You'll never be able to please everyone because for some games supply exceeds demand, so City have a choice about who they want to piss off more.
Various options have been put forward and none can be agreed on by everyone. The status quo suits the majority of regular match going away fans. I get the argument people cant catch up, but if you move to a ballot several people have understandably said they'll pack it in. Guess who's going to be at Newcastle, guess who was at Spurs, guess who was at Shakhtar? Its the same faces everytime - why should City fuck them over to enable someone with 3k points the chance to go to United, Liverpool, or Brighton in a possible title decider.
You started this post really well. Where supply exceeds demand someone's going to be pissed off.
It all depends on what we mean by a "fair" system. In its most accepted sense, "fair" means everyone has an equal chance but in this case it means that those who regularly go to games get first crack. There's no argument with that from most people, including the club. But even if every single away ticket in a 3,000 allocation went to points, the people at 3,001 and lower would be pissed off. But we know that games like Cardiff, Southampton, which are buggers to travel to, and midweek games in places like London & Newcastle are going to be attended by the hard-core or those who live nearer. I've done places like Brighton, Cardiff, Swansea and some midweek games where you get home at 2 or 3am but I've not done every game like that, whereas some do. I'd reckon that's probably no more than 750 people, give or take 150, who do all or the vast majority. There's probably about 1,000 or more who get into double figures, say 10-12, for away games in a season.
I'd say that the 1,800 tickets we get for a 3k allocation is probably about right on average but the games that are nearer, at better times and perhaps aren't on TV will be in more demand than games like Cardiff & a midweek one 150 miles away that is on TV.
So what is a "fair" system? If we were setting one up from scratch I'd say give the club its 150 tickets for players, staff, etc. Give seasonal hospitality fewer tickets, say 250, maybe 300 for a big game and if someone doesn't get for one game, promise them tickets for another game of their choice. Of the rest, put 500 into a ballot and sell the rest, aound 2,000, to points-holders in the normal way. For the ballot, anyone (as long as they're season ticket holders) can enter but you can only get a ticket through that if you've not got one through the sale to points holders.
For European games - I think its an absolute nonsense that Thomas Cook customers are now guarateed a ticket "to remove uncertainty" whilst the rest of us book flights, hotels, etc with no certainty of a ticket. If you're booked on Thomas Cook and you miss out on a ticket, you dont get charged for the flight, so you're not out of pocket. Guess what happens if you don't go with Thomas Cook. Tell me why we've changed this?
If the game doesn't sell out (and I don't think any have this season so far) then its not an issue, but what happens when we get a club like Plzen (500 tickets) next year? You're guaranteeing 40% of the tickets to Thomas Cook customers. Guess what happens to the price of the already expensive flights?
We've done this to death but there were 3 options:
1) Risk under-subscribed flights being cancelled leaving those who have booked and like the fact that it's a day flight, fully escorted, scrambling around at short notice for aomething that they can't do in a day and have to make their own arrangements for transfers.
2) Risk flights going with empty seats, which the club have to pay for, as they did for Shakhtar last season.
3) Risk some tickets going to people (who still have to be season ticket holders on the CL scheme) who might not qualify normally.
When we talk about fairness, all of these are unfair to someone. In the end, we decided (3) was the least bad but recognised that there could be a problem occasionally
As far as I'm aware, no other options have been discussed. Why haven't we looked into what other clubs do, like having a rolling period of loyalty points eg last 5 years, or for Europeans, selecting maybe 7 games fromt the last couple of seasons that weren't popular, and people who have been to all 7 get dibs, then 6, then 5, and so on.
I don't understand how our supporter "representatives" can have come to their conclusions, and don't think they are representative of away supporters.
There are at least 4 of us who do away games regularly so you're talking nonsense. Just to make it clear again, we put forward 3 initial options to the club regarding dropping giving points for away games, a ballot for 18-25 year olds and dropping the Platinum scheme. Those aren't the end of the matter though. We also agreed to set up a working party to look at other, more radical options about what we could do about the points system and ticketing generally and everything, including your suggestions, are on the table. But it's stuff that needs to be thought about carefully, unlike the 3 quick-wins we suggested.
We're meeting at the end of next week to commence discussions. So you're right that no other options have been discussed but that's not because we've closed the door on them.
