Manchester United Supporters Trust have launched legal action over the decision to cut their away support allocation after the club had already sold the tickets for their clash with Chelsea on October 22nd.
The game’s time was unconfirmed before the tickets went on sale, with no broadcast slots left and European commitments making finding a suitable time for the clash difficult. As a norm, sides in the Europa League play on Sundays to avoid a short turnaround, but Chelsea are in action in Austria on Tuesday evening, making such a decision problematic.
In the end, a decision was made to play the game on Saturday evening, but it meant cutting the no. of tickets on offer to travelling fans to just 2300, with a Met Police statement explaining that
“The clubs were unable to agree to an earlier kick-off due to concerns about TV commitments, so an alternative solution had to be found,”
“At a meeting of the Safety Advisory Group, a compromise was reached that involved the clubs agreeing to reduce the away ticket allocation to 2,370 which, in turn, changed the risk rating of the fixture from high to medium” they added.
“While we accept that this may disappoint and inconvenience some fans, it was not the only option available to the clubs and was not a decision taken directly by the police.”
“For a Supporters Trust to engage lawyers is always a last resort, but enough is enough”, they explain in a statement.
“United fans, and football supporters in general, have had their fill of being on the receiving end of unfair and irrational decisions by Councils and the Police who seem to consider us to be a public order problem rather than ordinary people freely enjoying a day out.
“Tickets had been sold for this game and fans are being treated like second-class citizens.”
“The police initially sought to cut our allocation from 2,994 to 1,500,” they added. “We have strongly opposed any reduction and worked with Chelsea to present a range of mitigations to the local Safety Advisory Group, which we believe could have allowed the game to proceed safely with our full allocation of fans.”
