Tag Archives: Arsenal

Arsenal fans wrong to take moral high ground over Stoke’s Ramsey abuse

Up to this point, I have stayed out of the Stoke City / Aaron Ramsey rumblings that have been going on between numerous Arsenal bloggers and Stoke’s Oatcake Fanzine.

The quick background is stoke fans discussed on their fanzines forum how they were going to ‘mark’ the minute which Aaron Ramsey got his leg broken by Ryan Shawcross. In response, Arsenal fans through blogs and tweets showed their disgust, with it even making the national press.

My opinion is a simple one. Arsenal fans – get over it. Over my years of being a member of various forums, Facebook Groups and on Twitter, I have seen Arsenal fans discuss a lot worse. We should not be taking the moral high ground here.

Stoke City’s discussions to applaud, hold a minutes silence, chant Ryan Shawcross’s name, on the 67th minute is not a discussion which is out of place on a football message board. And even if they go through with their plans on Saturday, it will not be the worse thing sung on a game day.

It perhaps shows the current PC nature of the game that such a scenario has caused such outrage amongst Arsenal fan’s, trying to act holier then thou. In fact, Arsenal fans are hypocrites.

I look at the outrage of Arsenal fans when opposing fans first started singing “she said no Robin.” Now he has left, it is sang loud and clear both home and away. The same is with Ashley Cole. We think nothing about making up homophobic songs towards him. And lets not mention how many children’s parentage we have attributed to Ray Parlour over the years!

Even with the Arsene Wenger song which has disgusted so many over the years has been matched this season with an Arsenal version about David Moyes and Alex Ferguson touching boys.

And lest we forget Emmanuel Adebayor. Who has not sung about wishing it was him, after the shooting in Angola which left 3 dead and 9 injured.

I have been part of message boards where Manchester United have the nickname ‘Munichs’. I have seen Arsenal fans attack Liverpool fans over Hillsborough. I have seen Arsenal fan’s coming up with songs on message boards about both.

So before you get on your high horse. Before you call Stoke fans a disgrace. Think about what you have typed over the years. What you have sung. If you are whiter than white, then fair enough. But if not, get over yourself, do not take the moral high ground. Stoke’s actions are no more then a small part of the big pot which is football banter.

Keenos
Follow @KeenosAFC

The Great Arsenal Stadium Ticketing Mystery

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I’ll be honest I was a little pessimistic about our chances against Liverpool in the FA Cup, considering how we ‘performed’ the week previous, but I, and I’m sure I’m not alone, was pleasantly surprised by how we worked hard to secure our place in the next round.

In fact I know I wasn’t alone, both my kids were delighted with our result and were begging me to get tickets for the quarter final, at home to Everton. Being the amazing Dad I am (go ahead – ask them) I promised to book them as soon as they went on sale – 10am yesterday morning.

Okay, I admit, I let them down a little bit, I was travelling with little or no internet access, but at the first opportunity I logged on to Arsenal.com to book up. I’ll be honest, I got logged on pretty quickly – normally there is that progress bar that crawls along the screen slower than one of Ivan’s transfer dealings, so I was pretty confident. I must add, as Silver members I have never had any problems getting tickets for any game that we’ve wanted to attend, whatever category game it is.

This was different. At 10:20am, it appeared that there was very limited availability in the family enclosure – there was a row of 15 green dots showing available seats, but whenever I clicked on one, it just wouldn’t select it – I tried different seats all with the same result and within three minutes all of the family enclosure was completely sold out.

I put it down to it being a popular fixture – but there was still plenty of availability throughout the rest of the ground, but this forces me to pay full adult prices for my kids, pushing the cost up to north of £130 for tickets, plus travel, food/drinks etc., I’m looking at a £230 day out. I’m not going to start on the ‘The working man is being priced out’ argument, think we’ve banged that drum plenty already, fact is the Champions League game against Bayern had already rinsed me out financially.

I took to Twitter last night and it seems lots of other people had similar experiences, in fact it seems a lot worse than I first thought – some were logged in and looking for tickets in the family enclosure at 10am sharp, only to find it was sold out already!! How can this happen? How can tickets go on sale at 10am and be sold out at 10:01? Something doesn’t sound right to me.

People tweeting me things like;

‘Kids have gone to every home game this season in Family Encl, tickets sold out by 10:02’

‘Logged in at 10:00 and all downstairs FE was sold out from the word go’

‘Something isn’t right…did they just let them tickets go over the phone and not online?’

‘Can’t see how four sections can sell out in 0 minutes’

I later learned that block 117 (Upper Tier) had also been nominated as ‘Family Enclosure’, but again I logged on to find it had also sold out, and quickly. I’m not sure there was any specific messaging from the club or on the website about this being released – seemed to be a ‘back door’ policy on it – why the secrecy?

Arsenal v Everton ticket ‘availability’

The Family Enclosure isn’t any smaller than normal, it doesn’t appear to be a hugely popular fixture – the above image was taken at 8:15pm last night, showing plenty of availability, yet all ‘Junior Gunners’ concessional tickets are gone? This is completely the opposite experience to that I have ever had buying tickets in the FE at the bowl.

I logged on again at 8.34, and to my dismay, it seemed more tickets had come on sale…

Further discussion concluded that this was Season Ticket holders who have opted out. This brings up a further question. The opt out date is 3pm Thursday 27th February, after the date tickets went on sale to Silver Members. Surely the club should have put the opt out date deadline before the tickets went on sale? Are the club hoping that all upper tier tickets are sold (at the higher price) before offering the lower tier season tickets to the market?

I’m not one for conspiracies, but there is something amiss here, something we will never learn about, because as sure as eggs are eggs, we will not get a straight answer from the club. In fact, having written to the club before, and having their reply featured in a double page spread in The Sun, I know asking the question would be futile, my time would be much better spent elsewhere.

So, best I leave this to the comments section on Shewore.com – so if you have any idea as to how all these tickets can be sold so quickly, feel free to leave a comment. Would love to hear from anyone who had a similar experience or those that were successful in getting a ticket in blocks 26-29.

Hammy
Follow @DHammy1971