Have season ticket holders 'passed their sell-by date' for clubs?

[Getty Images] BBC Radio Manchester's Gaz Drinkwater and Joe McGrath discussed restrictions on season tickets in the latest episode of The Devils' Advocate. Manchester United has restricted the accounts of "thousands" of fans , in an operation aimed at identifying potential ticket touts. Drinkwater said he has "full sympathy" for fans who have fallen under the restrictions despite not being involved as touts. "It's pretty obvious that these were fans that were not touting tickets," Drinkwater said. "I love that Manchester United fans have made such a massive, loud deal about this and football fans have got behind it as well because hopefully that means that these appeals will be listened to." Football finance expert Kieran Maguire joined the podcast and gave his thoughts on why United might be taking this course of action. Maguire said: "There's the theoretical one which is perfectly understandable. There's an awful lot of touting at Manchester United as with other big clubs - Liverpool are similar, Arsenal are similar, Chelsea and so on. There's a lot of people making a lot of money through the resale of tickets. "The other issue is that season ticket holders, to a certain extent, have passed their sell-by date as far as the senior people at the club are concerned. If you're a local Red and you're going 19 times a season to Old Trafford, you're not going to the merchandise 19 times a season. "You're paying high but not excessive prices for your ticket and those tickets could be repackaged by the club and they could send you to a warehouse in Trafford Park and give you a pie and a pint before the match and get a former player to tell a few anecdotes and they could sell those tickets for £200-£300 a pop. That's what the club wants." On how the club can manage the situation without upsetting the loyal fans, Maguire said: "There's no easy way around this. Nobody is denying that touting isn't a problem at the club but the way that they have taken [to deal with it] has been quite unpleasant." Listen below or on BBC Sounds here - and don't forget to subscribe to get each episode into your My Sounds feed. Explore all Manchester United content on BBC Sounds [BBC]