Stadium Expansion - Bushey Hall

All of those clubs have something in common. General supporter dissatisfaction in their performance. Arsenal haven't won the league since moving to the Emirates, Spurs are a joke club, Cardiff have a history of hating their owner and West Ham really really hate their owners - but not quite that much anymore as they are now doing well. So I question whether it's really the stadium that's the problem.

I do agree on the soulless bowl thing though. I equally don't particularly like having four stands that all look different to the others. Something like the Amex or Brentford's new stadium would be perfect.

If they can make that happen at VR, amongst the flats in the stand, a main road and unmovable residents, then fair enough, I'm in.

 

So don't build a corporate bowl then? I think the days of identikit stadiums (see: Leicester, Soton, Reading etc) are done. It's now simply a matter of budget as to how ambitious your plans can be.

 

The numbers speak for themselves with Arsenal, the Emirates cost £380m to build and has more than paid for itself since, and now provides £80m+ a year extra match day revenue.

The question is where they would be without it, not that the stadium has set them back. They’re where they are because of their owners unwillingness to compete with the new money at the top of the league that has come along since. Without the Emirates they certainly wouldn’t have been in the ESL conversation.

 

I expect the 22k who can now get in and couldn't before will be happier ?

 

Have they given up on the idea of persuading the fans to arrive early and/or leave late to ease this problem? Weren’t they trying to make it a replacement for the match day pub, a place to socialise before and after the game? It always seemed to be flawed to me.

 

Its pointless attracting new fans of you can’t fit them in

 

At least the 365 day a year income from them is swelling the coffers

 

Found this old map of Hertfordshire and I was surprised to see this:



The station was demolished before I started going to games and I didn't see any trace of it by then. But are there any plans to build something similar again to complement the stadium redevelopment (I've never lived in Watford so am not as much in the loop as most of you lot)?

 

I've never lived in Watford either, but I thought you used to be able to see the old stadium halt from near the Wiggenhall Road bridge?

 

Probably, but I didn't know about the station until I found that map so wasn't looking out for such a thing.

 

Wasn't that the end of the loop that allowed them to march away fans through the allotments into the Rookery when that had been designated as the away end?

 

That’s exactly what it was for. To try and stop away fans arriving at Watford Junction and passing through the town centre to get to the ground. People forget (or don’t realise) what the 80s were like.

 

"hooligan halt"

 

When the going got tough, the tough got going?

 

That may have been the plan but I suspect football fans are creatures of habit - why set off from home 2 hours early just to stand around a drafty concrete bar for 2 hours (and knowing Spurs, pay over the odds for food and drink)? I HATE drinking at the Vic for the same reason - much prefer to sit in a comfortable pub somewhere then get to the ground at 2.45

 

To be fair, the bars there are very very good, and the pints are £5 flat which considering I paid £6.80 for a pint of Neck Oil over the weekend is actually pretty cheap!

 

If you go to a truly modern stadium, you'll soon realise there's very little 'modern' about VR. Sure some of the building is new but it's not progressive - it's moderate facelifting at best. The sensory room is about the only 'modern' thing in the stadium along with the pitch.

The vast majority of Spurs fans prefer their new stadium as well.

 

But 'not progressing as a club' has very little to do with moving to the Emirates and far more to do with boardroom struggle and poor investment. Plenty of clubs have moved to new stadiums and been run well and succeeded. The belief that moving to a new stadium makes you weaker as a team on the pitch is a myth.

 

I agree with above comments, there is no link that a new stadium leads to competitive failure. As more clubs rebuild, there will be more examples where clubs in newer stadia have declined in league status. Brighton and Leicester immediately spring to mind as clubs that have improved in both a sporting sense and at the same time created new stadiums.

The facilities at Vicarage road are not the best, and more akin to those at Selhurst Park, Everton, and for clubs now in the championship that were in the Premier League Loftus Road and the Vitality. Palace plan a substantial rebuild on site and Everton a relocation. You would expect both QPR and BMuff to address the need for better stadium in any plan to regain and sustain a place in the top league.

Having a new stadium is not a guarantee of continued sporting success. An alternative to Vicarage Road would however be an indicator of a long term plan and financial capital to sustain the clubs status as a Premier League club. A substantial rebuilding plan if possible would have a similar impact. The rebuild option would, i think, require at least a season playing in a temporary home stadium such as Stadium MK.

 

Beer may be ok but the service is pretty woeful and it still means standing around in a damp concrete concourse - prefer a pub thanks

 

I feel I have to point out that, although Leicester were promoted in the first season in their new stadium, it was as a result of the misuse of going into administration to clear debts - a practice that led directly to the automatic 10 point deduction for other clubs in a similar position. Following that they went into decline, ending up in the third tier for the first time in their history under Holloway. It was only in the 2010s, some ten years after the stadium was built, that they began to rise again and eventually get back to the PL and onwards.

