You sound as though you know the technical issues involved, Fez, and it may be that a new ground will eventually be the answer. If that ever happens, aside from the emotional wrench, the location of any new ground will have a big impact. How far are Watford fans willing to travel? I already come 80 miles and I wouldn't want to add to it. Relocation to the south of Hampshire perhaps?
If the club ever do move away from the Vic. it would be an emotional wrench for many fans, but I think most would accept it. What would make absolutely no sense however would be a move outside of the town. Any new stadium would, I feel, need to be within walking distance of Watford Junction - to not use the town's excellent public transport system to London would be lunacy. I would have no sympathy whatsoever with an out of town move which is 'car driver friendly', in our time and age even football clubs should be showing more environmental consciousness than this.
Agreed - although they could do a Reading and have free busses going to and from the ground from the junction.
Not a chance I'm afraid! Look at any map of Watford Borough and there's simply no room. There was only one suitable space that fitted your criterion and that was the old Orphanage site - as I've mentioned before, that was earmarked (long before it closed) for housing with rumours of council backhanders from the developers. No, it's stay at Vicarage Road or an out-of-town site. It's all very well encouraging "environmental consciousness", but I suspect that the majority of Horns fans travel by car now and will continue to do so in the future. Of course, when the Croxley Link is built and there is a new station along Vicarage Road (for Hospital & Football Ground), well served by Met trains and also trains from Aylesbury, Chesham, Amersham and Ricky, then Vicarage Road may not be so isolated as it seems now........
I am a construction professional and my dissertation was a study of The Vic including a warts and all tour plus some surveying so hopefully, on this subject at least, I know what I am talking about. I like to think one of the Pozzo's representatives have read through it at some stage. It would be a wrench to leave The Vic, but if we are truly to compete at the top level - even at Championship level - then we need to be pragmatic. KP showed on Monday there was no room for sentiment on the pitch... there is precious little room off it either. And I wholeheartedly agree with Cologne and Dan Starkey regarding the travel issues. Pointless it being just car friendly. It needs top transport links, i.e. easy reach of Junction and Met (ideally); great facilities such as bars, food outlets etc. to encourage us to spend our money within the club. It also needs a location to attract non-football business on a regular basis. Long gone are the times when once a fortnight opening is acceptable.
Can't see a new ground I'm afraid and I'll be interested to see the final season ticket numbers and the crowd averages next season. We need to show our faith in the Pozzos and start hitting 15,000 much more often.
But (to repeat my previous post), where is this ideal location? Within easy reach of Junction and Met - demolish half the Cassiobury Estate? And the location of the Met in Watford is changing - Watford Met will close (despite the protests) and the new station will be built at the end of Vicarage Road, having an excellent service to/from the Junction and within walking distance of the ground. Oh, I know, let's move back to the West Herts ground............ I'm sorry to be so negative, but if such a site was geographically, politically and financially possible, surely the club would have tried to move long there before now.
Agree that I think there will be a bit of a clear out, but don't agree with the last sentence. After the first 7 games this season we had only 7 points. At the same point Cardiff had 13, Hull 13, Brighton 16, Crystal Palace 10 and Leicester 12. A slightly better start and we would have had automatic promotion, and would have pushed Cardiff all the way. We did this scoring the highest number of goals, having one of the best goal differences and playing some of the best football we have ever seen at the Vic, or away from it. I even saw a quote somewhere else on the forum saying that Zola may be tactically naive! Very disappointing day Saturday, but lets get some perspective on what we did achieve in the last 38 games of the regular season.
Could just ground share with Udinese in their new stadium... http://forzaitalianfootball.com/2013/04/udinese-to-build-new-stadium/
It has been known for countless years that there are problems with the existing site, but back in the EJ/GT era sites on the outskirts of the town were looked at, but the cost of the land was too high to make a reasonable case to build a new stadium. With the M25 and M1 links being so close vacant plots are at at a premium and to suggest that the Vic has a high worth for housing etc. is not correct due to the bad conditions. Recently while Pompey Supporters Trust were trying to get a realistic valuation on their ground to buy it, the District Valuer was brought in, and in his report suggested that with the demolition costs, the unknown ground conditions and access from only one end, the ground was worth about £250,000 at best. Similar conditions apply at Watford and there is no way I can see how enough money could be realised from the sale to build something new. Access to the Vic is a problem in some ways, but let's not forget that a relief road is due to be built to the back of the enlarged hospital next door and the railway is once again due to provide a link behind the ground. How long might this take to appear is a good question, but at this time it is due to happen. Just how big a stadium is actually needed? Let us say that for ease we attract 15,000 at present, yet 20,000 extras wanted to go to Wembley. If you could turn half of the extras into regulars you would do extremely well, so a ground that could hold around 25,000 would be quite large enough most of the time. The last set of plans for the East Stand showed that it would hold approx. 7,500. Add that on to our exist capacity of about 17,000 and you are about there. It would be a big gamble to build it with gates of 15,000 but on a cost/return basis it seems the best option. The old stand was closed in 2008 and it seems from my infrequent visits since that the atmosphere has become worse since then. Wherever you sit you see this demolition site and scaffold tower. Until that is dealt with whatever noise is generated will only come from three sides. Take a ground like Anfield which is very tight as it is situated on a small site, but the crowd are very close to the pitch and players which helps with the team support. Grab a few extra metres if possible down the East Side and bring the crowd nearer to the action.
Have to disagree there - given the player situation at the start of the season, the poor start was always going to happen. What shouldn't have happened was the inconsistency that crept in later, such as winning away to Brighton and following that up with a home defeat by Charlton, losing away and drawing at home with the bottom club - in fact only picking up one point on visits to the three relegated teams - losing at Millwall after dominating the match to an embarrassing extent, losing at home to Blackpool....... I'm certainly not knocking Zola and agree wholeheartedly that his team have played some of the best football ever at The Vic - but I still say that inconsistency from some players ended up costing us promotion. That and shocking referees - so bad in many cases that I started to believe the conspiracy theories that sprang up.
Well put BB. There's no doubt that a bit of loss of concentration and what have you did cost us a fair few points. Wolves away is another one. That's not to criticise the team at all but it's saying it like it is. If we want to go up next season we need to start turning those draws into wins and defeats into draws or wins. At least now we're commenting on all of this from a real position of strength and hopefully we'll go one better. A few people have said that the Pozzos diddn't plan on us going up this season so it's all good.
I don't disagree that at certain times we could have done better, but equally every team in the country throws away points they could have won. But you cannot argue the fact that over the last 38 games of the season we would have gone up automatically, even if we did draw/lose games that we shouldn't have during that period, and would have been within 4 of Cardiff. Even the best teams lose/draw games they shouldn't have and have inconsistent performances from players. The reason we did't go up automatically was down to the results in the first quarter of the season. Hopefully with a more settled club and squad to start next season we will have a much better start.
It was surely a season when any club could beat any other on the day with the result that the better teams still lost not infrequently and the worse teams managed more wins than in some years. That's my impression anyway...I've not checked any stats. It's possible next year it will be the same, but it may be that 2/3 teams will pull away and we'd certainly need to have fewer losses than this season if that were to happen. I still love the unpredictability of the Championship...as long as we're not losing to someone we all expected to beat!
