The 'new stadium' chestnut

[FanchesterCity]

Now, I'm sure you lot have done the 'new stadium' topic many times - so one more time won't hurt eh?

 

Once again - the subject of a new stadium for Everton is in the news - with the suggestion that the current one is holding you back in some way.

 

Of course, the comparison with Man U getting 3M per game in revenue, and Everton approx 600K is a tad misleading and seems to imply this is a result of the stadium alone (it's not). But still, that's not the point -

 

 

As a City fan, I know only to well the nightmare of having to leave your beloved ground. It's tragic in many ways - BUT, I'm not sure many fans would go back now.

We got lucky with the Common Wealth games stadium - exceptionally lucky really. The ground isn't 'ours' - it's only partly ours and a proportion of our matchday revenue goes to the council. It's unlikely that Everton will be as fortunate.

 

Hand on heart now chaps, no blue tinted specs - What are you views on the following:

 

 

1) Has Goodison Park reached the end of it's practical life as a top class football stadium?

 

2) Putting the emotional attachment to the ground to one side, would you prefer a modern stadium and all the facilities that go with such, or stick with a traditional stadium?

 

3) Are the attendances at Everton likely to improve / diminish / remain the same with a new ground (putting any location issues to one side)?

 

4) Without wishing to start a 'size of fan base' row - Everton's average crowd in recent years is below 40K, what could Everton hope to get if a) Perfomances stayed the same, they got worse c) They were in Champions League and challenging for the title?

 

5) Again, this is NO dig at Everton (it's the same issue at City actually) - what can fans REALLY afford to pay? Money is tighter than ever for many fans and by the time you've paid for parking, a coffee, burger etc, you've blown 50 quid. If you start adding in cup games and stuff, it's even worse. So what do you consider to be a decent price for a ticket at Everton?

 

 

 

As a slight aside - and something which gets brought up a lot on many football phone-ins is why Everton haven't been bought in the same manner City were.

 

Again, I genuinely have no desire to wind anyone up, but here are my thoughts, and I'd be interested in hearing proper reasoned responses from Everton fans:

 

1) City had a brand new ground with no debt attached to it (other than the revenue share that the council get)

2) City had a comparable fan base and had been under performing for many years making it a nicer proposition to 'rescue' (you can make more money on doing up a run down house than sprucing up an already decent one)

3) The land surrounding City was just 'dead' - a very poor area of the city, with few projects, no hope for jobs etc etc - making it very good for expansion and community activities (good PR) for Abu Dhabi

 

Now the Abu Dhabi chaps didn't "love" City - it was a business deal. It still is a business deal - the same as it will probably be if Everton get sold. So in their 'business' mind - City must have been a better / simpler proposition. This isn't a comparison about greatness of club / team etc... pure business. And it doesn't mean Everton are worth less (or more) etc...

 

So - what are your views? and what do you think is stopping investors coming to Everton? - Be HONEST - there are clearly reasons, we just don't know quite what they are.

[Avinalaff]

I don't want to be the stand out obstacle for your possible good intentions here, but your timing is terrible to be fair bud. It sounds like another Daisy Cutter article in the making. We've just had a match against City, and the obvious comparisons between fortunes, and now we have a City fan asking us to dwell further on matters of hardship. It's a little similar to 'rubbing it in' if you want honesty mate.

 

Goodison is a little different to Maine Road. It's not just 'any' football ground.

 

Quoted:

 

 

Goodison Park was the first major football stadium built in England.

Only Scotland had more advanced grounds; Rangers opened Ibrox in 1887, while Celtic Park was officially inaugurated at the same time as Goodison Park.

Everton's ground-breaking development at Mere Green was to set the trend for football stadia throughout the country. The Blues initially spent up to £3000 on laying out the ground and building stands on three sides. Kelly Brothers of Walton built two uncovered stands each for 4000 people, and a covered stand seating 3000, at a total cost of £1,460.

Outside, hoardings cost a further £150, gates and sheds cost £132 10s and 12 turnstiles added another £7 15s to the bill.

