Every chance there’ll be empty Pompey seats

Portsmouth are struggling to sell their tickets for the Checkatrade final. This is no surprise.

They have around 14,000 season ticket holders, who can apply for up to six Wembley tickets each. Sunderland have around 24,000 season ticket holders.

Pompey’s highest home attendance in this season’s Checkatrade is 3,313. Sunderland’s is 16,654. This is partly due to an ongoing boycott of the tournament by Portsmouth fans; only 189 of whom made the short-ish trip for their tie at Southend.

Sunderland’s average league gate of 31,327 is 72 percent bigger than Portsmouth’s. The clubs’ respective biggest league gates are 46,039 and 19,402 – a 137 percent difference.

Incidentally, Pompey’s biggest home crowd was against Sunderland.

I’m not deriding Portsmouth here. They are a great and usually a well supported club, considering they have such a relatively small catchment area and have endured desperate recent years.

But this doesn’t alter facts. Speaking of the 31 March final, Pompey chief executive Mark Catlin conceded: “It is going to be a tough call to sell 39,659, so I’m relatively confident tickets will end up on general sale.”

“I would be amazed if it was the case none went on general sale.”

So, using your skill and judgement, which club do you reckon was allocated the most Wembley tickets?

Sunderland have received 38,979 tickets for Wembley (capacity 90,000): 680 fewer than their opponents.

They were obviously and needlessly given the “wrong” end.

Perhaps the hope is that the unlucky 680 will be desperate enough to buy a ripoff hospitality package.

Either way, the likelihood is that there will be a visible surfeit of empty seats in the Pompey end that could have been filled with Sunderland behinds. We’re not talking big money here, but it’s still financially counter-productive.

No proper reason has been offered for all this and 680 people would like an explanation.

Or, better still, a cup final ticket.