Newcastle owners' stadium plan clear as thousands queue for pre-season tickets at St James' Park

Newcastle United staff have not seen scenes like these for some time after thousands of supporters queued to buy tickets for the final pre-season friendlies of the summer.

Newcastle welcome Italian side Atalanta and Spanish outfit Athletic Bilbao to St James' Park for a double header on July 29 and 30 respectively. Tickets for both games went on general sale at 10am on Tuesday and such was the demand, at 10.20am, there were still more than 14,000 users in the online queue with an estimated wait time of more than an hour.

At St James' meanwhile, there were fans physically waiting in line outside the box office as the queue snaked around the Alan Shearer statue. Initially, only the lower tiers of the stadium were on sale and, it shows the clamour for tickets right now that supporters could only order a maximum of six tickets per booking for the friendly.

It already looks like the attendance for both games will easily dwarf the 20,136 fans who attended the final home friendly against Norwich City last summer when tickets were half the price. A year on, supporters had the option to purchase a single match ticket for £20 per adult or £10 for a concession or a package for both games priced at £35 for adults and £15 for concessions.

These tickets are already being snapped up - a week on from 30,000 online users trying to get their hands on the thousand season tickets that were made available ahead of the start of the new campaign.

There has already been an unprecedented level of renewals from existing season ticket holders and, remarkably, there were 22,000 supporters queuing to buy club memberships after they went on sale last week so that they could have a priority booking period for single match tickets.

Newcastle may