Its a magnificent gesture but the club have really fucked up communicating these plans - they were getting hundreds of tweets and messages when it was first moved asking whether they could make an announcement about whether it was not advised to book independent travel, at which point Spike was on about 3 sold out planes I think. Obviously people will do what they like and book to go but most of us booked independent travel when it was announced there were 6000 tickets, which realistically most who go to regular away games would feel pretty sure of getting especially in the pandemic when many older fans might not consider going.
So its not really about points or who gets tickets or who has fair dibs, its about many of us who booked either just before or when prices were going astronomical, as we would do for any away game where fans are allowed, and now the potential is that there will be thousands of fans who essentially have travelled to a game that they won’t be allowed to go to, and yet all it would have taken was a sentence from the club to say ‘The advice from UEFA/Portuguese authorities is not to book travel as tickets are likely to be restricted to those on an official day trip’.
This would not have put everyone off, but it would have stopped the likely situation of 1000s of English without tickets in a city that will have much of police force focused on the game itself.
Also we forgetting Chelsea who presumably will not get a free trip so they will also have had fans booking travel before their tickets were announced (think they have loyalty system as well) so is it going to be one rule for them an another for us?
