ROB GUTMANN is back in the chair for this weeks Unwrapped with Mike Girling, Adam Smith and Andy Heaton as they try to decode exactly what the message was from Boston in Michael Gordon’s big statement/interview.
UNWRAPPED: MICHAEL GORDONS BIG NIGHT OUT
Guys,
Great show as always and once again spot with the development of Anfield. It is the worst possible solution which does not address any of the issues we have with Anfield. And also leaves us with an eyesore of a ground.
And one by one the other teams in England are building or planning to build new Stadiums….. Arsenal, Spurs, Chelsea, all have or are going that way and City and United already have the capacity.
The only thing I can think of is a fan funded development of the Annie Road in which we could build a new Super Kop…… A stand build by the fans for just fans…. No corporate seat, a single tier with food outlets for the normal fan!
It’s the only way I can see it ever happening?
Disappoint with this show to be honest lads. I think there are a lot of unfounded accusations thrown around. From the first announcement of the stadium expansion FSG said that the Anfield Road development was outline permission only and didn’t have a timescale. They were always going to upgrade the main stand first and then look to the Anfield Road. I don’t see anything new in that interview with Mike Gordon.
If/when both stands are upgraded there would be 10k extra seats for fans, not including corporate seating. This is described as a blip while 15k extra at the Emirates is described as a lot more? Also, no breakdown of how many of those 15k additional at the Emirates are corporate seating.
FSG aren’t doing anything that Moores couldn’t have done? He had to make personal loans to the club to buy relatively inexpensive players. The clubs commercial performance was a joke. Why didn’t Moores finance the 120 million pound Parry stadium if he was in a position to do so?
A new build stadium is being discussed without talking about any of the drawbacks. Arsenals new build stadium is only now beginning to pay off for them and they were able to do it from the Champions League spots and with a genius of a manager in place. Do we really want to go down that route? For a similarly sized stadium at the end of it?
I think there’s a lot of criticism for criticisms sake here and I think this piece lacks balance in a big way.
Agreed..Then there was some complete tripe about upgrading Melwood. Wait sorry?
Melwood was upgraded to in the early 2000s by Houllier based on the Clariefontaine model why do we need to spend more money on upgrading again less that 15 years later..
whats the point..
Well that was incredibly interesting but even more depressing. Been looking forward to seeing our ground finished and now i couldn’t give a shit!
I’ve always said that FSG have had a horrendous lack of ambition and i will go out on a limb and say that when they hired Rodgers and subsequently kept him this summer, it’s shown that lack of ambition more then anything else could.
i don’t think that FSG are going anywhere. first rule of business always explore all possble means of making profit. And they are trying to do that. To be honest i’d rather not go back to the previous owners thank you very much.
What a bunch of miserable cynics. Main stand development being delivered on time and budget and you can only see the down side!
The last time you dealt with this issue, the most sensible balanced view came from Jay McKenna, the person whose direct experience of dealing with owners might have been expected to make him more cynical. That balanced view wasn’t available on this pod.
How is a redeveloped Anfield the worst of all possible solutions? FSG have developed a solution that allows Anfield to develop to a capacity of nearly 60,000 without the need for taking on massive debt and in such a way that it can start to provide extra revenue to invest in the team immediately. Even when our rivals have completed their plans for stadium expansion, only Man Utd will have significantly greater capacity than that.
The alternative approach is to develop a new stadium with a capacity of say 65,000 at a cost of 400 million plus. Arsenal are the model you should be looking at for this, and it had a negative impact on transfer spend and therefore performance on the pitch for years.
You could be right in your view that the Anfield Rd development will not happen, but you should remember that FSG and Ian Ayre’s messages on the stadium have always been very cautious (frustratingly cautious) up to the point everything in committed. If the main stand is delivered on budget and FSG sees the returns they expect from it, the case for the next phase, which will be very much cheaper, should still stand. In the meantime we won’t see FSG creating a hostage to fortune by making a commitment.
One thing FSG have said recently is that they will not be selling the club any time soon. Some of you don’t want to take them at their word on this, but there is nothing out there to suggest your view on this might be correct.
What you seem to be asking for is not ambitious owners, but Arab sugar daddy owners. There are only so many of those out there (perhaps City and PSG have that market sewn up), and I for one am glad we don’t have them.
I get Mike Nevin’s idea about the atmosphere, but how does letting in another 15k miserable bastards who get to go to every game (half of whom want the manager fired) help the atmosphere? It’s not like the emirates is a cauldron. Fixing access and fixing the atmosphere are 2 different things.
On the subject of atmosphere, its not the amount of fans that is important. As acknowledge during this pod, the atmosphere was great during the 13/14 run-in and that’s with the existing 44.5k capacity. Put a competitive team on the pitch – which increasing the corporate capacity should help with – and the atmosphere will improve. Obviously other steps need to be taken as well but I fail to see how building a 60k Emirates type stadium would do anything to improve atmosphere.