Plymouth Argyle (H) August 4th, 3.00pm

Gotta be trolling :wink:

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Id say we shall win 2 - 1. Cook and Leahy to score. Im sure it will be a patchy match as usually games i go to lack any quality xD but i converted my cousin to be a walsall fan and it will be his second walsall match and so far the only other game he came to was the Northampton match. Hopefully he is a lucky charm!

Just got me tickets.

I’m not confident in the slightest and will go for a 2-0 defeat. Probably means we’ll win 3-0 which I’ll absolutely take haha

Frustrated to be reading that a club visiting Walsall might have fans who may not get a ticket when the reality is that there will be more empty seats than occupied ones in the ground. I hope we can get them all the tickets they need and make it pay on the day for them.

Should be an intriguing game and once again I’m really looking forward to it.

2-2 Guthrie and Cook for us. 5,348 in attendance.

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Why on earth would we want that bar dollar? ■■■■ it why not just give them the home end! Better yet just play it away.

Personally, I’d give them 3k tickets and make it a good atmosphere -we need the money. If Walsall fans can’t be ar$ed to turn up then it’s the club’s fault for failing to stimulate interest by signing enough decent players in the summer.

Make it a good atmosphere for them. Great.

Its not Plymouths fault that the club is run by a bunch of clowns , why ruin their day!

Couple of reasons.

One is the much needed revenue. Firstly the ticket revenue itself and secondly, with no Saddlers Club, the club itself has a great opportunity to cater for thirsty away fans. We need as much revenue as we can muster.

The second is the morality and fairness. There is an event that can cater for 11,300. Less than half the seats will be filled and yet there might be people who miss out because they support Plymouth. Imagine any other event being sold on that basis - “ I know you’d like tickets to see ELO at Wembley stadium and we do actually have 30,000 unsold tickets, but you can’t have one because you’re from Walsall - sorry - it’s a safety/police thingy - nothing we can do”. And before you say “it’s different cos of segregation” i’d say we could easily accommodate 3,000 away fans at the motorway half of our ground without compromising segregation.

If we could sell 10,000 home tickets then I’d be up for restricting the away allocation. But we can’t so there’s no point.

In terms of creating a better atmosphere, my experience is that the bigger and louder the away fans following, the better response there is from our fans thus creating a far better atmosphere all round thereby enhancing the experience for everyone whether they be of a Walsall persuasion or from the other team.

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I’m all for exploiting away fans to be honest. Always find bigger away followings lift our end/players a bit and the money’s useful.

Morality and fairness? You pass that of as being because of safety? What on earth are you talking about? It’s got nothing to do with that.

It’s got everything to do with atmosphere. Turning it into a home game for them isn’t the same as a concert (a particularly strange strawman to draw, not many people are going to an ELO concert hoping they lose).

You’ve had a very different experience to me then. We didn’t seem very enhanced when we gave the dingles half the ground. If I remember right we got absolutely battered and it felt like and away game. Or are we just going to pretend that home advantage isn’t a thing?

again that’s not their fault , had the club signed some players we would more than our number them 2 to 1…

Nobodies saying it is their fault. Still don’t think it’s worth giving away home advantage,

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I can also think of many occasions where we’ve given a teams a large section of the family stand and we’ve won (Sheffield Wed, Leeds, Coventry in recent memory). The dingles were the outstanding team that year and would have beat us in that game regardless of their away support. For me giving bigger allocations doesn’t give up your home advantage.

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For me it definitely does. Maybe ■■■■■■ were the best team in the league that year but I don’t think it helped at all giving them that much of the ground personally. They weren’t unbeatable as we ourselves proved.

And with all due respect to Plymouth, our players probably raise their game against teams like Sheffield Wednesday and Leeds, big names. I can’t see our fans creating a cauldron and it being a red hot atmosphere against Plymouth.

If nothing else it’s financially beneficial, makes up for local rivals like the Sloppies who bring about 300.

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OK. We see it differently and that’s fine.

The morality thing is down to their being availability but not to folk from Plymouth. I don’t see that as fair. I used segregation as a reposte to the potential reply that “football is different”.

You remember the game versus ■■■■■■ when we gave them half the ground and we lost and I remember the game against Sheff Wed when we gave them half the ground and we won. And I guess that’s the difference between our points of view. You can associate negativity with anything and associate positivity with anything. And that’s the choice that we as grown ups can make every day. Which is great. Didn’t Northampton bring the largest away contingent last year?

Anyway, vive la difference.

To a concert? Yes it is. We definitely definitely see that differently to be honest.

Didn’t we produce our largest home crowd against Northampton also? As in kept it a home game?

I know what you’re saying to be fair. I just don’t necessarily think it makes much difference. I always feel like it raises our fans and players game.

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Yep. And by that token we made Fleetwood away a home game and we were shocking.

I don’t think it makes too much difference around what happens on the pitch on the day. It just makes it a better occasion for everyone involved in my opinion.

And to your earlier point around “is home advantage not a thing then?”, I think you’ll find that statistically it has been becoming less of a “thing” since the football league was invented. The delta between home wins and away wins is at an all time low which suggests that the advantage of being at home was about the stresses and strain of travel and unfamiliar surroundings which have largely been overcome more comfortable travel, sports science and psychology. The mythical “twelfth man” maybe sometimes influences a ref, but that’s about it.