mail on sunday, spot on!

[broughtonblue]

as the title says.........

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/article-2252265/Football-fans-treated-terribly-Christmas--Patrick-Collins.html

[purpleronnie]

yep, but so what? fans just accept evrything so......

[SystonFox]

Part and parcel of our game I'm afraid.

And who's to say that all Yanited fans live next door to old Trafford and it took them 19 hours to get to Swansea? Same goes for any club, if a fan wants to attend a game they will regardless of cost/time/parking spaces available

[Jimothy]

I started reading and got to this bit and stopped.

As you might expect, the Premier League are the most cynical culprits. Their fixtures are designed for those who are more at ease with a remote control than a Satnav. Saturday offered several harrowing examples. Sunderland played at Southampton. According to my AA Route Planner, it involved a journey of 318 miles, taking 5hr 58min to complete. In total, the Saturday trip covered around 640 miles in 12 hours’ driving, with congestion, floods and the search for a parking place no more than occupational hazards.

Moaning about Sky pissing about with the schedule when that game kicked off at 3pm on a Saturday. Not really sure what the issue is with Southampton v Sunderland. They are both in the same league, they have to play each other. If you're an away fan and want to go you have to travel an long way.

[ADK]

Yeah i don't know what they propose, kick Sunderland out the prem for being too northern? Its not like the country was smaller years ago. Going to every away match is a complete luxury. I'd be more worried with the decline of the home support.

[C-man]

I think the point is that the games before Christmas are traditionally the least-attended games of the season because people haven't got a great deal of cash to spend on tickets, let alone length of the country travel.

Does seem a rather futile point, and a pretty small one in the grand scheme of things. These distances are hardly massive, England's fvcking tiny!

[purpleronnie]

Yeah i don't know what they propose, kick Sunderland out the prem for being too northern? Its not like the country was smaller years ago. Going to every away match is a complete luxury. I'd be more worried with the decline of the home support.

what decline is that?

[Webbo]

I get the MoS but I often skip this column. Yesterday he's complaining on behalf of fans normally he's calling us all thugs and morons, especially if you're from north of Watford.

It must be hard for columnists to find things to hate every week. I doubt if he's 100% sincere.

[Jimothy]

I think the point is that the games before Christmas are traditionally the least-attended games of the season because people haven't got a great deal of cash to spend on tickets, let alone length of the country travel.

Does seem a rather futile point, and a pretty small one in the grand scheme of things. These distances are hardly massive, England's fvcking tiny!

I got that that was the gist of the article but he's trying single out the premier league for it when a quick glance at the weekend fixtures including those called off show the Football League to be as bad. Brighton should have been at Blackburn, Oldham at Yeovil, Crawley at Sheffield Utd, Crewe at Bournemouth, Hartlepool at Portsmouth, Rotherham at Bristol, Gillingham at York, Bradford at Wycombe. So it's hardly just a premier league thing. I'm not sure what the guys proposing, only having local derbies are Christmas time?

The ironic thing is the localist derby on Boxing Day, Arsenal v West Ham is off because fans can't travel!

[Alexikokopops]

I could understand a bit more if he was on about the boxing day fixture. I don't really see an issue with Saturday's though. If you look at Boxing Day fixtures the only ones that seem a bit of a twat to get to involve Sunderland and Newcastle and, given they're relative remoteness to the rest of the league, matches involving those two are always going to be a ball ache unless they play each other every Boxing Day. It seems he's just having a rant for the sake of it.