How is sharing tickets among mates at face value a touting cabal though? It's an understandable reaction to the system as it currently exists.
Ok, maybe it's not touting if it's at face value, but it is definitely a cabal. Many people (not B@rneylfc I might add, just to be clear) are touting their tickets though.
I was lucky enough to get tickets in the summer sale and so have had tickets for all home games except the Cat As so far this season, but my bad luck this week leaves me with nothing for the rest of the season. Due to the nature of my work, I cannot check frequently for individual sales either, so I'm left feeding on scraps and relying on exchanges for the rest of the season. I have no chance of ever reaching 13 games with the system as it stands. I am a committed supporter and would like to attend every game, yet there are people who cherry pick their games, sell on the rest, yet are credited with supposed "loyalty". This really gets my goat.
The only way to make it fair would be for members to register all the games they would like to attend at the start of the season, and then for a ballot to be held for each game. Yes, you may have 8000 people applying for 5000 tickets for most games, but at least this would mean that if you applied for them all, you would be likely to have 5/8 of the games spread throughout the season rather than finding yourself in a situation where, effectively the club have cut you off for the entire second half of the season.
People who are currently lucky enough to have a divine right to 19 games a season would obviously object due to their own self-interest.