Referee: Robert Jones -  a full house last season for the Merseysider, overseeing Newcastle's home victories over Chelsea, Fulham and Brighton. 

He did us few favours tonight; keen to show visiting players yellow cards while home players went unpunished for very similar offences. The cautions for Gordon and Bruno however seemed lenient when watching the footage later, with neither challenge benefiting from slow motion replays.

VAR: Jarred Gillett.
 

Attendance: 53,080 including 3,000 away fans, who made a decent enough din from our vantage point on the top tier, although some with lower section places seemed to be less impressed.

Travelling fans were allocated a mixture of paper and digital tickets here and for the first time were commanded by NUFC to carry photo ID after random checks were announced 48 hours before.

This took the form of an unspecified number of away tickets (claimed to be less than 50) that were pre-selected by NUFC to fail when presented for scanning at the turnstiles. That made the time of entry irrelevant and retained the element of surprise lost had those ticket holders instead received instructions to collect their tickets with appropriate ID on matchday, as other clubs have tried.

Anyone in possession of a ticket that failed was directed to the adjacent away ticket office, where NUFC staff had envelopes containing duplicate working tickets for the same seats and handed them over upon production of photo ID that matched the named ticket holder. 

Because of the layout of the Etihad Stadium, there was no need to queue again for the security checks - something that wouldn't be possible at any other current Premier League stadium. Trying this amid the confines of Old Trafford for example would be memorable for all the wrong reasons.....

From what we observed ourselves and what others have reported, the checks seemed to have worked in most scenarios - albeit the issue of travel groups when paper tickets arrive en masse and nobody knows which ticket is which did prove to be problematic in some cases. The issue we raised  in advance about a lack of clarity over what photo ID was acceptable didn't seem to matter in the event, but that lack of clarity was avoidable.

NUFC's rationale for the spot checks was to deter so-called loyalty point hoarders, whose accrued points totals allowed them to buy tickets but then pass them on rather than physically attending. 

The club's pledge to punish season ticket holders whose ticket was used by another fan by deleting their loyalty points or even cancelling their season ticket certainly had the desired effect in terms of sales, which were far slower than would previously be the case. To reiterate though, nobody with the requisite amount of points missed out on physically attending this game if they wanted to.

The timing of this televised Etihad visit on a Saturday night in August will have deterred some from attending but the fact that tonight sold out at 10 points compared 45 points to last season (a televised Saturday 12.30pm KO in March) would seem to back up the "hoarder" theory.

"Fairness to all supporters" was the club's explanation for this stance, but in 41 years of watching United away from home it's hard to recall a more divisive or emotive subject than the fallout from those four words: excepting the infamous Tyne-wear derby fan ban of the 1996/97 season.

On one side are travellers who due to an endless list of personal circumstances don't currently have season tickets or enough loyalty points, but did the miles to form the away support at games, to be routinely praised by the club for their backing. As one disgruntled fan said this week, "where were you when you were shite? Southend, Watford, Palermo and Moscow, that's where."

The targets of their discontent are the club who now seek to exclude them, fan groups that they perceive advocated change for personal gain and fellow supporters now keen to watch a successful side on the road, but who previously made no effort to gain loyalty points in order to do so.

Another repeated view is that the club have acted on the views of fans who still don't qualify for away tickets, exchanging one closed shop for another. That mindset is aided by seeing implausible calls for loyalty points to be awarded for purchasing merchandise, attending home friendlies etc.

There's also a suspicion by some that the ticket clamp down seeks to undermine the independent traveller "bus culture" in favour of something more corporate. Amid claim and counter-claim as to whether that sector of fans were targeted for ID checks today, our viewpoint will be influenced by whether attempts are made to sell Champions League away tickets bundled in with club transport, as was the case here many years ago. That was unacceptable then and it's unacceptable now.

Another popular refrain from the newly-disenfranchised travellers are that those moaning about a lack of tickets are those without access to the previous unofficial, ad-hoc system. Will they slope off as quickly as they popped up if results and conditions aren't to their liking, or the timing and distance of the trip doesn't fit? The points level at which Brighton will sell out will be interesting.

Add in the increasing ticket demands of a successful club, be they places for player's pals, staff, sponsors, corporates, overseas dignitaries or international followers and the disquiet that surfaced during the Carabao Cup Final ticket allocation process is becoming ever more evident. That isn't helped by a club hell bent on imposing fundamental changes without a coherent overall plan. 

The "new fan" jibe of course is only partly accurate, given that there has been no public sale of season tickets since the Ashley era. 

For season ticket holders who have renewed year after year but never built up loyalty points due to another endless list of personal circumstances, this tightening of the rules is both welcome and overdue, allowing them to get tickets under their own name rather than relying on unofficial channels. They would also point out that they directly fund the club via the cost of their home season tickets.

Setting aside the civil liberty-related qualms of being required to carry photo ID, the fact that the club sought to randomly criminalise their own fans here and further complicate a day already upended by the kickoff change and ever-increasing security checks doesn't sit easy with us. Guilty until proven innocent seems to be a poor return for a lifetime of support.   

To equate a parent passing on a ticket to their offspring with someone punting one for significant financial gain and label both as touting is also deeply regrettable. Unlike the ludicrous sums that online ticket brokers are quoting for home games, selling away tickets at a mark-up is something we've only witnessed at cup finals. Like election fraud, this seems to be an invented situation; something NUFC even allude to by calling it "potential ticket touting."

Although there's nothing in their trophy cabinet, the club have quickly found themselves victims of their own success. We don't pretend to have any definitive answer and see the validity of both factions. However there has to be some recognition of the reality of the away ticketing situation; a zero tolerance approach where someone who is unwell on the day of a game cannot pass a ticket on to a known associate without catastrophic consequences serves nobody.     

PS: This game also saw the first ballot take place of season ticket holders with less loyalty points than the number that the away allocation sold out on, in this case 10 points. An unspecified number of tickets were distributed in this way, but were also non-transferable.
  

City's three pieces of silverware were displayed on the pitch before kick-off, with old boys Mike Summerbee (FA Cup), Tommy Booth (Premier League) and Joe Corrigan (Champions League) doing the fetching. We didn't see the Super Cup, perhaps Stephen Ireland didn't turn up....