Crystal Palace fan exposing Newcastle United fans not buying all tickets – Highly amusing

The Mag

·25 avril 2024

Crystal Palace fan exposing Newcastle United fans not buying all tickets – Highly amusing

An interesting one from this Crystal Palace fan.

I have just seen this on Thursday, the morning after the match.

Vidéos OneFootball

Eddie Howe and his players going down 2-0 to a revitalised home side, who were winning their third game in a row, having not previously managed even consecutive Premier League victories previously this season.

However, this particular Crystal Palace fan more interested in the Newcastle United fans.

Or should that be, lack of them?

Anyway, I found this highly amusing…

I would love to think this Crystal Palace fan was being ironic, doing this for a laugh, not really meaning what he is saying.

However, I think not.

There are a minority of Crystal Palace fans who take themselves very seriously and honestly believe that anybody is interested in them. That is, apart from Brighton fans in the lame strange ‘rivalry’ between their two fanbases.

So, this Crystal Palace fan declaring: ‘Newcastle spending all year calling us embarrassing for not selling out our away end against them, and they do the exact same thing.’

Where do you start???

I can honestly say, I don’t spend one second thinking about Crystal Palace until we are set to play them.

I spend even less time thinking about the small Palace fanbase.

As for spending ‘all year’ talking about Crystal Palace fans not filling the 3,200 away seats at St James’ Park, well, that could be any year we are talking about. I can’t recall Palace ever taking all of the away sections at SJP, never mind filling them.

When this Crystal Palace fan talks about Newcastle United fans not buying up all the away tickets last night, if only this were true.

As we all know, if you don’t have a season ticket then it is impossible to ever get a ticket for a Newcastle United away match. Every away game is sold out at some point as the club decreases the number of loyalty points needed.

I am currently one of the 100,000-150,000 Newcastle United members who never get the chance of buying any away ticket, never mind all those other hundreds of thousands of NUFC fans who are neither season ticket holders or members.

As we (Newcastle fans) also know, even paying £37 for a year’s membership now gives you minimal chance of even the odd home ticket. I have entered every ballot for tickets in all games, in all competitions, at St James’ Park this season and I have been successful only four times. Thanks to friends and the wider NUFC fan community, I have been lucky enough to get to a few more extra home matches this season as well, which I am grateful for. I am better off than many others.

The big irony as well, is that currently I don’t live very far away from Selhurst Park at the moment, within ten miles of it anyway.

Last night I was at the match. Along with many other Newcastle fans, I was undercover in the home sections, a Palace fan I work with sorted me and a couple of (NUFC) mates out. Indeed, I personally know of dozens of NUFC supporters who were in the Palace sections for this 2-0 defeat, certainly far more than the ‘unsold seats’ shown above.

I have no idea why these seats are showing as empty but one thing for sure, they weren’t ‘unsold’, they were 100 per cent bought up, as were all the other NUFC away tickets for last night’s game.

If you look at the time he actually posted this photo above, it is 8.01pm, a minute after kick-off. Well, I don’t know about you, but I can think of countless away matches (and some home ones…) where I have missed the opening minutes due to ‘just one more pint’, plus often underestimating travel times and distances to away grounds, especially when you are trying to get around London. I have no idea if these empty seats shown above would have been full if the photo taken 20 minutes later or whatever and I don’t care.

Whilst I am based down here only for a relatively limited time due to work, I feel really sorry for the massive numbers of Newcastle fans who live down south permanently. For most, it is now literally impossible to get a ticket for any NUFC away match, including / especially those in the London area. It is incredible just how many Newcastle fans live down here, the vast majority of course for work reasons down the years, including past generations of their family having moved down.

With the recent club crackdown on anybody passing on any ticket, even if giving it away you have the threat of losing all your loyalty points and even potentially having your season ticket taken away. So Newcastle fans down this way who used to get tickets by this route, now knackered. So instead they are forced to try and get tickets in the home sections, if they can get hold of them AND are ready to take the risks involved in sitting amongst hundreds of people who might not be happy if they realise you aren’t one of them.

Ironically, I remember Selhurst Park as the place where I experienced probably the biggest ever Newcastle United away following in the Premier League era, for a normal league match, not a cup final etc.

I just checked the details and it was Sunday 23 March 1997, a 4pm kick-off and the attendance was 23,175, with the majority of those inside Selhurst Park supporting Newcastle United.

Newcastle trailed 1-0 at half-time and then Tino Asprilla scored a class free-kick I remember, the game ending 1-1.

This wasn’t a Palace match, it was actually against Wimbledon, in the days when they had no stadium any longer and led a nomadic existence. One of the bonuses of course was that with the tiny Wimbledon support, it meant that something like 12,000-15,000 Newcastle United fans were inside Selhurst Park that day, it was mental.

Which poses the question of course, just how many Newcastle United fans would you get at a London away match these days, if you could just turn up and pay on the day, knowing you could get in?

Fair to say that last night, rather than these imaginary ‘unsold’ seats, Newcastle United fans could have easily sold out the away section three or four times over, with the vast majority of those, grateful Geordie exiles down south, at last able to get a ticket to watch Eddie Howe’s side in the flesh at an NUFC away match.

Stats via BBC Sport:

Crystal Palace 2 Newcastle 0 – Saturday 24 April 8pm

Goals:

Newcastle United:

Palace:

Mateta 55, 88

(Half-time stats in brackets)

Possession was Palace 47% (51%) Newcastle 53% (49%)

Total shots were Palace 20 (9) Newcastle 6 (1)

Shots on target were Palace 7 (5) Newcastle 2 (0)

Corners were Palace 7 (4) Newcastle 2 (0)

Referee: Thomas Bramall