The ground was dubbed Goodison Park and was opened on 24 August 1892, by Lord Kinnaird and Frederick Wall of the Football Association. Somewhat confusingly, the 12,000-strong crowd saw a short athletics meeting followed by a selection of music and a fireworks display.

Everton's first game there was on 2 September 1892 when they beat Bolton 4-2.

The publications "Out Of Doors", reported the following in October 1892:

"Behold Goodison Park! No single picture could take in the entire scene the ground presents, it is so magnificently large, for it rivals the greater American baseball pitches. On three sides of the field of play there are tall covered stands, and on the fourth side the ground has been so well banked up with thousands of loads of cinders that a complete view of the game can be had from any portion.

"It appears to be one of the finest and most complete grounds in the kingdom, and it is hoped that the public will liberally support the promoters."

A year after moving, in 1883, Everton were FA Cup finalists. They were then runners up again in the First Division in 1895. The ground hosted its firs FA Cup final in 1894 when Notts County beat Bolton, watched by a crowd of 37,000. At this time, Everton were the richest club in the country, and regular league gates such as the 30,000 which attended in February 1893 were still regarded as enormous.

 

Despite the revolutionary initial developments, it was not long before Goodison Park was improved even further. A new Bullens Road stand was built in 1895 at a cost of £3,407 and the open Goodison Road side was covered for £403, records show.

Meanwhile competition in the city was reaching peak levels. Everton were again runners up in both the league and FA Cup, while across Stanley Park, Liverpool won their first championship in 1901.

The Goodison Park of today really began to take shape after the turn of the century, beginning in 1907 with the building of a double-decker stand at the Park End, costing £13,000. In 1909, the large Main Stand on Goodison Road was built. Costing £28,000 it housed all the offices and players' facilities, and survived until 1971.

At the same time another £12,000 was spent on concreting over the terracing and replacing the cinder running track. A reporter from ‘Athletic News' wrote in the summer of 1909: "Visitors to Goodison Park will be astonished at the immensity of the new double-decker stand". The architect was Archibold Leitch, and the front balcony bore his criss-cross trademark, which can still be seen on the Bullens Road stand opposite.

Having regained its status as the best equipped ground in the nation, Everton hosted the 1910 Cup Final replay between Newcastle and Barnsley. A massive 69,000 attended. Then on 13 July 1913, Goodison became the first league venue to be visited by a ruling monarch, when George V and Queen Mary came to visit local schoolchildren at the ground.

It certainly wasn't just football that took place at Goodison though! During the First World War it was used by the Territorial Army for drill practice. Soon after, the US baseball teams Chicago White Sox and New York Giants played an exhibition match at the ground. One player reportedly managed to hit a ball right over the Main Stand.

The next big change took place in 1926, when at a cost of £30,000 another double-decker, similar to the Main Stand, was built on the Bullens Road Side opposite. Again, Leitch was the architect.

In the 1930s, Everton borrowed an idea from Aberdeen, who they had visited for a friendly. Pittodrie was the home to what were reputedly the first ever dug-outs for coaching staff. From Pittodrie and Goodison Park the idea soon spread, and now the covered dug-out is a feature of almost every ground worldwide.

 

Goodison enjoyed another royal visit in 1938, when George VI and Queen Elizabeth, (the mother of current Queen Elizabeth II), came to Everton and saw the new Gwladys Street Stand, just completed for £50,000. Goodison Park thereby became the only ground in Britain to have four double-decker stands and was newly affirmed as the most advanced stadium in Britain.

Goodison Park suffered quite badly during the Second World War, because of its proximity to Liverpool's docks, and the club received £5,000 for repairs from the War Damage Commission. Shortly after the work was completed, Everton enjoyed their highest ever attendance, 78,299 for the visit of Liverpool in Division One, on 18 September 1948.

Another familiar footballing adornment arrived at Everton in October 1957. The Goodison Park floodlights were switched on for an Everton v Liverpool friendly on 9 October.

