Fair play to Chelsea

Chelsea Football Club is delighted to confirm we will be offering a £10 discount to our supporters for away tickets to the Barclays Premier League match at Sunderland on Tuesday, December 3.

It means tickets will now be available to Chelsea fans for £24 rather than the original £34.

Senior (65 and over) tickets are priced at £13, while juniors (16 and under) are just £2, with subsidised return coach travel also available from Stamford Bridge for just £10.

Chelsea Chief Executive Ron Gourlay said: 'We recognise the difficulties in travelling to Sunderland on a midweek evening in the run up to Christmas. We hope this contribution of subsidised tickets and travel from the club will assist more of our fans to make the trip and get behind Jose and the team.'

From Chelsea website

fair play to them.

Its part of a big initiative, they will be doing this due to a scheme running (name forgotten) to do with away fans.

Yeah we do a lot of stuff like this for away trips

Newcastle are offering to sell away tickets to visiting fans for 20 quid, if the other clubs will return the favour.

Sadly not many are taking up our offer. Clubs, like Chelsea, are offering one off gimmicks like this which don't really do anything for the wallet of the fan.

So no, not fair play to Chelsea at all.

Shame that an away ticket to Stamford Bridge cost £50 this season then.

Chelsea are offering the same deal for the Newcastle game this week and have been doing this all season too. So it's not just a gimmick.

And home ticket prices are around £50 too.

Chelsea Chief Executive Ron Gourlay said: 'We recognise the difficulties in travelling to Sunderland on a midweek evening in the run up to Christmas. We hope this contribution of subsidised tickets and travel from the club will assist more of our fans to make the trip and get behind Jose and the team.'

I read that as, "No-one wants to spend a fortune travelling up to Tyne and Wear to watch a struggling team get battered whilst the freezing drizzle slams sideways into your face and speeds of up to 90mph and drunken Mackems bellow abuse at everyone including themselves so we're begging someone ANYONE to go up. A free cuddle from Jose may be thrown in if you're really lucky!"

What the club should do is offer free tickets for that game to any STH who has had their ST for longer than 2 seasons. One, it's a thank you from the club for a proper supporter, and two, you don't get riff-raff going. It's not like Chelsea need the £24 (or even the £34).

£50 to watch any football match is awful, in this age of worldwide tv coverage.

It's quite difficult to join the away scheme. You need a certain amount of loyalty points on your membership. I'm going to my first game as a member, first game since Hiddink was in charge, against Southampton in December. Earn myself a whopping 3 loyalty points for £46!!!

Blimey. You definitely have more money than sense Nick

A cap on tickets at £30 in the PL would be the best thing for football in this country. Would also drive down inflated wages.

£30 for the PL, £20 for the Championship, £15 for Leagues One and Two.

No higher than £10 for non-league football.

Bring football back to the people, this really would be the best thing for the game in this country in the long-term.

It's a flipping joke that it can cost more to watch Burton Albion than Bayern Munich.

Amen Duty

The atmosphere at the Gelsenkirchen is better than at The Bescot too, and cheaper to get in.

Its cost me £11 to watch Lewes play in the Ryman Premier

My season ticket at Brighton is £38 a month

while i cant afford a season ticket at OT myself, four of my mates do and i normally jump on there ticket when they cant go. works out for them around 30 quid a game which they usually just charge me 25.

when united haven't got a game i sometimes go to watch oldham in the magnificently derelict 3 sided stadium that is boundary park. these days paying on the day costs 22 quid! 3 pound difference between OT and boundary park!

When Charlton Athletic were a Premiership club (come on now, be fair... it wasn't that long ago), they used to provide free coach travel to fans for one away match a season. And it wasn't for a miserable evening match in autumn either, it was often for a plum fixture towards the end of the season when things were building up to a climax. One such match was their sixth round FA Cup tie at Middlesbrough in 2006.

It cost the club a lot of money, but it was seen as a sincere and genuine "thank you" to the fans for their support during the season. It (not surprisingly) had a massive take up, which would have cost the club a lot of money, but it was a shot in the arm for local coach travel organisations (which always goes down well in the community) and gives the team a boost when they run out and see huge numbers of their own fans, providing a 'home game' atmosphere.

Perhaps, if Chelsea want to save their fans money, then rather than offer a paltry discount on a ticket that many people don't want they could do the Charlton thing and hire loads of coaches, bundle all the fans on those and make a beano of it. It would mean putting their hand in their well-lined pocket, but it could actually turn an otherwise unappealing fixture into a bloody good night out.