Currency update for those heading to Milan

You may remember that, earlier this month, we advised those of you travelling to Milan for the Champions League last 16 first leg match not to change your currency yet.

Back then, on January 8, e1 was worth 90p, but the pound struggled a lot today and went down from 90p to 93p today alone.

Given that the situation looks like getting worse, now might be the time to get that money changed ready for Italy, as e1 might well equal £1 by February 24.

Decent TV football website

Anyone who regularly reads the Red Issue forum will have seen the frequent threads from people asking what channel a match is on.

Well, now there's a definitive guide in the shape of Live Football On Tv, which does exactly what it says in the...er...website name.

It covers just about everything, from first-team games to reserve matches: if it isn't listed on here, it isn't on telly. So put it in your favourites.

West Brom travel guide

West Bromwich Albion
The Hawthorns
Premier League
Tuesday January 27, kick off 19:45

Tickets
Out of a capacity of 28,003, United have got 2,400 tickets in the Smethwick End, priced at £42 adults, £25 for over 65s and £20 for under 16s.

The deadline for applying for tickets has passed and everyone who was successful should have had money taken from their accounts by now.

Home end tickets are sold out. Internet touts are charging £184 for away end tickets.

TV
This match will not be shown live on Sky or Setanta, but you can view it on the internet. Find links here nearer the time.

Travel

Car - £25.54
If you’re using a satnav or an internet routeplanner, like Greenflag, use the postcode B71 4LF.

The journey will take 80 minutes each way and will typically cost £12.77 in fuel.

The easiest route is down the M6, onto the M5, leaving at junction 1 on to the A41 and it’s signposted from there.

Parking

Park for free 15 minutes away from the ground on either Kenrick Way or Telford Way. It’s very easy to get away from the ground after the game as it’s just off junction 1 of the M5.

You can pay a fiver to park on the club’s East Stand car park. Entry is via the A41 by McDonalds.

The Hawthorns Pub, in Birmingham Road, B71 4JZ, is right next to the ground, also charges £5 for places.

ICS Distribution Ltd, in Halfords Lane, B66 1BP, charges £4 for places and it’s a two-minute walk to the ground.

For £2.50 you can get a spot at Park Lane Industrial Estate, Park Lane, B21 8LE, which is a five-minute walk to the ground.

Train/bus combo - £21.40
Leave Manchester Piccadilly by train: 15:27
Arrive Stafford: 16:24
Leave Stafford by West Brom club coach: 17:00
Arrive at the stadium

Then
Leave stadium by West Brom club coach: 21:45
Arrive Stafford: 22:30
Leave Stafford by train: 22:59
Arrive: Manchester Piccadilly: 00:37

The train costs £16.40. Book here www.nationalrail.co.uk
The coach costs £5. Book by calling West Brom on 0871 271 9780.

Train - £28.70
The nearest train station to the ground is called The Hawthorns – a five-minute walk to the ground.

It takes roughly two hours to get there from Piccadilly and requires two and sometimes three changes.

There are three trains that will get you home after the match, each requiring two changes.

Ask for an off-peak return ticket on the day, which is the cheapest you can get, at £28.70.

To save money, you could buy a single to Wolverhampton for £10 and a single from Wolverhampton for £10 and then buy return tickets on your next two trains (if you see the conductor). But the latest you could set off doing this would be 15:07.

Manchester to The Hawthorns
There are many services throughout the day. Use this to search for them, but below are the three latest routes to get to the game on time. Remember, set off after 10am else it will be much more expensive.

Option A
Leave Manchester Piccadilly: 17:06
Arrive Birmingham New Street: 18:31
Walk to Birmingham Moor Street: 18:53*
Leave Birmingham Moor Street: 18:53
Arrive The Hawthorns: 19:04

Option B
Leave Manchester Piccadilly: 17:27
Arrive Wolverhampton: 18:39
Leave Wolverhampton: 18:49
Arrive Smethwick Galton Bridge (pictured above): 19:04
Leave Smethwick Galton Bridge: 19:11
Arrive The Hawthorns: 19:14

Option C
Leave Manchester Piccadilly: 17:27
Arrive Birmingham New Street: 18:58
Then walk to Birmingham Moor Street*
Leave Birmingham Moor Street: 19:23
Arrive The Hawthorns (pictured below right): 19:34

The Hawthorns to Manchester

I would go for option B because
- it gives you more time after the game than option A
- there’s no walking in the dark through Birmingham city centre involved unlike option A
- you end up getting on the same (last) train as those who take option A
- it gets you home earlier than option C.

