So where have they gone, Rick? Not to the fans that’s for sure. Have a look around any LFC fans forum and you’ll see that something like 90% of the fans in yesterday’s ballot were unsuccessful. Strange that, considering we were informed we’d have something like a 40% chance of success. The numbers don’t add up, and predictably the club are covering their tracks by ‘refusing to play the numbers game’ and not telling the fans exactly how many tickets went into that ballot yesterday.
Out of our measly allocation of 17,000 (I’ll get to UEFA in due course), we know 4,000 went to those with seven or more games on their fancards. Fair enough, but that still left 13,000 tickets. Take away another 1000 for the players and staff, that leaves 12,000. Maybe another 1,500 for former shareholders, and another 500 miscellaneous (sponsors etc), and that would leave around 10,000 or so to go in the ballot for those with six games on their fancards. How many had six games on their cards? Well the club were hinting at around the 30,000 mark, which is way too high in my opinion, as when you include those with seven or more, that basically means that 34,000 people went to every home game. I’m not having that, but let’s say for arguments sake that it’s accurate.
That means we have 30,000 people in a ballot for 10,000 tickets. In other words, a 1 in 3 chance. Now bear in mind that these figures are giving the club a huge benefit of the doubt, as there really should be more than 10,000 tickets, and less than 30,000 entries into the ballot. I’ve gone with the ‘worst case scenario’, and even then it works out as a 1 in 3 chance.
So how come then, in a survey of all the fans on TLW who were in the ballot, we had 305 fancards entered into the ballot, and only 46 got tickets? Roughly a 1 in 7 chance. Maybe TLW was just unlucky? Well no, actually. Look around the other sites and they have an even worse ratio, it’s more like 1 out of every 8. The Heart of England supporters club had 40 fancards entered into the ballot. They got three tickets. I know people who had six, seven, eight fancards in the ballot and got none.
Me personally, I had two, and neither came up. I could live with that if it was just the luck of the draw. If 10,000 tickets had gone in, and I didn’t get any, I’d be gutted obviously, but I wouldn’t be as angry as I am right now. I’m livid to be honest, as it’s blatantly obvious that the club has screwed the fans over. I ask again, where did those tickets go, Rick? I know you won’t answer the question, because you daren’t. Thousands of tickets have gone to corporates, sponsors and whoever else, and the fans have had to fight for the scraps.
Yes, those very same fans who Rafa and the players credit with playing a huge part in them getting to the final. The same fans who Tom Hicks and George Gillett has been eulogising about. We’re there when the club needs us, creating the kind of noise and atmosphere that can’t be matched anywhere in the world. When we need the club however, it’s a different story. In Istanbul we filled three quarters of the stadium. It’ll probably be the same this time, and that’s something that Parry has taken for granted. You can almost see him thinking to himself ‘oh they’ll find a way to get in, they always do’.
Well what if we didn’t? What if those who didn’t get tickets said: “Fine, we won’t buy from touts, we’ll watch the game in the pub”. It’ll never happen of course, but if it did you’d be left with a hardcore of around 10,000 lucky enough to get tickets from the club, and the rest of the stadium would be made up of corporate dickheads more interested in the jolly up than the game. Atmosphere? Don’t make me laugh.
And if we were 3-0 down at half time to Milan again, there wouldn’t be three sides of the stadium singing YNWA at half time and inspiring the team to a comeback. Rafa and the players appreciate the fans, but the club itself doesn’t give a flying one, they take our support for granted.
This isn’t about me not getting a ticket, as I’d be writing this even if my dad and I had gotten lucky in the ballot. Something has to be done about this, and if the fanzines and websites don’t speak out, then who will? Whether I got a ticket or not is irrelevant, I feel I have a responsibility to say something, not because I see myself as some kind of spokesman, but because a lot of people visit TLW, and the more people who read this the better. I would hope the other LFC sites will also be making their voices heard over this, as it affects everybody.
The way the whole ticketing thing has been handled has been wrong from start to finish. I strongly disagreed with season ticket holders in the auto cup scheme not getting priority over normal fancards with six games. I know not everyone will agree, but personally I feel that someone who hands over £600 before the season starts, and also makes a commitment to buy tickets for every single cup game should be given priority over somebody who paid £3 for a fancard and who may actually only have attended the six European games and nothing else.
