TheBrownBottle

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)

Whelan, above, reasserting his view that there is "no chance" of Wigan's manager, Steve Bruce, taking charge at St James' Park while Ashley is the owner there, said: "I don't think you will ever get Steve going to a club that is run the way Mike Ashley runs it. Ashley has no class whatsoever. The minute he arrived there and turned up in the boardroom in a replica shirt and jeans and pair of trainers, the club was gone.“ Dave Whelan - FA Cup finalist, entrepreneur, soothsayer https://amp.theguardian.com/football/2009/mar/25/wigan-jjb-stadium-dave-whelan

Some parts will be a reduction in racist attitudes in the general population, some parts will be ‘frown power’ and the removal of any sense of social respectability of holding / saying those views. Which is of course the primary whinge of the ‘you can’t say anything these days’ brigade. Every time I’ve pressed someone saying that to tell me what can’t be said, there never seems to be a firm answer. Odd that.

It’s a fucking grotesque argument that mind. Proper business-speak wank. It’s obviously bad for sport for one owner - in this instance, the funding arm of a dictatorship - to own its four most popular clubs.

Very, very little. And what has been said is lacking in any kind of detail. They’re more like silent investors - again, very different from PSG & Man City where it was clear from day one who was running things and where they were aiming. Agreed re the Trust. Arse-kissing fans reps are never a good thing; they’re far too desperate to be close to those running the club. Arms-length is more appropriate

Of course - but that’s not happening in a million years. We couldn’t offer the salary nor immediate guaranteed trophy returns that he’d want for leaving Spurs

We still play it against ‘big’ teams where we don’t expect to dominate on the ball. But we don’t at all against lesser sides, as it is completely ineffective. There’s a more methodical style with pressure building from possession. The games against good sides at the tail end of the season - Arsenal, Spurs, Villa - all illustrate my point re how exposed the defence has looked. We blew Spurs away but conceded a stupid y pressured goal. Villa overrun our midfield and exposed the lack of pace at the back - if you wanted a blueprint for beating us, that was it. Arsenal hit us with sucker punches. A CDM potentially changes that.

We play a pressing game but not the same as what we played first half of the season

We don’t play a high press anymore. We stopped that when we went on that dry patch at the start of the year. After which our defence started to look very exposed and started making schoolboy errors in pretty much every game, leading to conceding daft goals like clockwork. We went from the best defence in the league to an average one. It seems patently obvious to me that if we continue playing the more positive style of the second half of last season (which was more fun to watch) then a genuine defensive midfielder would be a positive.

Me neither. It’s the most uninteresting transfer saga in history. Every year the same shite.

TBF the source being impeccable is difficult to verify when both the source and the poster are anonymous. Though of course if you're right we won't have to wait until next summer to have it confirmed - it will leak shortly if this is the case (as it was with Fun88)

Which is why Shearer is the 5th highest top flight scorer of all time. The 'PL record' stuff is a right old load of bollocks. The fact that only Jimmy Greaves has outscored Shearer post-war is incredible, mind. Kane still has a fair way to go to even break top ten - which would knock Hughie Gallacher out of the top ten list (nee one wants that)

I get the impression that we'll use this window for significant squad strengthening rather than one or two 'marquee' signings. Total guess mind.