A Letter To Arsenal From A Season Ticket Holder Of 30 Years After Missing Out On Wembley Carabao Cup Final Ticket

Has your application for a Carabao Cup final ticket been unsuccessful: Here's what one loyal Arsenal season ticket holder of 30 years wrote to the club

20 February, 2026 17:51

Anonymous

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A Letter To Arsenal From A Season Ticket Holder Of 30 Years After Missing Out On A Carabao Cup Final Ticket

Has your application for a Carabao Cup final ticket been unsuccessful?

Here's what one loyal Arsenal season ticket holder of 30 years wrote to the club

I have just found out that my ballot application has been unsuccessful for the Carabao Cup Final.

I have been a season ticket holder since 1995-96 and I go to every home game, including all the cup matches and have been trying to build up away credits to avoid the need for ballots.

I even travelled to Milan for Inter Milan vs Arsenal last month to finally get one away credit, as this was the only game that went down to zero away credits.

This is the third or fourth time I have been in a cup final ballot over the years, and I have never yet been successful.

I had to find other ways to see the FA Cup finals in 2014, 2015 and 2017, yet all my friends seemed to get lucky in the ballot.

So, this year I did a joint application with the two friends who sit either side of me in the hope that their luck would rub off on me.

However now I find we are all on standby. This is really gutting for me.

I just can’t believe I can be unlucky in every ballot for a cup final.

I also think it’s unfair that those of us who have been to every home game in the Carabao Cup this year are not prioritised for a final ticket over those who didn’t.

Yours from a loyal but bitterly disapppointed Arsenal season ticket holder of 30 years, and someone who first watched The Arsenal at Highbury in the early 1980s.

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comments

Alex in Wengerland
Feb 21, 2026, 0:09 #117349

I know several season ticket holders who have all entered the Carabao Cup Final ballot. Two of them applied for 2 tickets (with a relative who also have a season ticket) and two others who applied for a single ticket each. None of them were 'successful' and all have been 'wait listed'. "Piss up" and "brewery" spring to mind. There is also the complete shambles that was the "Early Bird" sale of the tickets for the Women's Champions League quarter-final (1st leg). Why were the supporters who have paid up-front for all WSL home matches not given the opportunity to buy their usual seats in some kind of pre-sale or even to buy any tickets in a pre-sale? As for the sale that allegedly started at 2pm, I fortuitously got in to the online Box Office at 1.57pm. When the link to the Early Bird sale appeared I clicked on it immediately and when I saw the seating plan to select my seats (within +/- 10 seconds max of the announced starting time) there were large areas of the block I usually in as well as the blocks either side of mine where there were no seats available for selection, seats that were "greyed out" denoting that the sale of them had already been completed, not even "pale blue" denoting that they were in another buyer's basket? So who had got into the Box Office that quickly or was it the touts grabbing all the tickets, the touts who the club don't seem to be very serious about stopping? It's like the club just take us for granted when you consider these two approaches to ticket sales. While I wish for nothing but a continuation of the level of success our club across both Men's and Women's Teams, if it all goes seriously wrong the club will lose fans at a rate never seen ever before. I've been following both the Men and Women's teams since 1990 and I know a large number of season ticket holders who are getting seriously p*ssed off with the fact that our club has turned from a football club who changed their home shirt every other season with the away shirt changing in alternate seasons (without even a number let alone a name) and sold a scarf and a couple of mugs into a leisure wear company which issues 3 new shirts every season plus training kit and fills in the rest of the season by issuing "Clothing", "Accessories", "Gifts" etc. I confess I have bought two 'leisure wear' tops but that was because I flatly refuse to walk around advertising Tourism in Rwanda! Seems like there is "something rotten in the state of" Arsenal FC and not just the fact that we have to advertise the Emirates airline on the front of our shirts