The Gooner has been contacted by several fans that travel to a large number of away matches, and although not on the ‘away season ticket scheme’, have a serious amount of away credits due to their loyalty in attending Gunners’ matches far and wide.

Charlton away tickets (an allocation of under 3,000) went on sale at 12 noon last Monday. The box office decided the game was a Grade B one on the basis that they had struggled to sell out the allocation for the two previous visits to the Valley. However, both these fixtures were over the Christmas and New Year holiday period and one of them was broadcast live by Sky.

Of course there aren’t any rocket scientists taking decisions in the box office, but a September Saturday afternoon away game in London kicking off at 3pm without any live television transmission doesn’t require a great deal of intelligence in calculating demand would far exceed supply. Many would attend given the chance. So what if the last two Valley visits took time to sell out? The circumstances are quite obviously different.

So an obvious candidate to use the excellent away credits scheme, rewarding those who are prepared to travel for more than an hour away from home to support the boys in a regular basis. But no, it was open to all Gold and Platinum members – something in the region of 45,000 fans, and it was first come first served. Critically, no postal applications were allowed, for those that knew they would struggle to sit and press their phone’s redial button at work for the duration of Monday afternoon, or those that did not have internet access due to their working day.

Certainly happened here. I was supposed to get five tickets for myself and four mates, and could not physically get online until 6.45pm. Apparently the tickets were all gone by 4pm. My heart sank when I got the Arsenal website and discovered that not only would I not be attending, but I’d let down my pals. Fortunately they’ve been good about it, which has made me feel a bit better, but it is a situation (as we are all healthy for away credits) that should never have occurred. However, it soon became evident that mine was far from an isolated story, as many others who have even more reason to be there than I have also missed the boat.

The box office are staying consistent in not accepting any blame and claiming they did the right thing in making the tickets initially available to so many, although it is significant that the Reading away game is now a grade A+ game (Charlton being graded as B). This is a classic case of shutting the stable door after the horse has well and truly bolted, and a candid admittance that they did in fact get it wrong, Reading being a live TV match, some distance from London kicking off at 4pm on a Sunday.

I do not doubt that the box office staff have been deluged with complaints, although in fairness to them, I suspect the decision about Charlton was made by no more than one or two individuals. As to who it was, we shall never know, although the box office manager Ivan Worsell would seem an obvious candidate for any blame, and has in all probability been bollocked by Keith Edelman, which I imagine is not a pleasant experience.

For those that were successful in obtaining Charlton tickets, good luck to you, there’s no blame attached to yourselves for taking advantage of the situation. I just hope not too many of the tickets were bought by touts with memberships, although I fear otherwise. One thing is for sure, there will be a lot of regular faces missing in the away section on 30th September, and it will be interesting to see if the atmosphere is any different with so many ‘hardcore’ fans not there.

And in the unlikely event that anyone out there has any spares that they will not be using, please get in touch through this website. We know of many deserving homes for any tickets you find you cannot use for any particular reason.

One final request to the box office. If you are going to pull this kind of stunt again, please allow postal applications, giving those who cannot use the phone or internet on a workday afternoon the opportunity to apply. You know it makes sense… or maybe you don’t.