A year later the club made another revolutionary move, spending £16,000 installing 20 miles of electric wire underneath the pitch. The system melted frost and ice most effectively, but the drains could not handle the extra quantities of water, so in 1960 the pitch was dug up and new drainage pipes laid.

The 1960s, like the 1930s, saw Everton win the Championship twice and the FA Cup once, and in 1966 Goodison Park staged five games in the World Cup, including that memorable quarter final between North Korea and Portugal.

No other English venue apart from Wembley staged so many World Cup games.

The next ground development took place in 1971, when the 1909 double-decker Main Stand on Goodison Road was demolished to make way for a massive new three-tiered Main Stand. The old stand had cost £28,000 and was then considered immense. The new stand cost a huge £1 million and was nearly twice the size, and was the largest in Britain until 1974, when Chelsea opened their mammoth East Stand.

Because the Goodison Road Stand is so tall, the floodlight pylons were taken down and lamps put on gantries along the roof. The old-fashioned Bullens Road pitched roof was replaced by a much flatter modern roof and similar gantries installed there also.

 

When the Safety of Sports Grounds Act came into effect in 1977, Goodison Park's capacity was greatly reduced from 56,000 to 35,000, mainly due to outdated entrances and exits. As a consequence, Everton had to part with £250,000 in order to boost capacity back up to 52,800. The 1986 figure stood at 53,419, of which 24,419 were seated.

In the early 1980's the original corrugated roofing of the Gwladys Street Stand was replaced by blue cladding, giving the roof a rich colourful look. Then, in 1987, the pitched roof was replaced by an upturned sloping roof extending out over the terracing below, which joined the roof of the Bullens Road, creating a continuous roof on two sides of the ground.

The next development was the conversion of Goodison to an all seater stadium, following the Taylor Report, in the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster.

This required the conversion of the paddock, enclosure and Gwladys Street terracing into seated accommodation. The Park End terracing remained temporarily but was only opened for big games. The reason for this was the intended redevelopment of the Park End. This came to fruition in the early part of 1994.

The last time spectators stood on the terrace was on 19th January at the FA Cup 3rd Round replay against Bolton. The old stand was pulled down during February, with construction beginning soon after. The new Stanley Park End stand is a single tier cantilever stand with a capacity of 6,000. The stand was opened on Saturday 17 September 1994 by David Hunt MP. A contribution of £1.3M was also given by the Football Trust.

The completion of the Park End brought Goodison Park's capacity up to 40,100, a figure exceeded at the time by only the projected capacities of Old Trafford and Anfield, neither of which were in such a confined area as Goodison Park.

During the Premier League years there have been only superficial changes to the ground. The Club's focus has been on securing a new permanent home, with plans for a ground on the city's King's Dock in the late 1990s eventually falling foul of spiralling development costs.

A painstaking search for an alternative culminated with plans submitted as part of a three-way partnership with Knowsley Borough Council, Tesco and the Club for a retail and ground development in the Kirkby area of Merseyside.

In 2009, following an extensive review process, the plans were rejected by government.

Goodison remains largely unchanged since the development of the Park End stand - although terraced housing behind the new stand was purchased and demolished in the late 1990s to accomodate additional parking and the erection of a marquee that provides additional matchday hospitality facilities. The ground capacity is now 40,157.

[c1982]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/15051909.stm

 

I'm not going to trawl through a City fans analysis nor am I going through Gavin's very nice looking cut and paste job but I may as well use this thread for this 'nothing new' / not very interesting article I saw on the BBC site.

[FanchesterCity]

Well it's YOUR club - I'm sure you have views - and of course, what happens at other clubs affects us all in the long run.

 

Are the fans partly to blame for not wanting change? You can lay claim to the wonderful history of Goodison but where's that getting the club? Not saying it's a bad stance - there's lots of good reasons to hold on to heritage, before we lose it ALL!, but there are some sound reasons to let go too.

 

Too touchy a subject? - it's hard to see your finances being that much of an issue - you're not in a total disarray, and you have a consistent attendance higher than the majority of clubs. So the issues MUST be elsewhere - not keeping up with other revenue streams? ground maintenance costs?

