Stoke had more tickets

[john@staustell]

Many apologies if this has been dealt with, because I've been a bit busy lately.

But there was a comment in the ESPN commentary that there were 25,000 City fans there, and 27,000 Stoke fans. More Stoke fans due to a 'last-minute allocation'.

Now WTF is this all about? Stoke had less season ticket-holders than cup final tickets, whilst City obviously had a lot more.

Personally I think each club should have 48,000 tickets, with possibly a little room for the Prime Minister and the royalty/lance corporal (delete as appropriate). But none for David 'league games on the same day' Bernstein.

The whole thing stinks.

[King Kev]

As I understand it, there were just over 2000 tickets returned to Wembley by member clubs who didn't want them. Stoke got the tickets because they were first to ask for them.

Hopefully City will learn from this for future games there.

[Feed The Goat]

The whole middle teir looked blue to me

[King Kev]

The whole middle teir looked blue to me

Me too. City fans seem to have a knack of finding tickets for the big games one way or another!

[Goaters 103]

The extra tickets Stoke got were simply ones for their end anyway, allocated to FA member clubs but returned unsold. The FA passed them on to Stoke to make sure they were shifted - City wouldnt have been allocated these tickets at all as they were all on the East side of the stadium

All those FA member tickets in the City end were snapped up by people supporting City, so its misleading to suggest Stoke had more fans when they clearly didnt.

I had to do a bit of ducking and diving but I got 2 extra of the county FA tickets myself for deserving Blues, and the majority of those passed on to Stoke to sell were in the £115 seats down on the bottom tier.

Loads of the 2nd tier on Club Wembley seats on the Stoke side were taken up by Blues and you can see them on the lap of honour staying right till the very end too.

[Sister of fu]

No way in this world were there just 25,000 blues there. I reckon well over 30,000. I shared my seat with 2 jibbers. Loads jibbed in and im told it was very easy to do.

[john@staustell]

No way in this world were there just 25,000 blues there. I reckon well over 30,000. I shared my seat with 2 jibbers. Loads jibbed in and im told it was very easy to do.

Sure it's always the case that more clubs' fans get tickets through other means. In 1981 my Lancashire FA ticket was right in the Spurs end. But it was effectively a larger allocation for Stoke because of this, whatever the reason. Surely it's not beyond the wit of man to allocate seats which 'might not be sold' in the middle somewhere?

And if these clubs 'didn't want them', there's an excellent case for upping the participating clubs' allocations substantially.

[MaineRoadMemories]

No way in this world were there just 25,000 blues there. I reckon well over 30,000. I shared my seat with 2 jibbers. Loads jibbed in and im told it was very easy to do.

It was very easy - the stewards were only interested in seeing if you had bottles on you and not looking at the turnstyles. So when a queue built up for the people inside waiting to be checked by a steward others could sneak in undetected.

[Manx Blue]

They may have had more tickets...but we left with the important item...that is all

[ross.mcfc]

No way in this world were there just 25,000 blues there. I reckon well over 30,000. I shared my seat with 2 jibbers. Loads jibbed in and im told it was very easy to do.

It was very easy - the stewards were only interested in seeing if you had bottles on you and not looking at the turnstyles. So when a queue built up for the people inside waiting to be checked by a steward others could sneak in undetected.

I waited till about 15:10 when they opened some of the smaller doors at the exits. Walked round the city end and figured out which one had the least amount of to stewards chase me. Fortunetly that particular door was manned with two blokes fat middle aged blokes that wouldnt have stood a chance of catching me. They didnt even bother chasing me.

Even as I was running up the stairs I fully expected to have to scarper past another set of stewards but it was a free run into the middle teir. I planked myself at the end of the front row in the front row directly behind the goals.