IN THE LURCH

SO THE rumours were true.
Three days before the Nuremberg game the German club have done a U-turn and withdrawn all tickets sold to blues in home sections of their Frankenstadion.

It leaves an estimated 4,000 bluenoses in a frantic last-minute panic after buying their tickets in good faith and paying for their flights/accomodation.
Merseyside police have asked fans without tickets not to flock to the ground, but I think they know that message will probably be ignored.
Fans who thought they were all boxed off and ready to go - only to be left gutted at the last minute - are going to try their best to get a ticket.
That will mean a feeding frenzy for touts and German Ebay traders, and much of that business is likely to take place outside the ground.
It's concerning.
The potential for trouble is high when you've got lads who've been on the ale all day and then get knocked back for a ticket shortly before kick-off.
It seems German police forced the tickets to be withdrawn yesterday after suddenly deciding that the game is a “risk match.”
But many fans will be asking themselves the same questions?

* Why did Nuremberg happily sell 8,000 tickets to English fans if there were concerns about the fixture? I guess they were shocked by the large numbers of orders from our lot but surely they could have had their cruelly timed ‘re-think’ before they’d flogged nearly 8,000.

* What has sparked the concern about the fixture, apart from the predictably large amount of blues travelling? We conducted ourselves superbly in Kharkiv and prior to that I can’t recall any pitched battles in Villareal or Bucharest.

* Why are Everton fans finding themselves, once again, emerged in a ticket fiasco for a European game. If it isn’t the Post Office (because it was them who failed to deliver the Kharkiv tickets wasn’t it?), Uefa, or our own club’s official travel agent who has cocked up this time?

It shouldn’t be like this. We’ve waited a while to get into the group stages of European football and just want to enjoy it, yet it feels like we’re being hampered continually.

Anyway, let's hope that in the face of all this hassle our fans are dignified and good-natured when they get to Germany.

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