It’s always sort of stuck in my beak a bit that the away section’s so prominent at Eastlands, and because we shoot the other way second half pretty much always it means late goals conceded are all the more galling. This was obviously much more of an issue when we were shite, but there are plenty of more recent instances - late Scholes and van Persie goals in derbies, Mackie for QPR, even Boro last week - all made worse because of the proximity of the teams in question to their supporters.
Often asked why we don’t stick them up in the gods, but anyone who’s been to Newcastle will tell you what a negative effect that has on atmosphere. In this day and age we should be doing everything we can to improve noise levels in stadiums (even if clubs are privately against this as it means higher policing costs and more arrests). Away fans make noise and home fans reciprocate, not vice versa, so away sections ought to be bigger and more prominent.
Hopefully there’s a way of doing this and keeping the fuckers off camera, you’d think by using pitchside seating outside of the ‘televisual U’ (shit term). Sadly, these are almost always prime seats in this country yet considered the opposite in most European leagues.
As an a-side, they really ought to do away with the ticket caps certain clubs are allowed to allocate to opponents. It should be a flat percentage across the board, irrespective of whether your stadium holds 10,000 or 80,000. Obviously lots of clubs simply couldn’t take, say, 8,000 fans to Old Trafford or the Emirates, but you only have to look at the difference in league and cup atmospheres to see the effect it would have.