I realise there are many fancard holders who will have gone to dozens of games home and away, but nonetheless, there will be some who only have six games on their card, and they were given the same chance of a final ticket as STH’s in the auto cup scheme. To me, that’s not fair, but I do accept that there is no completely fair way of doing it, and this is only a minor complaint in the grand scheme of things. There were other aspects of it far more glaringly wrong than this.
Let’s look at the decision to enter EVERY single fancard with six games into the ballot. Why? Why would you do that, it’s madness? How do the club know that EVERY single fancard holder would even want to go to the final? Two years ago, I didn’t go to Istanbul because I couldn’t really afford it, and I wasn’t going to deprive my family of a holiday so I could go to the final, much as I’d love to have gone. I know plenty of other people who were in the same position. Not everyone can afford to go to places like Istanbul and Athens, because it’s expensive and difficult to get to.
I couldn’t afford to go this time either, but my dad has paid for us both (we’ve already booked hotels and flights) because we missed out two years ago. If he hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have been going and therefore there’d be no point in me being entered into the ballot. I know I’m the only one in that situation, there will be hundreds, thousands even, of fancard holders with six games who have no intention of going to the final.
Yet they were all entered into a ballot, and some of them got lucky. Some of them are now selling on those tickets to the highest bidder. It stinks, and it was all so unnecessary. Why would Rick Parry do that, it makes no sense. All he had to do was say: “All fancard holders with six games who want to go to the final, send in an application and you will be entered into a ballot.” That way, the numbers in the ballot would be reduced, and the fans who actually want tickets have more of a chance of getting them.
He didn’t do that though for reasons known only to himself, and ‘30,000’ were entered into the ballot, with around a 1 in 3 chance of success. Except it was really a 1 in 8 chance at best, probably worse than that, because thousands of tickets weren’t put in the ballot, were they Rick?
When asked about it by the Daily Post today, LFC’s dismissive response was: ‘We won’t be drawn into the numbers game’. Of course you won’t, because if that fans actually knew where those tickets had gone to, there’d be mayhem. LFC (and by that I mean Parry) think they can just say nothing and ride out this storm, and the sad thing is they probably can, as people will do nothing.
I saw the idea put forward on another site that there should be a protest against Parry at Sunday’s home game with Charlton. The idea was shot down by some because ‘people will laugh at us’ or ‘it’s Everton that do that kind of thing, not us’. I despair sometimes, I really do. Some people are more concerned with how we look to outsiders than by what really matters. We’re just too nice, we’re a pushover. They treat us like dirt, and we do nothing because we don’t want to make a scene.
Open your eyes people, LIVERPOOL FOOTBALL CLUB HAVE SCREWED THE FANS OVER, and we shouldn’t just accept it because protesting is ‘not the Liverpool Way’. George Gillett and Tom Hicks are always talking about how important the fans are and how impressed they’ve been with us, so I wonder what their thoughts are about how we have been treated this week? I’d like to think they are disgusted.
I don’t hold them responsible for this, as they’re just getting their feet under the table and will have left these arrangements to the ‘old guard’ who after all, have had enough practice when it comes to cup finals. You can’t blame George and Tom for thinking it was in capable hands, but the fact is Liverpool’s ticket office is a joke, it’s always been a joke, and as long as Parry is pulling the strings it always will be a joke.
Of course, UEFA also have to be held accountable for this mess, but I don’t want to talk too much about them for the simple reason it deflects attention away from what our own club has done. Yes, 17,000 was a disgrace, but still, at least if the 17,000 had gone to the people it was supposed to, then it wouldn’t have been so bad. I expect to be shafted by UEFA, I don’t expect my own club to do the same.
My dad has been watching Liverpool since the fifties, but he’s had enough now. He says Athens is his last game, assuming he gets a ticket, and he is not going to renew his season ticket because of the sheer contempt the club have shown the fans. You’d have to be an absolute moron to believe the club have tried to look after the fans, as they so clearly haven’t. Thousands of tickets are unaccounted for, but it suits Parry to have people pointing the finger at UEFA’s pathetic allocation. “Don’t blame us, they only gave us 17,000 tickets and there just isn’t enough for everybody.”
I’ve been going to the game with my dad since I was five or six, and from next season I’ll be going alone. It saddens me so much, but I don’t blame him at all for how he feels, and a part of me wishes I could do the same and tell them to shove it. I won’t though, but even if I did, who would care? There are thousands waiting to snap up my season ticket if I gave it up, and the club know that, which is why they can be so blasé about it all and continue to treat us like dirt.
