how to get premiership soccer tickets?

[jdl22]

I agree with this. In 2000 I went to two matches before heading down to Spain for study abroad. I was visiting a foreign exchange student who lived with me my senior year of high school who lived in Stoke-On-Trent. At the time I was a Liverpool fan (now I basically only follow Sevilla, see avatar and location).

I went to Stoke City - Preston North End, which was a matchup of two of the better 2nd division (which is the third flight as you know) teams. The experience was incredible, small stadium with rabid fans and the match was amazing. Stoke went down 0-1 in the fifth minute or so and Stoke scored a goal just at the end of the second half and another during injury time to get the win.

Later I went to Liverpool - Middlesborough at Anfield. The experience there was good as well, big stadium and all that. The match was terrible however, Middlesborough were just looking for the 0-0 draw and got it by completely plugging the midfield. Also, Owen got hurt early.

It just so happened that I went to an amazing second division match and a boring premiership match, but in general I would highly reccomend going to a small club match as it's a wildly different experience. I was with my "brother" at the Liverpool match, when we were leaving the traffic leaving the city was completely congested with all the out of town fans leaving the match. The small clubs have much more local and hence diehard fans which makes for a different environment.

Having been to those matches as well as several Sevilla matches and watching Real Madrid - Manchester Utd. in the Champions League quarterfinal I think that watching big clubs in Europe is basically like watching professional sports in the US, although if you're like me and prefer their brand of football to ours then it's better. The point is that the feeling in the stadium is fairly similar. Going to the smaller clubs that don't have broad support in the country and world will give you a different experience you can't really duplicate here, except perhaps with smaller college sports teams or something like that.

[mosta]

thanks all for the insights. it looks like I can get Chelsea-Birmingham for GBP100 from more than one online broker. Tottenham-Newcastle was about the same (I thought it would be cheaper...). and it only goes up from there (Arsenal-Man U was close to GBP300). if I sign up to be a member at Chelsea, it's something of a rigamarole (passport photo!), and it costs GBP47, for tickets that would cost GBP50 and might not even be offered to me anyway.

I could shell out the GBP100 now, or wait and take my chances when I arrive over there. The one thing I don't want to happen is to show up at Chelsea and find the best offer on the street is some hundreds of pounds--or that nothing is left at all--and not even have time to fall back on Tottenham or one of the others. hmmm. (also, I have to factor in whether to buy another one for the girlfriend, or leave her on her own and risk suffering consequences.)

I don't rule out going to a lower division (and I still need to look more carefully at Fulham West Ham Charlton Tottenham), but plan A would have to be Chelsea-Birmingham on Sat and West Ham-Chelsea on Mon (Arsenal not being in town until the exorbitant Man U match).

[daveymck]

Personally I would get the tickets now if you can, the time you are coming is obviously the holiday season so you tend to get a lot of people who are home for the hols etc wanting to go, boxing day and the new year matches are always pretty busy. I suspect the spurs match would be the better game of the two even if it is the scum they are playing, Birmingham will sit back and try and be hard to break down at Chelseas so prob wont be over exciting.