TERRACE TALK - Arsenal: Sunderland ticketing farce leaves fans down

Judging by the irritatingly incessant whining of the WOB (Wenger Out Brigade), despite the fact that we’re currently looking down on every other club in the country, there are far too many Gooners who simply can’t comprehend that the vast majority of fans spend their entire lifetimes waiting, mostly in vain, for their teams to win something.

With our own comparatively trifling nine-year sojourn in the silverware-starved wilderness interrupted by the euphoria of successive, memorable May day outings to Wembley, this adds a certain spice to the recommencement of a journey that many seem to feel is now destined to always culminate in another end-of-season trophy party. But then it’s been so long since we last lost an FA Cup encounter, that I guess it’s inevitable that we’ve become somewhat blasé. Folk seem to forget that every cup run requires a large slice of good fortune.

In spite of the incremental efforts to sabotage one of the highlights of the football calendar, I’ve always adored this unique FA Cup third round convergence of clubs from contrasting tiers of the football cake. The increased allocation of tickets for away fans will often result in a stonking atmosphere. Yet there’s simply no accounting for the incompetence involved in Sunderland returning around half of their tickets, too late, apparently for them to go back on sale to us Gooners. The FA badly need to address the fact that there were far too many empty seats all over the shop this weekend.