You’re in the queue

Morning all, Andrew M is out of action today, so I’m on cover duty for the morning…the 83rd time you’ve had to put up with me on the main blog in the last 10 years, I just checked.

There’s not a whole lot happening on the Arsenal front. After a couple of days off, the players should be back at London Colney to begin preparations for Sunday’s clash with Chelsea, the first of seven games next month that will go a long way towards deciding whether this side ends the season with silverware. We won’t know until Friday who we face in the Champions League Round of 16, but a trip to Germany looks likely. Bayer Leverkusen’s 0-0 draw with Olympiacos last night means they won their play-off 2-0 on aggregate, and Borussia Dortmund hold a 2-0 lead over Atalanta ahead of this evening’s second leg.

Elsewhere, Atletico Madrid made light work of Club Brugge (Agg 7-4), Newcastle beat Qarabag again (Agg 9-3), and Bodo/Glimt stunned Inter with a second win in quick succession, this time in the San Siro, to progress (Agg 5-2). What a story for the plucky Norwegians, possible quarter-final opponents for the Gunners, who’ll no doubt become so rich from this year’s UEFA prize money, they’ll take an iron grip on their domestic league thus destroying its competitiveness forever. Or something like that.

It’s fair to say that March is about as varied as it gets on the fixture front for Arsenal. Sunday’s big London derby, two middling Premier League sides in Brighton and Everton, League One Mansfield in the FA Cup, a Champions League double-header and a cup final against Manchester City. All packed into three weeks. I know the manager likes to take things one game at a time, but as a fan, it’s hard not to look ahead, especially when tickets need buying and travel needs sorting.

Talking of which, nothing takes the shine off a Wembley trip quite like navigating Arsenal’s Ticketmaster portal. I can’t speak for everyone trying to buy Carabao Cup final tickets yesterday, an admittedly privileged problem, but joining the queue, getting through to the seat selection page and then being booted out of the system for “suspicious activity” is, choosing our words carefully, not ideal, particularly when you’re supposed to be working at the same time.

A quick scan of social media suggested plenty were in the same boat. Stories ranged from tickets vanishing from baskets to people being timed out by a system that then promptly crashed. Of course, once you’re dumped back at the start, what do you do? You panic, grab another device or two and try again, which probably doubles the traffic. After 90 minutes that were more treacherous than watching us play Wolves, and with the Waiting Room holding image still showing a team lineup featuring Sokratis and David Luiz (please, Arsenal, update it!), we got there. That said, if yesterday was anything to go by, the red and white end at Wembley is going to look like a Pep Guardiola tribute act after all the hair that got torn out.

Once things had calmed down, I messaged the club for an official line. They said a bot attack early in the process led Ticketmaster to kick people out of the waiting room, and access was only restored once the bots had been cleared. “The critical thing was ensuring bots weren’t able to access tickets,” said a club official. I suppose if you’re at Wembley on 22 March and find yourself singing North London Forever next to a ChatGPT avatar, we’ll know how well that worked.

Elsewhere, the Premier League and Arsenal have finally acknowledged that the upcoming home game with Everton, already moved from Saturday 14th to Sunday 15th March at 2pm, could shift again if UEFA schedule the second leg of our Champions League round of 16 tie for Tuesday 17 March. With Sky Sports holding the UK broadcast rights, if it does move, you’d imagine an 8pm Saturday slot is the most likely outcome.

It’s worth saying again that treating supporters like this at such short notice is exhausting. Both sets of fans were messed around when the reverse fixture went through a similarly muddled scheduling process just before Christmas, and now we’re here again. With so little wiggle room in the calendar, made worse by the expansion of UEFA’s competitions and the continued Saturday 3pm broadcast blackout, it feels like this is only going to happen more often.

Supporter groups have been banging this drum for years. The Football Supporters’ Association has repeatedly warned that constant fixture shifts, late TV moves and unsociable kick-off times disproportionately hit matchgoing fans, especially those who travel long distances or book accommodation in advance. They’ve also pointed out the irony that while broadcast deals keep getting bigger, the burden of flexibility seems to fall almost entirely on supporters, who are expected to absorb the cost and disruption without much say in the process.

Closer to home, the Arsenal Supporters’ Trust have pushed back on decisions that increase the burden on matchgoing fans, whether through pricing or late scheduling changes, warning that loyal supporters are too often expected to absorb the cost of a game shaped increasingly by broadcast and commercial priorities. The wider concern is that when fixtures feel provisional, and prices keep creeping up, the matchgoing experience feels wholly transactional rather than communal.

Fans will always adapt because that’s what fans do, but that willingness shouldn’t be mistaken for fairness. Loyalty shouldn’t be treated like an unlimited resource, not when you also want me to spend £80 every month on the same tracksuit in a different colour!

Anyway, rant over. Andrew M will be back tomorrow. Catch you next time.

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