If Ged Poynton, or anyone else, had got down off their high horse and talked to supporters and stewards, instead of trying to shift blame and hope everything will sort itself out, they might have begun to address the ongoing issues that their statements thus far have spectacularly missed.
After talking to a few people and thinking over what happened to me, there's a particular issue with turnstile blocks B & E at the Kop end and it's one that the club still hasn't acknowledged - we've christened it "the missed click".
In the two main entrances to The Kop, turnstiles B1-7 & E1-7, the card reader is one or two steps back from the actual turnstile. What has always happened with these turnstiles is still happening. It needs to lock after the person in front goes through before you scan your card. If it hasn't locked and you scan your card, it then locks when you push it to get through and, even though you are still on the outside, it counts you as having gone through before it locked.
In the past the turnstile operator would ask you to not push while he manually released the lock. People who use these entrances might remember that this used to happen quite often. The problem now is that there is nobody on those turnstiles with the ability/authority to see the green light, see what's happened & unlock the turnstile to let you through. In order to be sure of getting in now, you need to step forward and push the turnstile to make sure it's locked after the person in front of you is through, then step back & scan your card.
The computer has been applied to an ancient system that doesn't automatically move the turnstile through to a locked position before accepting the next scan and allowing the next person to pass through. Theses turnstiles rely on being manually pushed into a locked position after each person passes through them. Think of all the away grounds with more modern automated turnstiles, or even Merseyrail at Central & Moorfields, the turnstile automatically locks behind you. This doesn't happen with the turnstiles on blocks B & E and the turnstile is bit too far forward from the card reader for you to just push it and make sure it's locked before you scan your card.
So, repeating myself a bit here, if the turnstile hasn't been locked by the momentum of the person in front of you going through, then you scan your card, the computer assumes that you are in the unlocked turnstile and, when you push it to go through, you lock yourself out with the computer showing that you are in the ground. Then it's off to find a Fan Support steward to re-scan your card and hope that someone from the computer support crew is around & willing to push to the front of a queue to use the over ride card and get you in.
I'd hazard a guess that those two turnstile blocks are the original "full height" turnstiles installed in the old Kop in 1976 and retained when the stand was rebuilt. If anybody knows for sure, please let us know.
Anyway. Please don't forget to email Graham Smith at admin@spiritofshankly.com with any experiences or insights you have that may help us to avoid any issues at the Man United game.