Well, it wouldn’t be an Albion versus Premiership opponents clash without the club making some sort of spectacular cock-up in the ticketing department, and they’ve done it again with this one.

Against Spurs and West Ham, the issue wasn’t just that demand outstripped supply, but also that Season Ticket Holders didn’t get priority for tickets.

So now we’ve got the Membership schemes, and a brand spanking new website to go with it. Gold Members (Season Ticket Holders) get first dibs on tickets. Blue members (who pay £30 a year) get in second, and lastly White members are 3rd in line for any away tickets. If you’re not on the system as a member you can only go if the game is pay on the gate. That should be all dandy.

Except it’s not.
For some reason, from the day of the draw until today anyone has been able to register themselves as a white member, or upgrade themselves to blue. As a result, demand has once again totally outstripped supply. Is it right that someone who has been to every away game this season as a white member has the same priority as someone who decided to join the scheme this time last week? Nope. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but it wouldn’t have been too hard for the Albion to suspend sales of new memberships until existing members have a chance to purchase tickets, would it?

But there’s another spanner in the works. The new “state of the art” ticketing system, introduced by the club at the beginning of the season. Liverpool use it and it works wonders, apparently. That’s Liverpool with their 40,000 odd supporters at each home game. So how come so many Albion supporters were unable to log in with their user numbers sent to them by the club? So how come, when white members were able to buy tickets at 9am this morning, the website crashed? Some supporterss have unable to buy tickets all day. Many have even gone for the (unadvisable) option of gettings tickets in the home end at Villa Park, which to be honest, is a great shame. In the unlikely event Murray or Forster nick a 90th minute winner, do you really want to have to sit on your hands?

So that’s it then. Shambles?
Nope. It gets worse. Somehow, this brand spanking new ticket system which is going to be the dogs bollocks at Falmer has cocked things up so badly that the club has lost track of how many they’ve sold. The situation is so ridiculous (and we don’t mean to scare you!) that there is a chance they’ve taken payment for more tickets than actually exist. Now, the wearebrighton.com team are no experts on such matters, but we’re fairly sure that selling say, 7000 tickets, when you’ve only got 6000 to sell, is a fairly bloody huge faux par.

The one plus side to come from this? The ticket office staff, and club press officer Paul Camillin (who many of you might know as ‘Insider’ on NSC) have worked their arses off to try and keep everyone happy. Ultimately their attempts have failed, but not through their own doing, but by the piss poor infastructure and system in place. Two people behind a counter isn’t enough when you’ve got as many 10,000 people ringing up, booking tickets online, e-mailing the club, or coming into the shop itself.

Let’s hope the club finally sorts things out at Falmer, when they’ve got up to 22,000 tickets to sell each week. I won’t be holding me my breath though.

17.54 UPDATE: Apparently tickets are now available again to members via the club website. What chaos!

Let us know if you’ve got a ticket, if you haven’t got a ticket, if you’re in the home end, if you’ve got a solution to the ticket shambles, or if you’ve got anything else you want to report. Check us out on Twitter or on Facebook. Thanks.