Published: 17 January, 2013

I’LL take lectures from just about anybody about high ticket prices at Arsenal, because I think it’s sad that the club’s traditional working-class support in Islington has been priced out by people in big cars from Bushey.

The tickets are pricey. You got me. But then, as you’ll have heard, so is taking the family to a West End show. And when this subject comes up, it is always based on the fact that you are “taking the family”.

Those arguments also come with a list of things that you apparently need to do… then you need to get the programme, then you need to buy a hot dog for all of the kids, and chips, and then you have to buy the kit for them, and then you have to buy an Arsenal pencil sharpener, and a rubber… and then you have to empty your bank account at a cashpoint in the ground, put the bank notes in a food mixer and pour the liquid money into Theo Walcott’s mouth. After that, mate, you ‘re looking at spending close to a thousand quid. It’s an expensive day out. If you take the family.

It’s actually expensive to take the family every-blooming-where. The zoo. The seaside. I still get the family to stand on stilts and shoulders and sneak them all into the cinema under a big coat. Everything is expensive and football matches are way up there. BUT I will not take a lecture from the Manchester City fans boycotting the match at Arsenal on Sunday due to ticket prices. When you think of how they magicked up a new ground and a new team, they have no role in a seminar on how money has ruined our game.
Richard Osley

SO Arsenal wanted Man City fans’ £62 protest banner removed on Sunday because it was spoiling the view for the supporters sat in the £62 seats behind.

If they’d held it up in the Gooner section it might have been allowed to stay. Even if their seats were of the £126 variety.

Well, wouldn’t you rather stare at a bit of felt-tip on a white satin sheet (I presume that’s what the Berties sleep on since they won the league) than watch that load of old rubbish down on the pitch? At least when Tottenham went down to 10 men at the Emirates our men made a game of it – to the bitter end.

Arsenal? They just ran around like kids chasing a party balloon while Man City partied like it was 1975, the year the club last beat Arsenal away, when Bradford were in Division 4 and I got sent home from school with nits.

Still, times have changed – not for Bradford obviously – and as Arsene Wenger now knows (he struggled with the concept when it was Spurs who were playing with 10) it can be “difficult” when you’re a man down. Which is what we are at Spurs now that Adebayor has gone to South Africa. I do hope Harry Redknapp doesn’t stumble into him on his world sign ‘em up tour. He might take a shine to him again and then what will happen?

AVB lets Clint Dempsey get on with the job and our strike-force becomes… worth watching again.
Catherine Etoe

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