The only danger with option B is that if one connection is late, you could be in for a long wait.

Option A

Leave the Hawthorns: 21:47
Arrive Birmingham Moor Street: 21:57
Then walk to Birmingham New Street*
Leave Birmingham New Street: 22:28
Arrive Manchester Piccadilly: 00:37

Option B:
Leave the Hawthorns: 22:04
Arrive Smethwick Galton Bridge: 22:07
Leave Smethwick Galton Bridge: 22:17
Arrive Wolverhampton: 22:33
Leave Wolverhampton: 22:46
Arrive Manchester Piccadilly: 00:37

Option C:
Leave the Hawthorns: 23:07
Arrive Smethwick Galton Bridge: 23:10
Leave Smethwick Galton Bridge: 23:17
Arrive Crewe: 00:16
Leave Crewe: 00:44
Arrive Manchester Piccadilly: 01:36

*From New Street Station, exit on to Queen’s Drive, turn left and keep walking onto St Martin’s Circus Queensway and onto Moor Street. The station is on your right. It takes five minutes.

Coach
Official
United are running coaches to the game, with places costing £20 per person. The coaches leave at 4pm from the W2 car park at Old Trafford and are due to be back by midnight. Book here.

National Express runs coaches from Chorlton Street in Manchester to Birmingham Central coach station on Oxford Street.

They take roughly 2 hours and 45 minutes and leave Manchester at: 10:10, 11:40, 12:50, 14:40 and 16:00. If you go at 12:50 or 14:00 it's only £4 one way.

From there, you can walk to Birmingham Moor Street station and get the train to The Hawthorns station.

On the way back, there's only one coach and it leaves Birmingham at 22:30. It really isn't worth risking because you've a good chance of missing it.

Megabus runs one coach there leaving Chorlton Street at 12:00 and arriving at Birmingham Queensway at 14:00, with a one-way far costing £6. There is no return coach.

We'll put up a pub guide in the next few days.

To Asia we will go

United's next pre-season tour will be call in Jakarta, Seoul, Kuala Lumpur and China.

With a lot of detail to be confirmed, the schedule will look something like this:
July 16 - squad leaves Manchester
July 17 to 19 - training and matches in China, to be confirmed
July 20 - a match in Seoul at the World Cup Stadium
July 24 - a match against an Indonesia Super League Select XI at the Gelora Bung Karno Stadium
July 26 - a match against a Malaysia XI at the Shah Alam Stadium or Bukit Jalil Stadium.

Full match, stadium and tour details will be announced shortly and, as always, we'll have the best ways of getting there.

Bolton travel and pub guide

Bolton Wanders
Reebok Stadium
Premier League
Saturday January 17, kick off 3pm

Tickets
Out of a capacity of 28,723, United have 2,800 tickets costing £27 for adults, £21 for over 65s and £13 for under 16s. They have all been sold and posted out, or will be posted out shortly.

Internet touts are selling away end tickets for £110 each.

Home end tickets went on open sale on December 31 but only to people with a booking history at Bolton. But they were pretty easy to buy outside the ground for face value last season.

TV
The match will not be shown live on any UK, but there will inevitably be pubs showing it live on Scandinavian channel Canal + and there will be plenty of internet streams showing it too.

Travel
Yes, it’s only up the road, so it won’t be a long guide, but some people may wish to know train times and where to park for free.

Car - £5.20
It’s very simple from Manchester. Take the M61 to junction 6, do a right at the roundabout and you’ll see the stadium in front of you.

Do a right at the next roundabout for Lostock Lane. For the Beehive, go straight on at that roundabout and you’ll see it right in front of you at the next roundabout.

If you’re using a satnav or a routeplanner, key in the postcode BL6 6JS. It’s 20 miles away and will cost £5.20 in petrol.

Parking
A space on the stadium car park costs £6 and there are a few industrial estates dotted nearby, like off Lostock Lane, with spaces for £3.

There’s an Asda supermarket adjacent to the ground. Non-customer parking is banned on matchdays, but there’s nothing to stop you going in to buy a newspaper before the game.

Depending on how far you want to walk, there are free spaces further down Lostock Lane and past the Beehive Pub. You can park at the Beehive for £5.

Train - £3.20
Get an off-peak single return ticket to Horwich Parkway, which is a two-minute walk to the stadium.

Last season, police were ensuring fans boarding at Victoria and Bolton had match tickets before getting on trains. They might not do so this time, but be prepared.

