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    Away team hotels

    I was passing The Westin hotel this morning. This is one of the go-to hotels for the richer clubs who play in Valencia. In fact it's a mere 7-minute walk from Mestalla. Some clubs, such as Barcelona, don't actually stay the night, but book rooms and other facilities for daytime use.

    Now many clubs don't have the funds for overnight accommodation, while a few are able to use charter flights when necessary. So how about your team? What are their normal travel arrangements and do these differ for evening matches? And which hotels in your town tend to be booked by away teams with the means to pay?


    #2
    The North Lakes hotel in Penrith (and very close to the M6) is quite popular with teams playing at Carlisle.

    For the Euro 2000 play off first leg at Hampden, England stayed at the Cumbria Park hotel in Carlisle - at least for the Saturday night, as it was the scene of the rumoured all night drinking session (and associated fallings out) after the game which was blamed for England's lacklustre performance (in the second leg). This was also the venue, years earlier, of both of my sisters weddings, so I've always been amused by the thought of the England team getting hammered next to the pond which I was wrongly accused of pushing my cousin into (he slipped and blamed me, I was yards away at the time). Maybe that's what started the England players off actually, maybe Michael Owen fell in and blamed Paul Ince.
    Last edited by Walt Flanagans Dog; 17-05-2020, 09:07.

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      #3
      The Marriott in Waltham Abbey used to house loads of teams coming to London. No idea if it still does.

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        #4
        Lower division sides pick from one of two chain hotels in Plymouth, either Jurys or the Copthorne. One of my mates stays in Jurys when he comes down for Argyle weekenders and often finds himself sharing breakfast with identi-kit young men in matching tracksuits. He's yet to run around the hallways banging on random doors to disrupt their sleep, though one away team manager did try and persuade the hotel to keep all other guests out while his team ate breakfast.

        When Coventry were in the first division and down on a pre-season tour they stayed in the very plush Boringdon Hall at the same time as my wedding. I bumped into Steve Ogrizovic in reception and offered to buy him a pint but Gordon Strachan gave him the glare that said 'best refuse'.

        And, on a work conference in Cardiff in the early 2000s we stayed in a place just outside the city where both the Welsh football and rugby teams were also in residence. Long after the players had gone to bed, then manager Mark Hughes was still at the bar and very entertaining he was too.



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          #5
          The Harpenden House Hotel (don't look for it - it's not there anymore) was sometimes used as a stopover for teams playing at Wembley the following afternoon.

          One Saturday morning in June 1996 Colin Hendry wandered into the shop I worked in at the time, before joining the rest of the Scotland squad and heading off to play England in the Euros.

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            #6
            Did you tell him a joke? But it went over his head?

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              #7
              I think that when teams are due to play Chelsea they tend to stay at the Chelsea Harbour Hotel:


              Last edited by Nocturnal Submission; 19-05-2020, 10:47.

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                #8
                I doubt any Scottish club has an overnight stay but teams at East End Park have often used the Pitbauchlie hotel in Dunfermline for pre and sometimes post match food or a bit of a sleep.

                Livingston used the function room before our wedding reception was set up there, during Jim Leishman’s tenure with them. It did mean we got a photo with the man himself too (albeit a fair few guests skipped the dull bit between the ceremony and dinner by catching most of the 0-0 draw a mile up the road).

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                  #9
                  There is a hotel near Manchester Airport that I presume has been used by sides before playing Manchester clubs. It's got a golf course in the grounds, as well as a full size football pitch. I once saw Cheadle Town play Dinamo Bucharest in a friendly there.

                  Deviating slightly from the topic, when I went to Villarreal I stayed in pretty much the only hotel in town. When I went down to the lobby before heading to the game, I found the Villarreal team leaving the hotel to go onto their team bus.

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                    #10
                    Was that the Sercotel?

                    https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Locati...n_Country.html

                    By the way, the official name of the town is Vila-real.
                    Last edited by Sporting; 18-05-2020, 17:53.

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                      #11
                      On another angle in the original question, when Carlisle were a bit more flush they would occasionally fly to away games. Occasionally they would then allow the team bus to be used for supporters' travel, so one time for an away trip to Colchester we got to go on the luxury bus (and watch England play PNG in the RLWC, which dates it as autumn 2008, live on Sky Sports) while the team flew (to Stansted or maybe even Southend). Very occasionally, and a bit earlier than this, they would sell spare seats on the plane to well-off supporters to help offset the cost.

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                        #12
                        Originally posted by Sporting View Post
                        Was that the Sercotel?

                        https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Locati...n_Country.html

                        By the way, the official name of the town is Vila-real.
                        No, having had a look at a map it was the Palace.

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                          #13
                          Don't Man City have a home hotel on the Etihad Campus? I know that they own several floors of a city centre hotel where several of their players live.

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                            #14
                            I don't know if they still do this as I no longer work there, but when Manchester United played mid-week away games in London they would often eat at the restaurant that rented ground floor space from the office building I worked in (Roux at Parliament Square). They brought their own MUFC branded dining chairs, clearing out the restaurant's own ones in advance.

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                              #15
                              I learned this past year that when teams have overnight stays for games at Cheltenham they tend to stay at the nearest hotel to where I live. Not that there's any reason to get excited over the likes of Scunthorpe or Colchester staying at the local 4 star hotel.

                              When we played Leicester last summer though, they stayed there. One of the parents of my son's team is one of the people who deals with club bookings and she was able to set up a meet and greet for one of our other players who is a big Leicester fan. Apparently Brendan Rodgers and Jamie Vardy couldn't have been nicer to the lad. Had we been a closer knit team of parents, as we are now, then I'd like to think she'd have arranged for the whole team to meet them.

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