This season’s visit to Derby County is on Saturday, and don’t forget the usual 1pm kick-off.

Pride Park is two miles to the east of the city centre, and was opened at the start of the 1997/8 season. It was built as part of the City challenge scheme which revitalised a huge patch of ex-industrial wasteland, though before they could start building they had to get rid of a cocktail of chemicals buried underground, as well as some dodgy relics from it's days as an army training ground.

By car you need to come off the M1 at junction 25 and head towards Derby along the A52 till you see signs for the stadium. But parking around the stadium is limited, a better bet is the cattle market car park. This costs £3 and is about 15-20 minute walk from the ground and is just off the A52. To get there, go past the normal turning for the stadium and go up to the 'pentagon roundabout;' take the first turning off there and then take the next left - you then drive about 300 yards back on yourself, passing it on your left as you drive along the A52. You might need to avoid the nearby Wyvern Shopping centre, where non shoppers usually get clamped.

Pride Park is a short walk from the railway station (aka Derby Midland) and the ground is visible (and well signposted) from the station, though those too lazy to walk can catch the Arriva special buses B1, B2 and B3 straight to the ground. There is an exit from the footbridge above the platforms directly into the pride park area (on the opposite side of the station from the main exit) which is the shortest walking route. But for an alternative route past the best of the pubs you can turn right outside the main exit and turn right again under the railway, then take the first right into Pride Park Way, from where you can see ground right in front of you. Having written all this, it's quite possible that the police will round us all up for an escort to the stadium, so you may not have the luxury of choosing how you get from the station to Pride Park!

The chances are that none of the pubs near the stadium will be open, but if you're gasping for a pint you could try one of the following...My favourite pub in Derby is the excellent real ale 'Brunswick' in Railway Terrace, which brews its own beers and usually has five of them on tap, along with up to a dozen guest beers. Other possibilities are the 'Alexander Hotel', which is just a bit further on from the Brunswick, and the 'Merry Widows', also on Railway Terrace. These pubs usually have bouncers on a matchday, but you might manage to get in as long as they think you look well-behaved. If you're coming by car you can try the 'Navigation' on London Road (the A6), which you'll see on the right hand side just before you get to the away fans car park. Before some games they serve beer inside the ground, so if we're really lucky you might get the chance to pay over the odds for some of their fizzy lager.

Food-wise there are the Harvester and Old Orleans restaurants on the Pride Park industrial estate, and a bit further afield there is a chippie and a decent café opposite the station, which is a must for connoisseurs of a good ‘All day breakfast’. At all costs avoid the vans just outside the ground, which charge exorbitant prices for chips and horrible plastic burgers. Apparently the pies and pasties inside the ground are quite good, though I've never run the risk buying one myself.

The capacity is 33,597 and away supporters are housed in something called the 'Winfield Construction (South) Stand' behind one of the goals, where the away allocation is usually 3,100, which can be increased to 5,600 for cup ties. In the past Leeds have been told that if we stand throughout this game (as we usually do) they might reduce our ticket allocation in future, as they did on the final game in 2006/7. On that occasion we were limited to 1,500 tickets, all on spurious 'safety' grounds, of course.

Derby are the first club in English football to introduce ‘Demand Based Pricing ’ for home tickets, in other words using an airline-style system of charging more for seats the closer the match gets to selling out. The idea is to get fans to buy early, but it’s not exactly a good way of attracting casual supporters to come along, or anyone who may have perfectly good reasons for not being able to get a ticket a long time in advance . Do they have any plans to pinch any of Ryanair’s other ideas, such as charging fans £1 to use the toilet?

We can but hope that this nonsense doesn’t spread to other clubs, and give thanks that it doesn’t apply to the away section. Our tickets cost £32 for adults, with over 60's and under 21's paying £19.50 and under 16's £14.50. And at the time of writing there are fewer than 400 tickets left from the Leeds allocation, while Derby have now put the home tickets on general sale.

Up until last season Pride Park was one of the stadia where we weren't allowed to leave freely after the match, although last season we were allowed to walk out straight away. In previous seasons we could get into the coaches which are parked right by the away stand or head towards the away fans car park but a line of police blocked the way in the opposite direction and the fans heading back to the station had to wait for a police escort. What will happen this season? I suppose it depends what sort of friendly banter there is between the two sets of fans during the match.

The stadium has been designed so that an additional tier could be added to three sides of the stadium, which would increase the capacity of Pride Park to around 44,000. But this is unlikely to happen unless the Club become established in the Premier League, so they could be waiting for quite a while.

Some of this rubbish came from www.footballgroundguide.com

Photo: Action Images

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