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Opinion

Baggies in perfect shape on pitch for West Brom v Newcastle United but ticket sales a struggle 8 days out

4 years ago
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On Tuesday 3 March 2020 at 8pm, it is kick-off for West Brom v Newcastle.

A decider to see who reaches the last eight of the FA Cup and then be only one step from Wembley.

The tie to be sorted on the night, no replays and instead extra-time and penalties if necessary.

The Baggies had been struggling on the pitch, flying high at the top they suddenly went from 14 December 2019 to the end of January without winning a single league match.

However, West Brom have now hit great form with perfect timing for both the promotion run-in and the FA Cup.

A brilliant 3-0 away win on Saturday means an almost perfect February so far, five games and 13 points from a possible 15, four wins and a draw.

Now four points off second placed Leeds and a massive nine points off those chasing automatic promotion spots.

With home games against Preston (Tuesday) and third bottom Wigan (Saturday), another couple of wins could/would see the Baggies potentially 12 or more points above third (with only 10 Championship games to go), ahead of West Brom v Newcastle.

Circumstances that would very likely them see playing a far stronger team against NUFC than they have done in previous rounds.

West Brom are by far the biggest goalscorers in the second tier with 62 goals, which is ominous for a Newcastle team who have conceded more (29 in 14)  away from home than any other PL team.

The excellent recent Championship form (or cup run) hasn’t though translated to cup fever on ticket sales. With only eight days to go, West Brom are looking at a gate of under twenty thousand with still seven thousand tickets unsold, meaning less than 14,000 home fans have committed so far.

Newcastle fans of course quickly snapped up all available away tickets before any sale to members, never mind general public.

The clubs announcing that the 5,050 allocation won’t be increased despite the lack of interest from West Brom supporters.

Newcastle have the whole of the Smethwick End but a bit of a puzzle why that didn’t equal more tickets.

Talk of that end holding up to 5,500 and for example in January 2017, Derby had 5,351 tickets for that Smethwick End. So sounds like extra segregation maybe? A shame when so many NUFC fans would have gladly bought up more tickets.

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