Vitesse Risk Crowd Problems After Small Ticket Allocation

Vitesse Arnhem are risking possible crowd issues after standing firm on the minimum allocation they have to give of only 1,400.

If you scan social media you would assume that half of the population of Southampton is heading to Arnhem for the Europa League match on the 6th August, add to that the fact that most of them by their own admission will have no chance of qualifying for a ticket via Southampton Football Club and have already bought tickets in the home section on line and you can see a major issue in the pipeline.

By conservative estimates there could be as many as 2,000 Saints supporters in Arnhem either without a match ticket or with a ticket for the home areas and that could spell trouble for the Dutch police.

The real bugbear though is that the stadium is likely to be far from full, despite holding 25,000 Vitesse have not had an average crowd of above the 20,000 mark for many a year, there are likely to be swathes of empty seats on the night, including two blocks presumably being used as a buffer zone between the Saints fans and Vitesse supporters.

If Vitesse had allocated these tickets to Saints then it would have taken a fair chunk of Saints supporters off the streets and out of the bars whilst the game was on.

Instead the Arnhem police are going to be stretched to not only deal with issues within the ground with so many Saints fans possibly in the home areas, but to police the City Centre where there will be a lot of Saints supporters in the bars or in the proposed fan zone.

The upshot though is that the more Saints fans there are who are not in the ground but in the bars increases the potential for trouble.

Perhaps Vitesse will come to their senses and increase the allocation but I doubt it, it seems Saints have tried their best to convince them hence the delay in getting out ticket news, but it has fallen on deaf ears.

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