TheBrownBottle

Winning the European Cup puts you on a very small, very select list of clubs. Pretty much every English club of any significance has one league title in the bag in their history.

Maybe have Milburn, Keegan and Shearer on three of them, then a fourth plinth like Trafalgar Square with new statues every so often. Voted on by the supporters. There is a danger that my dad and his mates vote for Tony Green every year, mind.

We play the ‘big boys’ in England twice a season, and it’s a domestic pot. The only reason the FA Cup registers so high for me is the history and prestige of it - European competitions generally hold greater value. The UEFA Cup would be the bigger trophy to win - just - but if you ask me on another day I might put it below the FA Cup (though only for emotive reasons). If I wasn’t an English NUFC supporter, I wonder if I’d actually put it below the Conference League.

Conference League 100% trumps League Cup for me. Not sure why beating Fiorentina in a final is less prestigious.

Nope European Cup Premier League UEFA Cup FA Cup Conference League League Cup The traditionalist in me wants to place the FA Cup much higher, but it’s been damaged badly over previous decades. I’m astonished by the numbers on here who’d take a PL win over the European Cup. I would swap five league titles for one European Cup

Another consideration re a new stadium is naming rights. Much to Mike Ashley’s chagrin, SJP is SJP regardless of any attempt to have a stadium sponsor. A brand new stadium opens up real naming rights benefits. Don’t get me wrong, I’m as romantic as they come when it comes to football - I don’t like the commercialism the game now attracts. But I’m also aware that the real world operates in a different way from the one in my head. A new ground in five or six years time would allow the owners to get maximum value in the market - likely with a KSA company splashed all over it.

It’s got character because it’s been around for a while. Character builds with time. The 90s era stands didn’t have much character when they were built.

Sorry to hear that - that’s a pisser. Huge error by the club. This is the sort of thing a supporters trust is there to call out - but ours’ has its nose so firmly up the board’s arse I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Land costs are one of the key factors, as are in ground conditions. Everton’s new ground is on reclaimed dock land - a potentially expensive site location, and the site purchase may have been expensive. If NUFC offered to effectively rebuild Leazes Park on the site of the current SJP the purchase costs would be minimal. Land purchase is what often is forgotten when comparing to London stadiums (along with space constrictions which often bloats construction programs). Have a look at land prices in London and you’ll get a sense of how expensive building a stadium there would be.

Pretty much mate - it really depends on what the end outcome they’re seeking is. KSA construction is heavily built around outcomes-driven scope; the cost can often go hang. But in our case, they’re liable to find that a shiny new ground in the city might be as cost effective and they can fill it with revenue-driving exec facilities.

Vanity projects like NEOM expose that they don’t have a clue about construction costs - just that they have a shitload of cash. I’ve got mates who’ve worked in the construction industry in KSA - believe me, I wouldn’t be looking in that direction for the sharpest minds when it comes to controlling construction costs.

Yep, she’s one of those people who ooze competence in their work. She has a way of speaking which is both friendly and forceful - not a combination which you come across regularly.

Yeah, agreed re SJP Metro - closing it and grouting the tunnel would remove one potential obstacle (and would finally end any remaining hope of the Metro being expanded west - a pretty forlorn hope anyway!) It would still be a bastard of a job, even with the station being close. Given the risks involved in the project, any contractor undertaking the works is unlikely to agree to a fixed price lump sum contract - so in all likelihood the club would be exposed to substantial financial risk once any project to expand is greenlit. You likely wouldn’t be able to undertake any substantial geotech until the station is closed - which might expose some additional cost risks depending on required piling depths. The slope at Gallowgate creates the problem of structural height - and you also have Strawberry Place; if the road isn’t able to be permanently closed, you’d need to find an engineering solution to avoid that whilst building structural piles to unknown depths and (assuming the Metro station isn’t closed) avoiding damage to the Metro. It isn’t impossible, of course - but it’s hard to imagine any sensible cost benefit analysis being positive about it. Our owners do have unbelievable wealth, so it depends on their appetite, of course - but for the cost and risk, if I was their Civils QS I’d be advising them to explore other options.

A further note on this though; it has to be caveated against what the owners are likely to build. An ordinary stadium on a reasonably priced greenfield site would be one thing; if they went super shiny deluxe, then of course the cost would skyrocket. The last football stadium in the UK I was involved with estimating on was Leicester’s when they came up in 2016 - they did some extensive refurbs. That was pricey …

I’m a civils estimator by day - it’s one of the few things in life where I’m reasonably certain on such things. I don’t find it hard to believe, tbh. You can’t benchmark any stadium built in London against what it would cost in the NE. Everton’s proposed design is OTT in terms of expense. Arsenal’s ground cost c.£400m in 2004; but Leicester’s cost less than 10% of that around the same time, and Man City‘s a quarter of that. There have been three significant stadiums built in the NE in the last quarter century or so - the SOS, Riverside and George Reynolds Pink Elephant. Construction cost indices become fairly imprecise going back more than 5-6 years, but there is no chance in hell that construction cost have went up ten fold in 20 years. Allowing for the right site as low cost of land purchase, then you’d not be looking at anything like the costs you’ve cited. edit: as a quick explanation, latent conditions are the biggest risk generally on civils projects. The site at Gallowgate is fraught with latent conditions risks - you’re building over a road and a Metro station, on a sloping site where geotechnical investigations are likely next to impossible. The potential damage to the trains or services underneath is huge. The engineering solutions to actually build on there - even without those conditions - are nightmarish.

Expansion to SJP likely wouldn’t be cheaper than a brand new ground - depending on how big and how it’s built, of course. Extending the Gallowgate - if it’s even possible - would be a massive civil engineering exercise and would be hugely expensive.

I’m sort of happy about that re Messi. The US feels like a much more tasteful footballing retirement home.

You’re going to be bitterly disappointed come 1st September. The club won’t be aiming to win the European Cup. We won’t be buying players on that premise. We’ll be taking advantage of the income boost to strengthen the squad. We might sign one marquee player - but I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t.

It wouldn’t pay for any foodbanks. Better taxation policy and increased revenues would mean that they wouldn’t need to exist. Though of course they shouldn’t exist at all at present - it is a conscious choice of the UK govt to have the poorest in food poverty.

Yes. I would. They’re talking about ten times salary for the players going over there.

“Wemember, you are mowtal”

Clubs like Bournemouth and Palace would be the ones ejected to make way for them. It wouldn’t be a 30-club division. English football is a pyramid. That’s it’s strength. And 150 years down the toilet because some would like to see Man Utd play Barcelona twice a year guaranteed. Nah, I’ll give that a miss.

He broke his leg? He never said owt

It’s a hideous idea The whole ‘Super League’ idea needs to be fucked off generally, and I’d think most would not be happy with adding teams to the English league - one consequence of which would likely be expulsion from FIFA

I mean, you’re right in terms of outside of KSA. Must be a pisser for supporters of other club across there (and there must be some)