Tickets for Sunderland selling fast

TICKETS for Coventry City’s keenly-awaited trip to Sunderland have been selling fast.

The tickets for the match at the Stadium of Light on Saturday, November 23, went on priority sale to season ticket holders at 9am yesterday morning and fans had snapped up a third of the club’s away allocation within half an hour. That figure rose to 800 by lunchtime.

City have been given a disappointingly low allocation of 1,496 for the fixture.

Sky Blues fans are unhappy with the reduced allocation for the game after close to 3,000 made the long journey to the North East last April for what was one of the club’s most memorable away days in years as Mark Robins’ men beat the Black Cats 5-4.

The allocation has been slashed by almost half due to the off-field behaviour of supporters in the immediate aftermath of last term’s fixture.

According to the Sunderland Echo , Sunderland City Council’s Regulatory Committee decided to limit the number of tickets for the Sky Blue Army.

The two clubs have held a bitter rivalry since 1977 when the Black Cats were relegated from the top flight on the same day that the Sky Blues survived, playing out a 2-2 draw with Bristol City.

The decision was made after talks involving Northumbria Police, and the same restriction was applied to Portsmouth fans, whose allocation cut to just 2,000 in August.

Meanwhile, 400 tickets have been sold for ity’s FA Cup firstround trip to Colchester United on Saturday.