Recent ticketing news shows the disconnect between club and fans at Newcastle right now

Since the takeover Newcastle United's new board have rarely put a foot wrong when it comes to on-field decisions.

In fairness, their off-field decisions have been pretty good for the most part too, however, there is one big black cloud looming over the whole thing lately and that's ticketing.

As Newcastle becomes more successful and continues to play exciting football, demand for tickets has obviously skyrocketed. Those who gave up their season ticket in protest of the previous regime are now seeing the downside of their actions as they can't get to games any more.

The ballot system for tickets and the loyalty points system for away games is causing absolute chaos with fans never knowing whether or not they've got tickets for upcoming fixtures and then having to make/break plans depending on the outcome of the ballot.

The other thing that's riling up fans is the seemingly ever-increasing cost of tickets, pushing the working man out of the working-class game. As match-going fans are well aware, it's not just the cost of the ticket itself, but there's potential transport costs for those from outside of the city, there's the cost of the many, many bowls of loudmouth soup that accompany the games, or if you're taking the kids along the inevitable cost of something tangible for them to take home ... it all adds up.

So yes, while the club is a business and it needs to make profit to break free of the shackles of FFP, doing so at the expense of the hard-working fans who were here long before the takeover just sits a bit wrong.

Especially when you look at the ticketing prices in Germany. The Bundesliga lead the way when it comes to fair ticket pricing and that has been superbly reflected this week.

The difference in pricing for the home and away tickets for the upcoming Champions League games against Borussia Dortmund is actually embarrassing.

The German side are charging Newcastle fans just £16.50 per ticket whereas those who want to come to St James' Park will have to fork out £60 before they even start to look at travel and hotels.

Season tickets for Bundesliga sides are so much cheaper than any Premier League side it's actually disgusting. You can cry on all you like about the difference in quality, but at the end of the day, Bayern Munich sells a standing season ticket for $165 (£142) and they were able to buy Harry Kane for £100million, so that shows how inconsequential season ticket prices really are to a top-flight club.

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The Premier League needs to take a leaf out of the Bundesliga's book and start to cap ticket prices at a sensible level before the atmosphere is killed off at every ground because the only people who can afford to go are there as part of a corporate deal and don't even support the club they're watching.