only2garners

That shows how we all see the game differently. I had Smallwood down as by some way our best player in the first half and arguably man of the match, although I'm happy to give it to Armstrong. Reed was affected by his injury but for the first 30 minutes before it did nothing save for one nice cross field ball.

Surely you must have known you would be in time for the game at 11.30 if you were home at 12.30 today?

Did you not know you would be back from work by now (or in time to go to the game)? If you did you could have ordered a ticket before 12.

If that’s what you want to do you’re probably stuck with off-peak fares. Travelling down on Friday and back on Sunday means travel at really busy times because lots of others want to do the same for the weekend. I assume all the Advance fares will have gone now - there were probably less because Virgin know it’s a popular time.

Maybe what she meant was that the centre blocks had already gone to ST holders? I just did a trial purchase online and I couldn't buy in block N but could in block L (I already have a ticket in block N bought last week).

£240 is just the cheapest for the Town End Matty. The side stands are £270 and the premium seats £300. So for the best seats PNE are £25 a game against Rovers £22.63. Not enormous differences but £2-3 a game higher.

North End have just announced their half season tickets - cheapest £240 for 12 games, so quite a bit dearer than Rovers.

I’m seeing returns from Preston for £46 return, out at 12.58 and back on the 20.31 and I doubt they will get less than that. Bear in mind the 20.31 is the last train of the day, so a bit tight but probably doable. Obviously if you’re starting from Blackburn you’ll need to get to Preston. You can park at Preston station for £6 for the day.

Trains for 12th January have not long been on sale so hopefully not too many will have committed yet.

On the other hand there has been a four week gap between away games and both are reasonably priced. Clearly for some away night games are not on and there is the damned red button but I would imagine we should end up with more than original allocation of 2,086.

I see Wigan tickets are also on sale now - just got mine online. Hopefully a good proportion of those going to Deepdale will come along to this as well.

See you in there Ozz. I got mine last week at the back of Block N.

You should be fine with 17.48. I don't think we have been held back at Deepdale in recent times, although i guess it could always be possible. It's about a 20 minute walk from Deepdale to the station (or 15 if you need to run!), so you should be OK anyway.

I think that was the linesman’s fault, not the ref. The linesman flagged when we took the quick throw-in - I think he thought that the throw-in that QPR took when he dropped the ball hadn’t gone on the pitch so should be taken again. The ref correctly saw it had gone on to the pitch and bounced out so overruled him, but by then the moment had passed. Unlike nearly everyone else I thought the ref was OK yesterday. Live from my poor vantage point in the JW I thought the Bell penalty claim was a banker and Bremerton’s dubious. Watching them back on Quest last night the ref was right and I was wrong. Bell’s clearly not but the defender clearly caught Brereton - he was going nowhere and the defender didn’t need to make the challenge but he did, therefore penalty. I thought most of the bookings were right too. Reed clearly lunged in and Smallwood’s was a professional foul to stop a quick break. It was frustrating that he didn’t punish QPR more for time wasting, but he did seem to be adding on time. I was expecting 5 or 6 minutes injury time so was surprised to see only 4, but in the end that did us a favour. Brereton’s booking was silly though. overall the game was two teams competing to see who could give the ball away more. I think he just deserved the win as at least we were trying to score. It looked like QPR planned to sit back, frustrate us and hope to get something on the break. A bit surprising as you might think they would have been a bit more adventurous given the run they were on.

Paul - there should be no problems with the hourly TPE service from the airport and Piccadilly to Preston via Wigan - less than an hour.

The weekend engineering works that have shut the Bolton to Preston line are due to finish today. So there should be trains running from Manchester to Preston via both Wigan and Chorley on 24th. Of course the Northern ones might not be depending on strikes but TPE should be then be running services via Chorley.

I would if you could enlighten us Stuart on where you got that quote from? Our current average gate after 8 games is 14,386. Yes, we've had Leeds in there, which may well be the biggest away attendance but we have also had Millwall, Reading, Brentford and QPR as 4 of the 8. Of the 15 games left I can only see Ipswich as bringing the level of support that 4 brought - there are plenty of games left where there will be decent away followings. So I don't see an average of 16,000 over the season as too far out.

It was touch and go whether he could get to Ewood by 12, not 3. It certainly read like he could make the game but might not make the ground by 12.

There may be many things to beat the club up about, but complaining because you can't be bothered to either call up or go online to order a ticket is surely not one of them. I can understand someone who doesn't know whether he can make it until after 12 would be annoyed at the surcharge but if you know you can go why don't you just order in advance?

The Meadow St pubs are usually pretty full with North End fans - I don't know whether this would be an issue or not.

Here's one.

So 2,500 at Bolton with high prices, 5.30 kick-off, live TV and train problems. None of those problems for this (maybe trains but buses are practical to Preston), so I think we should be approaching capacity. I agree with tomphil that should be a minimum 4K.

It will be 12 years in January Paul. As Paul says, the Forum can not be representative. I don't think there is a way to get a truly representative group of fans - there is no way to develop a true constituency from which to choose one. But we do make efforts to try and represent what fans as a whole are thinking. A number of different groups have a rep on the Forum for example. I try and raise points even if I don't personally agree with them, if I believe that the point is widely held. Who is suggesting that the Forum is agreeing with the club on not lowering prices? I made a point about the practicality of one extreme example of price reduction, which apart from Ozz's post, I don't think posters have been suggesting anyway. that doesn't mean that I, or anyone else on the Forum is opposed to price reductions. I think what I would say is that the club have two factors that need to be taken into account when discussing admission prices. Firstly, they are not going to do anything that would significantly reduce total ticket revenue. Secondly any proposals need to make sure that the price promise for season ticket holders is not compromised i.e. that St holders will always have the cheapest tickets overall. I don't understand this - what do you expect Forum members to do? The next meeting is two weeks tonight - what would you want me to be doing now? We had a long discussion about attendances at the last meeting in September - before this thread was started.

1. I’m not the voice of the Fans Forum. I’m the secretary and one voice amongst many. 2. I’m not against price cuts. I was just pointing out the economics of halving prices. 3. The Forum represents a wide range of fans’ opinions and guess what, we don’t all agree all the time. I don’t agree with some of the opinions offered and I’m sure plenty disagree with me. Ther are plenty of different opinions on this thread and across this message board too. Anyway blueboy, I’m apparently only there to hob nob with the bosses according to you.

There is one problem with Bradford City’s approach - it has not brought any success on the pitch. They are currently bottom of League 1. You might think that bigger crowds would by now have brought some success on the pitch if the theory about the effect on performance was right. You might also think that with a big catchment area (a lot bigger than ours), they would have have picked up more fans in those seasons that they were around the play-offs. Does anyone seriously think that if we halved our ST prices we would sell double I.e. 20,000?