Bradford City fans clamouring for season tickets for the club's first season in the Premiership have been boosted by the news that about 1,700 are now on general sale.

After winning promotion 16 days ago, City were besieged by fans wanting to watch Paul Jewell's side entertain the likes of Manchester United and Arsenal next season.

City, who had sold more than 9,000 season tickets before the fans knew which division their side would be playing in, opted to utilise an appointment system where supporters calling at Valley Parade were handed an allotted time to return to buy their season ticket.

Now these appointments have been completed, City have announced that the remainder are on general sale.

Chairman Geoffrey Richmond said: "After the huge demand we experienced in the days which followed promotion, we have decided to release another 1,000 tickets from what were going to be on sale on match days.

"At the moment we have sold 13,300 season tickets so we felt that the extra tickets should also be released. We will still have 1,200 tickets available on a match-by-match basis."

City will have a capacity of about 18,000 next season with the new Kop due to be completed before the start of the new campaign.

Visiting clubs will receive tickets for the whole of the Symphony Stand at the Bradford end which accommodates 1,800 supporters. But if they cannot fill this area then home fans will be allowed into the stand in a similar way to what happened at the final home match of last season against Oxford.

Richmond said: "The remaining tickets are now available on a first come, first served basis and I foresee them selling very quickly. "We have about 900 season ticket places left in the Kop, about 700 in the Sunwin Stand and just a handful in the Ciba Stand."

Meanwhile, City are still investigating the possibility of erecting a temporary stand to boost the ground capacity by about 2,000.

The club are hoping to erect the stand in between the Kop and Sunwin stands.

Richmond said: "We have had visits from two companies who are able to build temporary stands and plan to have discussions with another one.

"We have not been quoted any prices yet so we don't know how viable such a venture would be. We would also have to have the full agreement of the safety team before erecting a temporary stand. If we receive permission for the temproary stand we will release more season tickets for sale. We expect to know within the next ten days."

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