I've been looking at the attendance figures for last season, and I'm surprised at how many premiership clubs look like they could benefit from increased capacity. http://itv.stats.football365.com/2004/ENG/PR/attend.html So, does your club have any future plans for expansion or a completely new stadium? Will anything exciting happen in the near future? Or is it just too expensive/impractical/unnecessary? (I won't post the few obvious things I know are happening myself, I don't want to deprive any fans of the pleasure of bragging about how much their new capacity will be )
Getting regulatory consent to build a new stadium is a very long process. A number of tossers always seem to come out of the woodwork to object to the plans. Brighton are currently trying and have been for years. Newcastle wanted to build a new stadium in the late 90s, but on the grounds that it would take them around 3 years to get consent they decided to redevelop their existing one.
The future must lie in ground sharing, on purely economic grounds, it makes sense! Liverpool and Everton are looking at it at the moment. I can't for the life of me understand why the Arse didn't share the new Wembley? Ashburton Grove is just a few miles away and it would have given them increased capacity as well as maximum use of the facility. I understand the argument about having a home, but it doesn't make sense to waste so much money! When Dundee went into administration last year, I asked why they couldn't share with Dundee Utd, whose grounds are 100 paces apart - United supporters said it was unthinkable, no feckin way - makes you larf doesn't it, when rivalry is so firece you would rather see your oldest enemies go out of business?
The problem with ground sharing would be that stadium based non-matchday revenues would be halved. This must be the first season in a while that none of the 92 league clubs are ground sharing (unless I'm wrong). I believe that Wembley would have lost a lot of it's funding if there had been a club side playing there. As for Albion, the plan is that when/if we become an established PL side to porbably replace the Halfords Lane stand and take the ground capacity up to 40,000. The chairman commented on the radio that this vague plan is to be looked at over the next few weeks as the board try to plan for the future.
Your name is certainly appropriate for someone suggesting ground sharing! No. Most of the talk about this has come from outside parties. After the King's Dock fiasco, and at the height of Everton's financial problems, one of their directors did offer tentative support for the concept of ground-sharing. However Liverpool have completely rejected the idea every time it has been suggested. Again, mentioned by the media a lot but I doubt it was ever seriously considered by the people who matter. Arsenal's attempt to play their European games at the old Wembley was a complete failure. This may have soured them to the idea. Besides, in my opinion, IF you build a national stadium it can't then also be a club stadium. It's just unfair, why should the FA pay for Arsenal's stadium, when other clubs have to find money themselves? Plus for them every cup final or semi-final won't be on neutral ground like it's supposed to be. This is really a circular argument. You think the money is wasted because ground-sharing is a perfect way to save money. If the club and their fans WANT their own stadium enough, the extra money isn't wasted because they're getting what they want. At least with spending money on a stadium you are left with an asset that still retains value. The real way to waste money is on bad player purchases, In the modern game you're lucky to get any money for them, and if you can't sell you still have to pay their wages! I'm firmly against ground-sharing. Every club should have their own home. Besides, it just wouldn't work in this country, with the lack of sun here the grass would all be dead after a month . Wouldn't that be the ultimate victory?
Virtually every premiership home game since you expanded from 37,000 to 52,000 five years ago has been a sell-out. If I were Newcastle I'd be thinking about expanding again. The thought of all that untapped revenue... err ... I mean, those poor geordies unable to watch their team keeps me awake at night . Yeah, I know it's extremely difficult to actually get anything done. I just think that spending money on your stadium, so that you can get the full benefit financially from the extremely passionate geordie support, is much more likely to bring future success than trying to buy Rooney for £20m.