 

Like who?

It depends what you want from your football team. I don't want us to have a 30k stadium that won't be filled and even in the PL would be about 5k tourists or neutrals in and in the championship would look awful when we'd probably have it about 50-60% full. I don't think the extra couple of million pounds a year in revenue that we'd generate would be worth it. It's not like we're an Arsenal or a Spurs who almost doubled their capacity. We don't have the fanbase to do that.

I'm not having a go, but I feel like there is almost a clear divide on opinion from this on people who go regularly and people who don't. I love Vicarage Road and when I even compare it to the new Brentford stadium, which I guess would be the model we'd follow, i'd take the Vic every single day.

 

Brighton, Bayern Munich, Juventus, Swansea, Atletico Madrid, Athletic Bilbao, Burton Albion, Salford (most likely in the near future) - all just off the top of my head. I’m sure there’s countless more really.

And equally I’m not having a go either - but I think to suggest that opinion is divided on those who go every week and those who don’t is nonsense to a large degree. Every fan of the club I know personally, including myself, would like to stay at Vicarage Road - but not at the expense of everything. If it makes sense, I’d be gutted and excited in equal measure. We all attend nearly every game.

Yes there’s probably a natural divide between fans due to age/heritage and attendance - but I wouldn’t say it’s clear and stark…and certainly not based on attendance alone.

 

What do you love about Vicarage Road that can't be replicated elsewhere?

And there must be things you don't like about it too?

 

Most of those clubs moved because their fanbases were a lot bigger than their current stadium. Brighton is probably the only newer stadium where i've enjoyed the experience to be fair and Swansea fans that I know still don't really like the Liberty.

 

But thats taking on a different argument - you're talking about 'fan experience' when the point made was that moving to a new stadium makes a team less competitive is a myth. I named many clubs where that hasn't been shown to be true when you asked 'Like Who?'

 

I think generally clubs moving stadia is a great opportunity to bolster revenue. In our case, it wouldn't particularly be about boosting capacity but doubling or even tripling matchday revenue through improved food/drink offerings and hospitality facilities. That seems to me to be where the true value lies in moving stadia; we might increase our capacity by 40-50% but we'd probably be tripling the number of executive boxes. The Pozzos are familiar with this from the redevelopment of the Stadio Friuli in the last few years. They didn't boost capacity at all, I believe, but the facilities are significantly better and they have provided a lot of corporate facilities, a conference centre etc, enabling the stadium to diversify its revenue streams beyond 19 matchdays.

That said, I think stadia - while generally a progressive move that is correlated to on-pitch progress (although that might be because stadium moves/redevelopment is a symptom/function of off-field leadership that is competent and progressive anyway) can be risky. The new Spurs stadium is mightily impressive and it seemed like a surefire way to promote Spurs into the commercial elite. But it could not have been built at a worse time, recouping no revenue at all for the last 18 months, and Spurs is now the most heavily indebted side in Europe. They haven't even found a stadium sponsor yet. Now Covid is perhaps a once in a lifetime risk (although we have to contend with the threat of relegation and becoming a lot less sexy particularly to the corporate hospitality class) but even without something like it, moving to the Emirates really weighed Arsenal down financially for a decade or so and left Wenger unable to invest to compete for the title, though they're far better off for it now.

 

This is a massive blow to the progression of the club.
It was never going to be easy to get Hertsmere BC on the clubs side.
Vic Rd is a poor championship ground that is landlocked, too small, out of date also difficult and expensive to improve. It’s going to need a lot of clever upgrades to make it a PL stadium like that new build. Also it’s going to take twice as long to do it. Shame.

 

I just want a ground I can sit comfortably in, not bang my knees continually on the edge of the seat in front and have a little bit of elbow room

This is 2021 after all

 

I *think* you've got this a bit arsey-versey. HBC have a track record in running/having commercial 'assets' for the benefit of the local council taxpayers in the highly successful studios in the 'Wood and the Gooner filth and us in Shenley (it's not actually in London Colney as that's part of Snorbens - I think). I know HBC were very supprtive of both the Gooners building a new stadium at their site in Colney Shenley (failed because of public transport and congestion issues) and also Sarries looking at the moving to what is now the proposed Sky 'Herstwood' Studios (failed because of congestion through B'wood town centre and Sarries luke-warm response to sharing with a proposed athletics centre).

 

The history, culture and memories it contains plus the fact it's a real stadium with different stands from different eras not just a soulless bowl. The best thing about the vic is that when Gino sells the club and we end up back in the champo or lower leagues the stadium will still be fit for purpose, we won't be stuck in some barely filled vacuous bowl with 0 atmosphere. A couple of seasons in league one would leave our attendances well below 10,000. We were only getting 12,500 in the champo before the Pozzos arrived. A new stadium risks being a vanity project that could rip the heart out of the club.