Jackie Broon

Yeah, I think there is more of a realisation on here that we need to move in order to be able to have a meaningful increase in capacity and a multi-purpose venue that can generate the revenue to help us to compete.

Apparently you can also stand behind a barrier in the tunnel and watch the post match interviews for a £1000 a pop at Man City.

As has been discussed many times before, in technical terms it's unlikely to be possible to build up without an additional structure behind the existing stand to physically support the stand and for the access and concourse. There just isn't likely to be room for that without unacceptable impacts on light and the setting of Leazes Terrace. In terms of impacts on light there are two separate potential issues, planning and civil law right to light. Chelsea's new stadium was actually stopped by civil law right to light, rather than planning.

The 1bn figure that has been widely reported was arrived at by Bloomberg multiplying the amount Staveley received for her shares from PIF, that was picked up and circulated around every media outlet as a valuation of the club. Forbes estimate our value at £595m https://www.forbes.com/lists/soccer-valuations/

Current big 6 clubs are a different beast, they are very valuable because they are in a de facto monopoly position. It is virtually impossible for any club outside of the big 6 to bridge the gap with the limitations of PSR, even with the backing of a state it's not clear we're going to be able to do that, and if we are it's probably going to take a decade and billions more in direct and indirect investment. We would not turn a profit currently, we have been running at a loss of £70m per season and would not have got the Sela/Adidas deals etc. without the influence of PIF.

Case in point, Moshiri is selling Everton for £400m, after he put in £750m trying and failing to bridge the gap to the big 6. There is no profit in owning an ambitious club outside of the big 6.

That includes the £1bn that was paid to settle the BeoutQ dispute and allow the takeover to go through. Discounting that my point still stands, any potential profit will be eaten up by the cost of bridging the gap to the big 6.

The sale price was £2.5bn, the higher figure includes investment they committed to make. PIF/RB have essentially spent 1.7bn on us already, plus whatever they have put in with associated party sponsorships. We're just not going to get to big 6 levels of revenue and value on good leadership alone. They will have to funnel money into the club through associated party sponsorships and massive infrastructure investments, that will be expensive and not guaranteed to work. We are an incredibly high risk / low reward as an investment, it just does not add up that they see us that way.

Chelsea were sold for £2.5bn. We're a very different proposition to an established big 6 club within the constraints of PSR. We're not going to be worth billions without billions of investment, that's if they can find a way to get those billions in around PSR.

Yeah, that small matter too. Doesn't really make much sense as an investment, even if there were someone actually willing to pay £1bn for us, which I seriously doubt given our PSR constraints. It just doesn't stack up that PIF see us as an investment for profit.

Their total investment so far is £305m purchase price and £392m injected via share allocations since, so £697m invested. Although probably technically more than that via associated party sponsorships.

It could be that one of the options they are considering, or the direction they've decided to take, is something like the Etihad campus so there can't be movement on a new training facility until they've finalised what they're doing about the stadium.

Because we are complying with the PSR and it would be one less club in front of us and if they get hammered they will probably end up challenging the legality of the PSR.

The are also some likely good reasons for lack of visible movement at the moment, like waiting for the outcome of the Man City associated party transactions case and the potential complexity and sensitivity of developing around Leazes Park and/or Terrace.

I think word would probably start to drip out one way or another as things progress.

They don’t need to but there are numerous reasons why it would not in the club's interest to do that until the plans are at a more advanced stage.

Announcing that we are going to move without the details that it's only a few hundred meters and without details of a shiny new development would almost certainly cause an uproar.

If, for example, the outcome is that they have decided to build a new stadium at Castle Leazes they can't just come out and say that. They will need to come to an agreement with the Freemen and any other landowners, go through a design process and pre-application consultation with the Council, and then probably release the news in a public consultation before submitting a planning application to try to avoid the same Friends of Leazes Park situation as in 1997. In that circumstance, if they were just to state their intentions without going through that process first there would be a huge risk of jeopardising that development.

Almost certainly yes.

There were expectations that we would sign a proper 6 going right back to Eddie's first summer. That only went quiet this summer because it's clear that Eddie isn't interested in bringing in a 6. But, people were still seeing that as an issue, and seeing a 6 as our highest priority, even when we were defensively solid.

I don't think Howe sees a defensive midfield player as something he wants or that fits into his philosophy. Maybe if we had the money to go out and get a Rodri it wouldn't matter, but we have to work within the constraints we have and we could have got a defensively minded midfield player in to plug that gaping hole.

Our recruitment has left us set up to play one way, without any defensive midfielder in the squad and that is a gaping hole, particularly in the way we set up away from home. That is entirely by choice.

It goes back a lot longer than that, we've been disjointed for the past year. There has been some big papering over the cracks, but there have been obvious issues since the beginning of last season that have just become more and more apparent.

The planning application was submitted in late December 1997 and approved July 98. Also the Castle Leazes application was submitted in February 97 and the club announced that it was abandoning that plan in late November 97 (although it wasn't actually formally withdraw until January 98). So it seems they must have had the expansion plans drawn up at pretty much the same time as the Castle Leazes proposal, because there's no way that could've been done in a month.

Planning, I'm possibly the only person on here who has actually dealt with a planning application for a football stadium (albeit sub 10,000).