The new Arsenal stadium at Ashburton Grove is, after all, designed to cope with the number of away supporters which the competition rules dictate. The issue, apparently, is that it's not been tried yet. The authorities want us to step up more gradually and so, rather than go straight from 3000 away fans to 9000, for this match (on the 31st) Tottenham will be getting 8.5% of the ground rather than 15%, which comes to just over 5,000 seats.

Tottenham were also, quite rightly, supported in their view that there should be a 'percentage parity'. So our allocation for the first leg remains at just 3,000 (available now).

They also won out in the pricing. Arsenal wanted to do the normal thing and make it a really cheap night out, but since in this case it would have affected Tottenham's income the FA ruled that we had to make it a 'Category B' game (not quite full whack but not the normal 'budget' price), but we are allowed to sell concession tickets throughout the ground. The tickets will go on sale to season ticket holders on Monday.

Fair play to Arsenal for trying to make it cheap. In regular League Cup ties you feel that they're not just doing us a favour. Having turned it into a reserve team competition they probably wouldn't fill the ground on a normal League Cup night if they charged the full amount. But this is a semi-final against Tottenham so they could probably have charged whatever they liked.