Weird the way it's been handled, opening a bit of new stand but away from the rest of the fans and with the opposition fans in between. Can only assume that Luton didn't want to have to open more seats than the main stand if they could help it. Based on the stand capacity being about 4.5k (I think I read) looks like we'll account for about 2k and there will be a lot of empty seats where the hashtag fans are.

Aye, all fair points. I guess I just see this as a fundamental shift away from what I think of as a football experience is all about and will inevitably change the feel and the clientele. It's not for me, but that's just my opinion

Works for me

Absolutely people actively pursuing a dream of the Metro Centre with a football pitch, man

Well, I did ask and cheers for the responses.. but reading all of this just makes me want to stay at SJP and keep it as it is even more just whack an extra 6k seats on the top of Gallowgate and leave it alone Do all these things have to be tied to the stadium? Could we not buy and offer conferencing facilities elsewhere in town under the nufc brand? Better food and drink options are the reason it’s fucking great to have a city centre stadium surely? Pursuing a more corporate high end experience for folk who just want to watch the poorer people bawling and yelling at a little game of football? To each their own but none of these benefits sound like they’re adding up to a better matchday experience to me. Leaving SJP in pursuit of bigger concourses so we can peddle tat to casuals, and glass fronted rooms that people can hire to put management consultancy training on, and desperately trying to cater for all food and drink options when there is a whole city just outside the doors fuck me lads, times are changing. I would honestly rather just have us obscenely and shamelessly bankrolled

Aye, I guess I just keep reading people talking about how it's impossible to maximise potential revenue at SJP but it seems to be a pretty vague concept in most people's minds what we would do differently. Maybe Newcastle is ready for underground go karting and I'm just getting old

I will ask again in this different thread because I still genuinely don't get it. What commercial opportunities are denied to us at SJP that would open up majestic new revenue streams at a new stadium? Naming rights are manifestly possible at SJP and has been explored before, albeit in the least palatable form imaginable; and the Stadium of Light seems to be a decent indicator that putting gigs on a couple of times a year doesn't equate to commercial success. Are we just talking about getting in loads of hospitality clients that don't really give a fuck about football but will pay through the nose for seats, or is there more to this?

Aye, absolutely. I don't suppose there would have been as much objection to the Rolex Arena or Porsche Park or SelaField and I'm not convinced there would be now but I don't really know

Blatant corruption

We've had that before, was canny popular why is that easier somewhere else? Because it doesn't have history as SJP so it's easier to just call it the WongaDome from the outset?

What are we going to be doing with this mooted new stadium that isn't being done at the minute, just out of interest? Putting Pink on and that? Doesn't seem to help much with finances Genuine question, what commercial opportunities are we missing out on at SJP? I haven't seen any of the arguments, although I'm sure they've been made enough

Not sure why they opened the new seats on that side, it's away from the main block of Newcastle fans and next to the hashtag fans instead. I was hoping they'd open the legendary other side and I would have asked to move if they did, but they've gone for the opposite one and weirdly split the supporters

Not allowed apparently. A steward at SJP told me he was going to confiscate them because they were against premier league rules; he obviously had a change of heart about it, hopefully when I reminded him that it wasn't a premier league game. He was a mackem and his words were "no air horns or vew vew zeylers" had forgotten all about him until now

Honestly I can't conceive of folk being OK with moving from Gallowgate any more than I can conceive of folk being happy with us playing in green and black halves rather than black and white stripes. Know what Ben is saying but personally I love the lopsided majesty of the place - nobody sees the east stand from anywhere, Gallowgate looks like a lot of other football grounds, but those two stands with level 7 look absolutely phenomenal from outside I think, really imposing. No axe to grind with people who view it differently, and yeah it's a tough call if diversification and commercial success is literally the only way to sporting success - but I definitely see SJP as a major part of our history and identity and would be gutted to lose it. Castle Leazes I could maybe just about live with - a different cathedral slightly higher up the same hill - but anything else and I'd be devastated like.

Aye. My assumption has been either that we're genuinely not bothered and happy to play by the rules, or that we prefer to maintain a dignified and politically expedient silence while there's a chance that other people will fight the fight for us

Who knows some lad who admires both Emma Kelly and an unspecified De Bruyne and felt they belonged on a shirt together

Bairns beat the mackems 3-2 today according to the Instagram

I reckon a fair few of us did. I definitely did too, to my shame; not so much sneer as pretend that whoever was playing, the men's game was like watching Manchester City Vs Manchester City every week by comparison. I was never as bad as that post on page one of this thread but I didn't even think about it as being a genuine sporting competition. Who knew that it's actually just the same game was a lass at work that shook me out of my idiocy about it. Who's going next week then? Just the three or four of us that said at the time? There are some tickets left, although not many

Turns out they're made of a combination of steel and titanium, then

I assumed there would be more games today given how many teams seem to be a couple of games behind us

Just looked at Forest's fixtures, still got a couple of tougher games like. Would be nice for us to win it at home but might not be quite there by April 14th