Hello viewers.
It appeared at first glance to be just one of those Fridays that inevitably fall just before you get paid. At first glance you’d put your impending wages on it being one of those Fridays when you know with a burning certainty that Diego Forlan wasn’t really at the Lodge being asked to provide a urine sample. And him responding, perhaps in Spanish, ‘What, from over here?’
But it all got quite feisty. I can assure you of that. It took a turn for feistyness.
I was having a having a conversation with the highly esteemed and prolific author Norman Giller and the much respected media all rounder, Martin Cloake.
It was essentially that Norm and Martin both have faith in the notion, the idea of a coming together of all parties involved in the NDP now in the wake of Judicial Review having now been vetoed.
That a meeting of minds featuring involved parties in Haringey, THFC, Boris, Lord Coe, Mr Lammy etc could somehow thrash out a viable path to WHL being updated and upgraded for the 21st century and beyond.
My view was that this was a commendable, even noble but ultimately deluded view.
The decision to gift the stadium to a pair of Porn Barons running a Championship football club with enormous debts was in essence corrupt in so much that those wanting the stadium to remain after the Games merely wanted a monument to their achievements there forever for all to coo over.
I also suggested that given the surreal costs of expanding at the present location ie continuing with the NDP, that the Club would either need to put itself in hock to Bond villains/foreign investors or resign itself to working off it’s debts and not spending any money on players for a generation.
Before I ask you what you think, can I ask for something more sophisticated than either ‘let’s move in to Wembley’ or ‘I’d rather watch us in the Championship than leave N17.’ I would regard both of those sentiments as being as equally unbalanced.
So, what do you think?
Just wondering, why are there no interim plans to expand the stadium by say 10/15,000. We must be able to squeeze a few extra rows up in a couple of the stands. Essentially giving us the extra revenue, the time to work on Olympic alternatives and the kudos of being able to say we’re in a stadium somewhere close to 50,000? Is there not an architect in the world who can achieve that on top of what we have in order to buy us a few more years? If they can build a winter olympics in Dubai, they can give Spurs an interim solution.
decent shout that, i guess they maybe dont want to spend out on something they will want to tear down again in a few years. But it might be the only solution.
Just what we need another 15,000 people trying to get in or out. Guess I’ll wait there til 8pm before my 120 mile journey home.
yeah well they’d need to cater for the extra capacity of course as part of the plans.
Just how do you think they can do that without spending on transport? One of the main sticking points of the whole scheme.
Fair play to you for agreeing. COYS!
so your suggestion is ……. ?
Yeah I forgot about transport, didn’t really think that one through.
Sadly, I don’t think WHL is like a Lego set, where you can simply take the roof off while Mum’s making beans on toast & squeeze in a couple of extra rows… Would be lovely but the cost would probably be just as much as rebuilding the old girl, compared to the revenue it would bring in.
If you build within the existing footprint, the only way would be up, leaving the stands so vertical you’d probably need crampons & rope to get to the top tier. That’s without taking into account that one of the major stumbling blocks to the NPD was the limit to capacity caused by the sight lines to daylight of the surrounding houses.
On top of that, you have to consider the age of the fabric underneath. The base of the East stand has been there for nigh on 100 years and I think adding the extra weight of another 5-7,000 people might seriously raise a few issues.
It may turn out to be that, in the current market, tackling these problems becomes the only way forward – But it certainly won’t be a quick, easy or cheap solution.
Adding 15k seats is pretty much what we are trying to achieve with the NDP (they’ve been talking about a 56k-seater, so adding 20k is the goal). There is no way the current stadium could ever be increased by 15k. Also, as has been mentioned, the transport infrastructure would need work. Not that I’m an architect or engineer, but common sense leads me to believe that adding just 5 – 7,5k seats would be right on the edge of what is possible at WHL.
Even if it was technically possible to expand the existing stadium as a stop-gap solution, I don’t see how it could ever make financial sense. Why? OK, I’ll tell you.
