ponsaelius

It's almost like teams at the top usually win more often than not

I wouldn't want their stadium but some of the landscaping and public realm around the Olympic Park is absolutely fantastic, particularly now it's all maturing. Whether you go more contemporary or whether you tie directly into the existing Victorian park aesthetic, it could become a fantastic thoroughfare up from SJP Metro to a new stadium.

There's so many advantages to building on Castle Leazes. The council can leverage the application to get obligated improvements in terms of landscaping and public realm on the existing site of SJP and Strawberry Place. You could secure additional tree planting to offset those that would be lost. And you could get improvements to a lot of the existing Leazes Park which could actually do with some TLC and security over long term maintenance. The green argument just doesn't stack up for me - the right scheme can easily be a net benefit in nearly every way.

I still think it would need to go further north primarily onto Castle Leazes, as per the original 90s plan, with as little encroachment onto the Leazes Park footprint as possible. But I'm still convinced it could be a great solution, particularly bringing Leazes Park more closely into the city and improving the setting of the listed buildings. I'm still surprised it ended up with such resistance in the 90s - but the plan was slightly less convincing because they wanted to retain a smaller SJP in situ. The current site is just so constrained in terms of delivering on the existing footprint.

Gets more roadman by the day

In terms of Wirtz would he not play out wide predominantly?

We always did have Miley in our thoughts for midfield though - and we are down a man with Tonali being out. Not usually for a temporary signing but I think Phillips makes sense. All the rumours were that Eddie wanted him before he went to City.

Dunno how anybody pays for all these subscriptions, like. Get a fire stick or go to the boozer if you want to watch the match surely.

The straw man of moving to somewhere like Benton is not even worth mentioning imo. Neither the owners nor fans would ever want it. Any move would be within the vicinity of the city centre.

Land swap with Castle Leazes could genuinely be great. I do love the idea of expanded green space closer to the city and as a thoroughfare to the ground. As long as any new stadium looked like a football stadium and not that airport terminal posted a few pages back.

Would be interested to see how big you could get Gateshead Stadium with temporary stands behind either goal (plus you could get some to the front of the east stand). Those two at Yektarinburg added about 12k to that stadium. It's probably not going to add a huge amount tbh - to the point that you might as well just build a whole new one where you can at least do four full stands. Plus it would be a bit of a nightmare in terms of transport. Chester-le-Street ala the MCG? Would be weird as fuck and is far away enough where you probably might as well just use Darlo instead.

Building Stadium 974 was expensive. It was basically a normal stadium with shipping containers used as a style aesthetic. A gimmick. Building temporary stands to expand existing stadia is nowhere near as expensive and very common. Chester-le-Street do it for internationals, Russia World Cup had stadiums with temporary stands. And like I say Cagliari built a whole 16k seater for about 8 million euros and threw it up in a year. Not saying it's necessarily the answer but it's probably not that outlandish. If rotating the pitch and altering the footprint slightly could deliver a new stadium on the existing site the cost of building a temporary stadium + build a new one altogether would likely be more cost effective than expanding the existing stadium over the metro etc. You'd obviously have to significantly limit capacity (25k max maybe) but it'd be better than playing in Edinburgh or Darlington imo.

You can do temporary stadiums a lot cheaper than that to be fair. Cagliari's current temporary stadium holds 16k and cost 8 million euros.

Getting ridiculous now on the injury front. Gasping for one of the fuckers to return.

That might be the ugliest stadium I've ever seen.

The fact that the survey asked how much more you'd be willing to pay and started the slider at 50%. No way to say 'actually it's already quite pricey, like'. Was looking at Forest tickets and the cheapest is £47, with Category 1 being £62? I'm reasonably comfortable financially compared to a lot of people, with no dependents, but I think that is a lot for that fixture. It's a bit mad that this is probably the cheap end before they start hiking things up.

Conversely SJP is much closer to Monument, Haymarket, SJP Metro and Haymarket bus station. It is definitely far more more central in my opinion and better served in terms of transport. On the other point, I'd agree. It would certainly develop that part of the city. While the site is already slated for residential/mixed development there's a reason it's taken years for anything to come forward. It's a money pit in terms of remediation work and a patchwork quilt of land ownership. I'm still not convinced it'll ever be properly delivered without central govt money. A Saudi backed football club consolidating the lot and throwing good money after bad on infrastructure is one of the few types of investor that could properly deliver it with north east land values.

Ah shit. One of a few I haven't got round to ticking off. A real shame but hopefully they turn back up in the Wearside.

The stadium location is both the best thing about the club but also a massive pain in the arse for their dreams of revenue maximisation at all costs. You can read between the lines to see how they are grappling with this reality. Perfect location means guaranteed huge crowds every week and an iconic stadium brand for the club, but it also means no fucker is interested in rocking up an hour before to eat and drink overpriced shit when there's a thousand better places in walking distance. I've heard on the grapevine that they are completely not interested in the arena site. I do find it mildly surprising if true as it's probably perfect for fulfilling the niche of not quite being out of town but also being peripheral enough that they could probably drag people in early the way Spurs stadium does, or have it surrounded by fan parks and soulless club associated eateries ?

The survey is awful mind. There is one cursory mention of improving the atmosphere. Literally everything else is about improving corporate, comfy seats, food and drink, how much you are willing to spend. All stuff I literally couldn't give a single fuck about - but this seems the way it's going to go. Particularly jarring when you consider Mehrdad's comments on atmosphere.

They won't say it explicitly but there's only basically four viable options: 1. Expand Gallowgate, East Stand and stadium wide renovation. Max capacity probably about 62k. Positives are minimal disruption and retain historic location. Negatives (depending on your perspective) are probably limited in terms of internal improvements and means stadium is maxed out forever in terms of capacity. 2. Rebuild on same site. Perceived positives are it is possible to more or less do whatever you want while retaining historic location. Unlimited scope for corporate and offering for hosting other events. Could go to any capacity which desired. Main negative is that demolish and rebuild will mean at least 2 years in exile either at a temporary stadium or another stadium somewhere else. 3. New stadium on the Arena site. As above positives are the scope to do more or less whatever you want. No disruption at all. However complete loss of historic location, and also slightly more peripheral in terms of relationship with the city and transport nodes. 4. Build new stadium on Castle Leazes. Again more or less freedom to build whatever type of stadium you want up to any capacity. Although it is in a new location I would say it retains the spirit of the historic location - particularly if connected down to Strawberry place through enhanced/new parkland. No need for any play in exile.

It's physically impossible with a demolish and rebuild. Spurs half built theirs first directly adjacent before demolishing WHL - and even with that it still meant almost two full seasons at Wembley. I don't think we have the physical space to do something similar. It would be 2-3 years.

If it has to be a rebuild it has to be on Castle Leazes. I just can't see us being in exile for what would be a couple of seasons of football in order to build on the existing site.

There's certainly an irony that considering our injury crisis he'd have probably been in the squad for most of this season if around. Obviously based on these loan spells he's a fair way off PL standard - but then clearly so are the likes of Parkinson, Ndiweni, Diallo etc who have been on the bench recently.

Schar will know fine well he's been one of our best players over the last two years. He will be wanting one last big contract before he goes back to CH.