My boy's names are imprinted in a couple of bricks. Can't remember how much they cost back then. It was just one method of income generation to help raise funds for the SoL.
I've also got a brick in the wall but have no idea if it's there or not, looked but couldn't find it. think I paid a fiver.
Or that it was in London, on 6 Times the land with huge access issues and took 4 Times as long to complete..... I do scratch my head at £800 million mind.
Appreciate those points , but again, 6 times the land, not 50 times. If it was a case of it being even say £200m for the stadium , and £600m for access roads and local infrastructure, then fair enough but we’ll never know the costings. But I still question the Olympic conversion. The stadium already there , nearly as much quoted to alter it, and then they later ask an extra £150m or so to finish. Did someone really cost it so inaccurately , or am I right to be suspicious ?
Oh the Olympic project 100%, that was a black hole that nobody ever explained, with the Wembley project it was unique, to this day Wembley has things that no other stadium has, and the work around the stadium was far more difficult.
At various times when the Wembley Project hit well publicised construction and costing snags, various national papers suggested that Bob should be brought in as a sort of consultant/Overseer. This was based on his work on The SSoL and his subsequent developments around Leeds. The FA naturaly ignored this claiming everything was going as expected. I honestly can not remember exactly how much the cost over-run was but £200mil is in the back of my mind. I believe that Bob was brought in by The FA when they eventually decided to go ahead with the St George's Park project where by coincidence (?) the architects were the same as designed The SAFC Academy of Light, The Sunderland Aquatic Centre, and Durham CC Riverside Ground. I understand that unlike the Wembley project this one ran as smoothly as you could hope for.
25 quid a brick it was and we sold 25,000. That's 602,500. roughly guessing engrave and admin costs it must have been a good half million the fans chipped in on building the SoL. Further testament to Bob and his costing on the SoL.
He had the bank balance when we sat 2nd at Christmas but didn’t push on with it. We owe him a lot, but he should’ve invested then and I am in no doubt we’d have pushed Man U for the title!
Brian clough could have came here, Bob you blew the biggest chance in our history, but thanks for the SOL roker park was our home but was crumbling but we needed a Mancini or a top manager and money to be spent.
I’m not sure Mancini would have quit playing for ****ing Inter Milan to jump in as Sunderland boss at the time. I’ll give Bob that one..