To the match
Direct trains leave Piccadilly at 10:46, 10:54 and then at 46 and 54 past the hour (add three minutes on to get the times from Oxford Road and six minutes for Deansgate). It takes roughly 30 minutes. There are also regular indirect services – changing at Bolton - that take 40 minutes.

Direct trains leave Victoria at 10:22 and then at 22 minutes past the hour. There are also regular services – changing at Salford Crescent - that take 40 minutes.

From the match
Trains leave Horwich Parkway to Manchester at 17:27, 17:45, 18:25, 19:27, 20:27

The first few trains after the game will go to Victoria (even though they are timetabled to go to Piccadilly) and won’t stop along the way.

Bus - £1.50
Bolton runs 13 bus services to and from the stadium on matchdays for £1 single and £1.50 return.

They start from Bury, Radcliffe, Swinton, Leigh, Farnworth, Bolton, Bromley Cross, Darcy Lever, Chorley, Wigan and Egerton. Timetable information is here.

You could, for example, catch the Metrolink to Radcliffe (on the Bury Line) and walk two minutes to Radcliffe bus station and catch the number 3 bus, listed above.

Coach - £13
United are running coaches to the game with places costing £13 each. Click here to book.

Pubs
Scotts, in between the train station and the ground, is only open to fans showing home end tickets on the door. There’s usually a fair bit of a room there on match days and you can get served quicker than you’d expect.

My favourite when visiting the Reebok is the Bromilow Arms in Lostock Lane. You can park there for £3 and they do brilliant food.

It can get quite packed pretty early and it can sometimes take 15/20 minutes to get served.

It’s technically a home fans’ pub but you won’t get any trouble from the locals, mainly because it’s popular with older fans who come for the real ales and with families who come for the decent food, especially the curry.

You can also park on the car park outside the Beehive in Chorley New Road (directions above, picture below).

Believe it or not, it’s a Grade Two listed building. It’s much bigger than the Bromilow, has an outdoor seating area at the front and is pretty much the main away fans’ pub for this ground. It opens at 11am.

But because of that, you tend to get lots of police and the (albeit small) chance of trouble. But it’s only a five-minute walk to the ground, as is the Bromilow.

If you’re after something a bit quieter, you’ll have to venture a bit further from the stadium, but it’s worth it.

Head towards the motorway roundabout and turn left at the next roundabout onto Chorley Road. At number 480, you’ll find the Royal Oak, which is a great little place for a pre-match pint.

And further down that road, you’ll find the Wagon and Horses, which is a decent little boozer.

Readers' questions - Milan to Bergamo

Q. Whats the best way to get from Bergamo Airport to Milan city centre, especially early morning - our flight leaves at 6am on Thursday morning?

Would it be worthwhile hiring a car considering public transport will be limited after the game anyway? Alex Carr.

A. Don't hire a care. Get on the Terravision bus that leaves from outside Milano Centrale train station and runs pretty much 24 hours a day.

If you're on a 6am flight, you'll want to check in by 5am. Buses leave Milan at 4am and 4.30am and the journey takes exactly an hour (though at that time in the morning it'll be more like 40 minutes).

You can also get this service to Milan when you land in Bergamo. In fact, the only other way to town is getting a bus from the airport to Bergamo town and then getting a 50-minute train to Milan. So the bus saves you time and money.

You'll find a timetable here. It costs e10 one way or e16 return. A lot of reds will be on those early-morning coach so it is best to book online.

Some fans will know Terravision from their route from Chorlton Street to Liverpool Airport. It's a cheap, cheerful and reliable service.

Finally, if you're travelling on Ryanair, we would advise you to check in online for both your flights to and from Bergamo before you leave.

This will save you time because it means when you arrive at the airport, you can go straight to security rather than having to wait for check in, which closes 35 minutes before the flight leaves.

You can check in online up to five days before travel. You'll need a printer for your boarding passes and you can only do it if you're not putting luggage in the hold, though you can do it with hand luggage.

Don't change your money for Milan just yet...

...because the pound is getting stronger, so as long as it keeps doing so, you'll get more euros for your money come the end of February.

United face Inter Milan at the San Siro on February 24 and with tickets costing "approximately £45" you're going to need all the spending cash you can get.

Today, e1 was worth 90p compared to 98p on December 31. Without boring you with the details, financial experts think that will continue because of changes in the European economy.

We would recommend you wait until the end of January before changing your money and you're likely to get the best deal at Althams, which has branches in Bolton, Bury, Denton, Farnworth, Littleborough and Ramsbottom.