Right now it looks as though it would cost us 250-300m to complete the NDP. That means we would be paying almost 14K per seat (assuming total costs of 275m and 20k seats). This is deemed to be “unviable”.
So what if we could expand the existing stadium, and do it at a price that is considered manageable? Let’s assume it was in fact possible to add 5k seats bringing us over 40k, and lets also assume that it can be done at a cost that makes it, in the first instance, viable. Lets say we had to pay two thirds of the price per seat of the NDP. That means we would be paying 46.6m for 5k seats.
Those are just numbers I made up, but if we could do it, surely we should, right? In fact, probably not.
Just as our current 36.365 (feel free to correct) is insufficient to truly compete at the top in the long run, so too is 40k. So this would only be a temporary measure, and at some point we would still need to move/rebuild. Maybe in 6 years the NDP in some new form becomes viable. Boris agrees to pay for therequired public transport upgrades for the surrounding areas, or whatever, meaning that the new stadium can be build for just 190m (the same cost per new seat as the expansion we just imagined).
But wait… We’ve already built 5k new seats. So in stead of the new stadium adding 20k seats at a cost of 190m, it will add only 15k seats. And since we already spent 47m rebuilding WHL, the total cost of getting above 55k seats will have been about 240m…
The next change we make with regard to stadia needs to be a fairly long term solution. Temporary measures are almost never a good idea from a financial perspective.
One point: The fat lady in question is not Karren Brady.
#facelikeakickedinfridge
If we built smaller seats we would increase our capacity. Or if only skinny fans were allowed entry we’d have the same result.
Don’t know why no-one has thought of these sooner
The best incentive for a diet EVER!
Yes fatty :daumen:
I did have that thought cross my mind a couple of evenings ago but thought I would get slaughtered for suggesting it. What about a new form of buttock supp ort like a shooting stick to overcome the space problem after all its only for two hrs and we used to squeeze in 50,000 plus on big games.
Aren’t Ryanair considering putting saddle-style ‘leaning seats’, that have a footprint half the size of a conventional airline seat, on their planes?
Why not football too?
Or that thingy they used to do at footie matches in the bad old days. What’s it called again… Standing?
Why then, may I ask, did the club even bother to start and make public the NDP? If they knew that they would not get government funding, why be left with egg on their face by saying we’re going to do this & that – and then say “oh hold on a minute – is that how much this is going to cost?? Woooooo…… I dont think we can afford that! We need the stadium and we need it more than the current team – who may finish 4th/5th/6th – so lets get £150m for Bale, Modders, and all the dead wood – and ensure we survive in the PL – but get the Stadium built now! Cos trailing to Man Utd & Arsenal by MILLIONS per match in income will only leave us further & further behind. We cant wait for the car crash organisations like Haringey, The mayor’s office and TFL! If WHU get back in the PL they will be generating a bigger match day income than us in the Olympic Stadium! So we’ll be 4th in London alone – not to mention Man Utd, Man City, Liverpool, Newcastle…..Your match day income reflects the size of your club! GET IT BUILT NOW DL!
This issue was the appartments, and commercial buildings. The profit from them was going to pay for big chunk of the land and build. The planning application passed, but only after it was hacked into so much that we couldn’t make enough money out of it to make it work. So the council basically killed the deal with all their various demands, and aren’t willing to put their own money (not enough anyway) in to the transport upgrades either. Lets face it, Tottenham High road, not on matchday, is a grubby place. So any development on there is a good thing surely? It’s hardly going to compromise the picteresque aesthetic integrity of the local surrounds is it? DOn’t see any other developers queing up to put in swanky loft conversations and hotels? It’s a nightmare, as we’re left with a load of money tied up in land bought over the past 10 years that nobody wants.
Ground share with Le Arse
go wash your mouth out felch
I’m sure they would welcome it with open arms. After all, what could the Arsenal board want more than leveling the financial playing field with their biggest rivals?