My troubling tale of the spare Arsenal tickets

So I have this spare ticket for yesterday and I am loitering, feeling a little bit dirty because I am basically hanging with the touts at the botom of the stairs near the North Bank bridge. There is no way to offer a ticket for sale without sounding like a tout so you do get meancing glances but, hey. “Mate, £35 ticket hete, have it for a £20…all legit,” I say to this Turkish gentleman with limited English. “Can this get three of us in?” came his retort – and I stared, uttered not one murmur, turned on my heels and went in. Ticket unused. Twit.

Not the greatest anecdote you’ll ever encounter, granted (maybe should have chosen the two blokes I saw offer people tickets for free but the offer wasn’t taken up!), but it serves to highlight just how many bleedin’ spare tickets there are for home games these days. And there were loads of empty seats against Fulham yesterday at the Emirates as we drew 1-1 and then had to round-up all of Bobby Zamora’s playthings once the game had concluded. Twot.

And I still can’t believe the club announce tickets sold rather than the genuine attendance. If we get only 55,000 for Fulham at home half five and on the box then let’s tell it how it is. Still by far the biggest attendance in London and second in the PL. Arsenal’s prevarication does them no favours.

I reckon you could pretty much rock up to all but any home game (except United, S****, Chelsea etc) and get in for under face value. And Twitter is swamped (great work by the way from @arsenal_tickets) with punters trying to offload their spares I’ll give it a go as the season progresses and report back. Following on from yesterday’s post and the now infamous (in my mind) Boozergate piece I have to confess that after ranting on about the Railway* I did stray in there after a swifty in the 12 pins. But fera not the search will continue and I have a whole assemblage of watering holes to try out come Tuesday and Manchester City in the Carling Cup.

Anyway, my verdict for the game yesterday was we were a bit flat but with a bit of luck and following headwind we should have won. Take a point and move on I reckon. As for AA23 and Marouanne Chamakh I can’t help but think they were shop-windowed to a degree.

And so we idle towards the Sunday rags and the media coverage of the Arsenal. From what I can see the main tale of interest is that , according to the Mail, City manager Roberto Mancini is preparing a bid for Robin van Persie. Yawn.

Also, that we are that we are interested in signing Udinese’s 22-year-old Romanian winger Gabriel Torje, according to the player’s agent. Induces catatonic state.

*Departed with alacrity as a result of Cadsett’s arse. His guffs have taken on a new potency because of his gout tablets. Stear clear.

CARL ELDRIDGE – Holding my nose on Twitter @eldoemdia