Amazing stadium. It really makes me cringe when stadiums are named after a company, but other than that, the "Westfalenstadion" is pretty much perfect.
A) SMS should not be expanded until the club is routinely selling out. Why spend on more seats if no one is coming anyway? 8,000 people on Wednesday hardly inspired stadium expansion. B) I have never been there, but I love what I've seen of the Estadio Municipal de Braga in Portugal. Wow is that architecturally interesting.
In Portugal in May, our tour guide insisted on circling the stadium at Braga..very impressive and interesting. Grows from landscape.
Yeah, if I could build a stadium I'd probably build that one. Another fun one is Float@Marina Bay in Singapore. I don't want this as my team's home, as there's no atmosphere, but it sure is fun as a marquee attraction. I hope they put up some high nets!
Now that is cool, but am I right in saying there are no fences or nets around the pitch to stop the ball going in the water? What would happen if Fernando Torres had a shot on goal?
Beats me? They bring a lot of spare balls? It looks like in the pictures that they can put up some netting if they want to, and according to its wikipedia page it has indeed hosted some football games, so I guess they've got it figured out. Probably never seen the likes of Fernando Torres, tho.
When the plans for Stoneham fell through and they turned to the present site I thought it would be an absolute disaster. I had a vision of gridlocked roads* and yobbos tearing up the city centre, but I couldn't have been more wrong. After visiting other grounds in "out of town" locations with no pubs and crappy park and ride schemes I'm glad the Stoneham Plan got the chop. It's true that the current location leaves a bit to be desired, but if they ever consider moving I hope it's not too far from the city. *Something to thank the early leavers for.
I agree with making SMS more intimidating, I don't like the fact there is a big gap between the touchline and fans. This is due to UEFA guidelines, but Old Trafford is ok in their eyes and the first rows are now used in champions' league matches methinks, why compromise a stadium design for a few, if any european matches a season? I would like to see the pitch sunk, as there is no undersoil heating, and an extra 8 rows or so bringing the crowd closer. A new tier should be quite steep; It's ironic that German clubs come to England to study football stadia and acoustics of traditional grounds, and seem we ignore that. It would be good to have an archictectual feature, like the second design on pg1. Maybe like the Bayer Arena which is 2 tiered on 3 sides. please log in to view this image
I think that when we were playing really good footy under WGS against Premiership sides, you could still get seats for the less fashionable games against teams like Bolton or Fulham. I just wonder how many more fans could be tempted along if, sorry, when we return to the Prem? To justify building a new stadium, we would have to be filling St Marys for every game, and be confident of filling an extra 10000 seats every week. The only way I can see this happening is if we become well known for the quality and style of the football (the Southampton way?) and expand our appeal beyond the geographic area. Is this what Cortese has in mind? To become a lot of fans second team, like West Ham?
Our gates this season are no bigger than last year..any increase will probably be due to the number of away fans. Cortese must be pulling his hair out. He said we would lose money in League 1, break even in the Championship and make a profit in the PL. Sure Nicola expected an increase in home fans this season. We certainly don't need a bigger stadium yet.
It is early days Fran, but our gate average for league matches is 24033 is that not slightly up on last years attendance?
That's right..let facts ruin a good argument. Must admit I didn't work it out..just feel a bit disappointed its not higher.
Well, putting up ST prices by over 30% has its consequences as I'm sure NC realised when he was carrying out his calculations especially in these times we are living in Shouldn't even think about capacity increase until we are a relatively established premiership club
