^Damn! Still no deal!

NBA LOCKOUT OVAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!



NBA IS BACK FOR XMAS!!!! W0000000000T!



Earl, your Lakers are gonna take a beating on Christmas!

^ Ahh Crap! Already talking smack before the tip-off aren't you Bosco!

fuck you arsenal

wtf sweden?

Question to all Premier League watchers: Am i wrong or is it not so easy to purchase tickets to a game?

I'm going to London on the last semptember weekend with a couple of friends for a mini-vacation, and we are trying to watch the Arsenal - Tottenham game. But as far as i understand the arsenal site, you have to be an arsenal member (silver, junior or red) to purchase one or more tickets, is that right? So there basically is no other way to get tickets? Is this for every Premiere League game or is this a special Arsenal thing? What if i don't want to become a member?
It is much more easy to buy a Bundesliga ticket...

ThePumisher, on 21 July 2014 - 10:09 AM, said:

Not easy? You are positively dreaming Pum. I don't think you realise just how popular Premier League tickets are amongst fans of the big clubs in England. Yes, even after their national team's latest um, effort in the World Cup. Don't worry I'm Irish so you can chuckle at England all you want as far as I'm concerned.

ThePumisher, on 21 July 2014 - 10:09 AM, said:

Hmm, I'm just popping over to England to try to catch Manchester City v Manchester Utd. That's what you may as well have said. Arsenal and Tottenham see the fixtures against each other as the most important domestic games of the entire season! It's a massive rivalry. Try picking a smaller fixture and you could be in with a chance.

As a Manchester United member I'll give you a flavour of my own experiences. Before the big financial crash of 07/08, my applications for tickets at United (against anybody in the Premier League) would be successful perhaps one in every three attempts. You would enter a ballot and hope that they would suck money off your credit card and then send you tickets. Sometimes I would rejoice when I saw Man Utd on my credit card statement!

Since the financial crisis, things have actually got easier. The Glazers have increased prices every year which has also had an effect. Now if I apply for a game against someone like Southampton or Crystal Palace, I'll get them almost every time. But against the big boys like Man City, Chelsea, Liverpool etc, it's still a lottery. Sometimes these days the 'smaller' games go on general sale if Old Trafford still has a few seats left a week before the game. Sometimes.

So, the members of Arsenal will get first dibs for the fixture you are talking about. Whilst the Season Ticket holders of Tottenham (not even the members) will battle for the 'away' ticket allocation. So you're probably out of luck. Or, looking at your Arsenal link you could go for a Hospitality Package. Check out the prices!

You could try going to see West Ham - a London club that sometimes sells a few expensive (£60 - £70) tickets through Ticketmaster. Link here. If you came over in August you could catch West Ham v Spurs for £68.50 per person. Bargain!
I did this once myself for West Ham V Man Utd a few years ago. We had to sit amongst the West Ham fans and didn't make a sound when United scored the winner. You could get a punch or three aimed at you for sitting in the 'wrong' end.

Or you could pop along to see Fulham in South west London. Admittedly they have just been relegated from the Premier League, but Championship football ain't bad, and tickets won't be too hard to purchase. It's a lovely club in leafy South West London with the lowest fan-violence statistics in the football league. I've been to plenty of games there and always liked the warm atmosphere. Details here

Nearby QPR have just been promoted back to the Premier League. They are away to Southampton on 27/9 but a week later they are at home to Stoke. I woudn't be surprised if you could get tickets to that game through their website. Crystal Palace is a little more difficult to get to using public transport however they host Leicester City on 27/9, and again you may get tickets through their website.

There is one not-quite-legal option too. Although gig tickets can be bought/sold by fans to a rediculous degree, it's illegal to do the same with football tickets. But if you check Gumtree.com a few days before a fixture, sometimes you will see adverts such as "Mourinho v Lambert live in London this weekend" which means Chelsea v Aston Villa tickets. So if you are really keen on Arsenal v Tottenham, look out for "Wenger v Pochettino" tickets advertised on Gumtree. I haven't done this myself so I don't know how likely you are to be conned or ripped off.

Hope this helps.

skyscraper, on 21 July 2014 - 10:31 PM, said:

And i don't like 'em.

skyscraper, on 21 July 2014 - 10:31 PM, said:

Yes, but sadly not in a good way. Damn. Thinking about creating a twitter account and ask Podolski if he could manage something, he's always open for the problems of Cologne people...

Really worried about Jules Bianchi A video of the crash appeared and it's extremely violent. I don't even know how he didn't get killed instantly...

It's hard for me to sympathize for anyones injury/death when it comes as a result of racing motorized vehicles.

Excuse the pun, but isn't occurrences like this that "drive" this "sport". Nobody really cares who wins the race, everybody is just waiting on the impending tragedy.

Amazing that he is still alive... for the moment.

Bosco, on 07 October 2014 - 2:29 AM, said:

Nobody wants to see that kind of thing happening. Formula 1 has been really safe for years now. After Senna's death, there has been a lot of changes. Cars and race tracks have been made extremely safe in comparison to 20 years ago. So much that even in the most extreme crashes like Kubica's crash at Montreal in 2006, he only got minor injuries. The problem with Bianchi's crash is that recovery vehicles like the one he crashed into are absolutely not made to be crashed into, they're not Tecpro barriers or tyre walls that will absorb most of the choc, and it's quite obvious that any f1 crashing into it will go under it, with awful consequences... It was a huge mistake to send that vehicle, without getting the safety car out. Awful weather, extremely wet track, and a dangerous curve on which you have little visibility => you don't send in a vehicle like that because even at slower speed, you can lose the control of the car and crash exactly like Sutil did a lap earlier, and that's exactly what happened...

I know nothing about Formula 1, and everything you have said could have improved the chances for your fellow frenchman to have a safer crash. But the bottom line is car racing will never be safe. Cars are machines controlled by humans and made by humans. Humans are prone to error. And when error happens with the weight and speed that those machines have, it rarely ends in a happy ending.