http://www.foxestalk.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=70532&hl=%20tier%20%20east%20%20stand&st=20 That's a thread from January. Some differing views, but also it's not exactly clear what the situation is. I think it's very clear that the East Stand will be expanded on it's own first, but it's not clear if the others will be at any point. I reiterate, I cannot see us getting over 40,000 at any point.
Firstly, I thought originally it was 3 sides but more recently they decided they could only do one? I heard this last month. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Well...I'm quoting what I heard when the stadium was originally built, so you have the most recent information. It's strange that it could be done but now can't though? On the subject of how big should we 'grow' the stadium, personally I think we should make it as big as we can. We will never be a Wigan because our history is different. We have a history of being in the top two divisions and never dipped below 20000 supporters, even in League One. I don't really care what it looks like to be honest and any empty seats would be managed so they would be the top tiers. Therefore, for the cameras, the stands would appear full while on the game. I wouldn't want anything to make the atmosphere worse but I think the effect would be negligible so long as the lower tiers were filled first. It wasn't a bad atmosphere at MK Dons and their top tier did not even have seats! I think we should expand as much as possible because it gives us potential. For a Prem game against Wigan, we probably wouldn't have many more than 30-35000. For a game against Man U or maybe a big European team, we might be able to fill it. If you think about new rules about clubs financing squads based on revenue, then maximising on gate receipts definitely makes sense. A full house at 45000 would make around £450k per game. If we only filled it 4 times in a season then it would be £2 million. I bet the new owners have this is mind rather than whether it will look odd having unequal stands.
Yes, The Dell was a great little stadium, with a close atmosphere. But the most important word is little. It kept Saints little, and meant that the patronising word plucky, was not too far behind it. When the St Marys design was made known I thought, too small, and I still do. However, when I go to a match, and if my seat is nearer to pitch side than the roof, with about 10 minutes before kickoff, I invariably go down, to stand just behind the advertising, and look around, just drinking in the echoes, the noise, the people bustling around, or just sitting in their seats, talking with friends, or just waiting for the match to begin. And the quality of the atmosphere is not worse at St Marys, it is just different, because it is a bigger stadium. I'm not sorry that St Marys is not a unique design. It is tried and trusted. The façade looks great too.
In my one and only visit to the Dell, I also remember being very jealous of Matt Le Tissier. There are only a handful of players I would've loved to have seen in a Leicester shirt and he is one of them. When the St Marys design was made known I thought, too small, and I still do ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I know what you mean. With a stadium of 32000 ish you are on a par with Wolves, Derby and the like. Build a stadium of 45000 and you are on a par with the likes of Villa and Everton. It is an as yet unanswered question whether Southampton or Leicester could fill these stadiums on a regular basis but I personally would prefer to have the question answered. I don't know about Southampton but Leicester have always been limited by small-mindedness in the board room. A feeling of 'that'll do' and penny pinching. We finally have owners who seem to want to push the boundaries of what our club can become. Part of this must mean getting as many people through the turnstile as possible. The 'size' of a club can change. Fairly brief spells in the lower divisions don't seem to have changed either Leicester or Southampton too much for the worse but there are clubs who have spent longer down their and are no longer considered big clubs in any way. Clubs can become bigger too. Wigan and Reading have changed the nature of their clubs by good investment in playing staff and new stadia. Leicester (and Southampton) can be changed too but it requires owners who will push the boundaries. If you build it...they will come!
But we will be a Wigan, we will still be laughed at by away supporters if our Stadium wasn't full in the Premiership. What it looks like is quite important to a lot of people, there's nothing more deflating than seeing our home stadium with thousands of empty seats. I think we are getting ahead of ourselves to talk about a big European Team, we all have dreams but Europe in the close future sounds a bit ridiculous for me. And as I said, even if we did fill it (which would be rarely if at all) the atmosphere would be worse because it would be filled by so many non-Leicester fans. Our fanbase isn't 30,000, it's barely even 20,000, anything on top of that number are day trippers, plastics, neutrals or whatever you want to call them. Don't get me wrong, I'd love 45,000 fans going to see Leicester every week, but I dread seeing 10,000 empty seats in the Premiership, and I think plenty of other people feel the same. But if we only expanded to 38K for example, and filled it every week (that would be a bigger home attendance than Spurs BTW), what would be wrong with that? £2m might be good for the owners, but even the players we are after now are worth more than that. I'm not talking about their best interests but mine, the matchday experience is very important to me - the atmosphere, what it looks like - it all makes a difference. With the Club coming out with how they want to improve the mathcday experience for the fans, I think this would do the opposite for a lot of them.
I think that we could fill what we have in the prem if the ticket prices stayed the same, but i can see the platinum fixtures (your chelseas and Man Us) being quite high, not QPR high, but at least 10-20% higher than this year. Expansion of the stadium to me would be fair, as long as current prices didnt increase.
Well we might have to agree to differ on this one. Personally I don't care what away fans think. If we have 35000 in a 45000 stadium then we have a much higher attendance than most anyway, so any criticism is pretty hollow. Such as Bristol City fans having a go at empty seats when we had 10000 more for that game than they get at home. I was in the Leicester Mercury in about 1994. They basically took the pish out of me for suggesting that Leicester would end up in the top half of the Premiership and in Europe. They rang me back 3 years later to ask whether I would go in the paper again as it turned out I was right. I refused, mainly because I was offended by their original article. What I would've said at the time though, was that I thought Leicester would end up back at the bottom of the second tier. The reason I would've said this was because we were limited by the capacity of Filbert Street and the board would not invest serious money in building on O'Neill's success. I was right about that too. This doesn't mean I have any monopoly on being right. What it does mean is that I don't want to see Leicester limited next time we hit the big time by not being able to capitalise on the big crowds we seem to be able to attract. Until we have a stadium which is 'too big' for us, we won't know our true support. I'm not suggesting 55000 straight away, but if the owners are prepared to push all the way to the Champion's League then we may at some point need it. (I just hope we don't get relegated in it!)
Yeh I guess we'll just have to wait and see I just hope they at least expand it gradually, that's all, one stand and see if we fill that.