For many of us, the elation we all felt after the semi final has been wiped out, and all that is left is anger, sadness and resentment at how we’ve been treated. After the semi final, a group of us spurned the opportunity to go out and celebrate, because we wanted to book hotels and flights before they were all booked up. It wasn’t easy, but eventually we found a hotel in Athens and booked flights going out there via a one night stay in Stuttgart.
We were all on such a high, really looking forward to it. We had nine fancards - all with six games on - between us (we had friends and family who didn’t want to go to the final), and needed only three tickets. We liked those odds, and figured we’d have a good chance of getting tickets even if there was a ballot. We still need three tickets, but we’ve already paid £450 for the trip and can’t back out now. So we have to go over there and try and find tickets. We’ll probably have to pay over the odds from a tout, something I have never done in my life but now have no choice. I feel I deserved a ticket, but equally I know plenty of people far more deserving than me who have also missed out. I’m more sad for them than I am myself, especially when I keep hearing stories about douchebags who aren’t even matchgoers who have tickets.
One lad on the forum works in Taskers, and he said they gave four tickets away to staff courtesy of LFC. If they gave the staff four, no doubt the management had all filled their boots first. And was it just one branch of Taskers, or did all the other branches get tickets too? And if Taskers got them, then how many must the likes of Carlsberg have got? I don’t even want to think about it, as it’s making me feel ill.
Like I say, if they’d put all the tickets they had into the ballot, I wouldn’t have a problem, but it’s clear that they didn’t do that. The club have dished out tickets to whoever they wanted, and then put what was left over in the pot for the loyal fans. And there are some people happy to just sit back and accept it. We shouldn’t accept it, and nor should Tom Hicks and George Gillett, nor their sons Tom Jr and Foster, who are on the board.
I wouldn’t trust Rick Parry as far as I could throw him, but I do have some faith in the new owners. I was very sceptical about them initially, but they have won me over with their enthusiam and passion. You can’t fake that, and they really do seem to have taken the club to their hearts. Whenever they have spoken, there’s been an honesty and up frontness about them that we’ve never had from Parry, and although my trust may be misplaced (only time will tell), I think George and Tom genuinely do care about the fans.
It’s too late for our new owners to fix the mess that Parry has created and mend the broken hearts of those who will miss out on a final they deserve to be at, but they owe it to us to make sure it never happens again, and they owe it to us to remove those responsible for this mess.
Rick Parry received a half a million pound bonus when the takeover went through, as it was written into his contract that he was entitled to it. I’d like to know who agreed to that, but that’s another story for another time. He’s on a huge salary, he drives a brand new Aston Martin, and he’s got the life of Riley, swanning off on holidays to the likes of Barbados whenever he feels like. He’s doing that because of OUR MONEY, and his continued presence at our club is a slap in the face to every fan who has been denied a ticket for Athens. Where was Rick when the sh*t hit the fan yesterday after the ballot was made? Enjoying himself at Chester Races, that’s where.
Mind you, he has a habit of disappearing whenever something big is happening. This is the man who was in the cinema with his phone switched off the day before the 2005 summer transfer window closed, as Michael Owen was desperately trying to get hold of him in a last ditch attempt to avoid joining Newcastle. It probably wouldn’t have made any difference, but what chief executive worth his salt has his phone switched off 24 hours before the transfer window is due to close?
The same kind who took himself off on a Carlsberg trip overseas on the 2006 summer transfer deadline day, leaving Rafa alone to try (and ultimately fail) to broker a deal with Blackburn chief executive John Williams for Lucas Neill. The same kind who went to Barbados for three weeks in 2005 without sorting out a new contract for Steven Gerrard.
Gerrard had said he would sign a contract immediately after Istanbul, but nothing was forthcoming. Then Parry went away, and Gerrard repeatedly tried to get hold of him to find out what was going on, but got no answer and became so confused that he got it into his head he wasn’t wanted and ended up slapping in a transfer request. I’m not excusing Gerrard’s antics, but it was all so avoidable if Parry had done his job properly.
There is a history of
ups, but none greater than the one he managed this week with the allocation of OUR final tickets. So this is a plea to George and Tom, sort it out and get rid of this clown. At the moment this mess is not your responsibility, because you are new and we understand that you weren’t the ones overseeing this shambles. If you stand by and take no action against those responsible however, then you become equally culpable as it will appear as though you condone their actions. Rick Parry’s incompetance reflects badly on you, so fire his
.DAVE USHER TLW