 

Do don't appear to have a horrible history of over spending (something that MIGHT come back to haunt us at City) - so I'm struggling to understand what it is that's stopping Everton being as competitive as other teams (off the pitch).

[MikeO]

I see the council are still bending over backwards to accommodate the dark side...

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2041676/Liverpool-granted-stadium-extension-City-Council-look-explore-options.html

 

[FanchesterCity]

Many (blue) moons ago - Everton were refused permission for Stanley Park on 'greenbelt' grounds (I believe) - although it might have been some covenant on Stanley Park being kept as a park blah blah blah - regardless they were denied the chance to rebuild there.

 

So, years later, Liverpool DO get permission.

 

OK - time has passed, and things change you might say - and that's a valid theory.

 

BUT, my question is this:

 

IF Liverpool have been granted planning permission for Stanley Park - then can't they also grant the same to Everton? My understanding of planning permission is that one simply has to present a valid case, building plans, intention for the building etc etc and it's those 'plans' that are approved (not the club). Therefore - SURELY the same can be applied to Everton right?

 

 

Now, putting aside conspiracy theories:

 

a) Have Liverpool spent more time / effort on getting plans for Stanley Park and meeting the criteria necessary in order to win planning permission? (and therefore Everton haven't?)

Am I wrong in believing that IF Everton also submitted similar (or the exact) same plans, they too would be granted the same permission?

c) Do Liverpool have some additional 'hold' on Stanley Park that Everton don't?

d) If the justification more than the plans alone, but based on the PERCEIVED viability of Liverpool FC over Everton FC?

 

Anybody with brain cell can see that in a perfect world (and assuming you can't expand on the current site because of the school and housing next to Everton), that Stanley Park is just about as brilliant a location as you can get (and putting aside the issue of the land being lost to a stadium and all that goes with it, instead of open park land - which is a debate in itself).

 

I'm struggling to see why Liverpool can manage to get permission and Everton can't - unless they've simply done a better job, or someone's reckoning Liverpool are less risky than Everton? (NOT a dig at Everton, just saying that some numpty MIGHT look on paper and say that their long term viability looks better than yours).

[MikeO]

My understanding is that Everton made tentative enquiries about building on Stanley Park but were told it wouldn't be allowed due to a covenant that said it had to stay as it was.

Not quite sure how Liverpool got round that.

[FanchesterCity]

My understanding is that Everton made tentative enquiries about building on Stanley Park but were told it wouldn't be allowed due to a covenant that said it had to stay as it was.

Not quite sure how Liverpool got round that.

 

Yeah, hard to know the real detail - on the surface though, it sounds like a) passage of time changed things or Liverpool put more effort into the matter and found ways of appeasing the Council, or keeping in line with the covenant.

 

A similar issue happened with Oldham Athletic - huge area to the side had a covenant that the land must stay as playing fields - and they tried to get around it by creating a replacement area elsewhere, and move the ground onto the existing playing fields - they failed (but Latics and Oldham Council have been a bit of a joke too).

 

This is partly what I was trying to say about the 'extra facilities' etc... it's not that you necessarily NEED them - it's all part of the game of winning over council officials and making them look good in the process. If you say "we're moving Everton" they says "so what?"..... if you say "we're moving Everton and will create a new recreation center, sports science academy, a new retail area etc etc then their ears prick up cos they can claim it's all THEIR doing... and they save some money off their budget cos Everton are building paying for it, and not them". Sadly, it's not really an option that Everton today can afford - not without a serious punt from the banks, or new investment into the club.

 

I'm not one for accumulating more debt on clubs, but sometimes, in business, it's necessary to take on more debt to finance such plans... but I'm not sure in the current climate anybody would be prepared to spend the 200-300 million? to create a new stadium and extra complex, and wait 15 years for their investment to start paying off.

 

You seem to be trapped in a catch 22... clearly a big club who COULD be doing a lot better financially if your commercial arm got its act together, but the commercial arm needs a bit more success on the pitch (CL?) and better stadium (or just better facilities as a 'compromise').