I have shouted year on year thst you need a quality team on the pitch,playing high standard football with full houses each week. How often has that happened in the last 25 years. Ashton Gate held 21000 previous to the demolition,SL is spending millions bringing it up to 27000.when is that going to be required in league 1. 7000 more seats is that really going to make a massive difference income wise from football. The rugby would never fill that amount of seats. So the additional income has to come through other avenues,i really would like to know how much that will generate nothing like the football or rugby funds. My opinion we cannot get it right on the playing field,both football and rugby teams play in the second tier of their respective games. When you look at the money SL has poured into the clubs,his return on investment is horrendious. If it was Hargreaves,Lansdown serious questions would be asked. Do i think we should be in a far better state with the amount of money that has been thrown at it 100% i do. Has the club gone forward with all the money thrown at it,A new stadium but you need a product to fill it,sadly that has been blown away,the feel good factor was there from last season,however SL and his board have just let it all go down the drain in the first quarter of this year.
But it is not Hargreaves Lansdown, it is football. You know the old joke about how to make a small fortune in football...? Answer = start with a large one The football capacity was not 21,000, it was restricted to 19,500 for "safety" reasons so we are effectively adding 8,500 new seats and if we are to be successful and, ALL IMPORTANTLY, self sustaining, we will need every one of those to pay the wages of the better players. We are not there yet, the stadium is progressing but ala West Ham, the minimum requirement is that we stay in this division for next season. It would seem that some, (if not all) of the management team thought we had enough to achieve this however it is rapidly becoming clear that this is not the case. It is catch 22 - the bigger stadium pays for better players but we don't have it yet. This means that SL will have to stick has hand in his pocket to buy better players to keep us up and compete in order for the stadium to take over this role, provided of course, that we are successful. The stadium element of this conversation is, to a degree, irrelevant anyway as the money has been in the bank since April 2009, when SL sold some of his shares in Hargreaves Lansdown and raised £47.2million specifically to cover the cost so it is not "new" money that SL has to find now. Also, I can't imagine that having been in the bank for 5 years, that this money wasn't soundly invested so I expect it is worth a fair bit more now. Whether the pot has been used to fund some of the losses over recent years, I don't know...
Forty million pounds and more is not being spent on the redevelopment to increase capacity by five six thousand, it is being spent to assist BCFC to increases its spending from income from the new facilities. Income will increase regardless of attendances. That is the point, to create an FC via Bristol Sport that is less reliant on attendances and Mr Lansdowns wealth. Could you explain how Mr Lansdown should proceed? Can you explain how numerous players costing five and six million and thus demanding wages of a million plus a season would be afforded?
Reading - Swansea - Hull All built their stadiums first - then the money generated helped to get the teams right on the pitch
It simply cannot pay wages of that stature,however why bother trying to sign 6,7,8 million players,when the board cannot pay the wages to go with it. However where i do question the ambition going forward,was what happened pre-season The answer nothing,there have been plenty of players that could and would have improved us,but nothing happened. Certainly not costing those crazy prices. The risk now is a quick return to league 1. How much do you think Ashton Gate is going to generate outside of football and rugby.
For some inexplicable reason we haven't learnt the rules yet, and to play the game at the same level as everyone else that should be priority #1. When we get that message only then do we stand a chance of getting something right finally. Know what you want to be and act accordingly - but don't hold your breath for City to adapt and change because it's not in our DNA.
Without the stadium, you don't get as much sponsorship. The ground itself will be built with copeporate boxes which will be used by football and rugby. And believe it or not also in league one. There will also be functions like at the moment screening the rugby World Cup in the sports bar and promoting the biggest screen in the south west. These all generate money which in turn will fund the football. So like Cliftonville politely asked you, how else are we going to pay these wages that players want. I get the impression that you just think SL should pay out regardless of what the income is in the club. So you being a successful business man that you tell us, you could always like some do on here and put money into the club paying for the corporate seats and then allow the club to generate extra income. Or perhaps use some of your savvy mind and realise to make a business you need to balance books, bit like what's happened. Dwight Gayle was a silly offer, but I doubt Gray was on that much previously and we probably offered him a lot more, but he decided he could get even more by joining Burnley.
ROD what i said, was the revinue the stadium will bring in will be a fraction of the football and Rugby funds.
I think most clubs find it the other way round nowadays, sponsorship and prawn sandwiches are what funds most now. Gone are the days when supporters are the most important we are just bread and butter now. Look at Swansea 20k a week less in the championship but there deals paid to keep them well afloat.
How much do I think the redeveloped Ashton Gate will generate eventually? There will be a significant increase in commercial revenue. This will be millions. How many is down to how all the group businesses perform. Mr Lansdown could increase the clubs losses this season to a capped level and for two seasons after by the way. I would disagree that Mr Lansdown chucking more money in endlessly is progress, sensible or healthy.
Steve Lansodown is being coated off here for putting millions into something more sustainable instead of losing another forty million in a couple of seasons. Well done Steve L some of the redevelopment is not to my taste but money is better in bricks, and facilities now than massive debts due to players and greedy agents which is what some results fans appear to prefer.
Why some fans have a go at SL is beyond me. If and I say If he gets things wrong, it won't matter to me, I will stay with that guy till the cows come home. He tries and that's all you can ask of anyone in whatever situation. It's so easy to criticise, reminds me of how easy to play football THIS side of the white line. Without SL we'd be with the Sags and YTFC in L2.
Probably not but at present the critics on here don't seem to have any answers beyond spend more / what City are not allowed to v invest in the ground to increase money coming into the FC. SL is being sensible while others want City to behave like Cardiff!!
As the owner and presumably the overseer of the setting of salaries, transfer fees and such like then it he who the buck stops with whether he likes it or not. Following promotion we are once again at a level that we should be playing at as a bare minimum and we are struggling big time by short sighted management. Clubs much smaller than us have reached the top division and have managed to stay there by having good practices in place. Every day seems like day 1 in BS3 over the past few years. The simple facts are that if SL wasn't in charge then someone else would be. Would we be better or worse off ? Who knows, it's pure conjecture. But if SL wasn't in charge, then who also knows what sort of individual or group might be attracted to a sleeping giant as we are so frequently (and incorrectly) labelled, with no Premiership clubs for miles around for competition ? Publicly we just continue to act like a bunch of amateurs dabbling in a multi billion pound operation.
SL for the amount he has invested in this football club, and Bristol sport has had a very very poor return. What have we spent this year 2.1 million on Kojak,that was a gamble as he was untried in the championship,the scarey thing is he is our best player this season.what does that say about the rest. Sorry we deserve what we get this season,we have gone into this league seriously under prepared. Also the amount of money that has been pumped into the club TO WHERE IT SITS NOW is very concerning. We have just had the best season for decades,yet we have gone into the championship with a set of blinkers on,we have a squad which is weaker than last year. We have two kids that were playing at oxford and plymouth coming on as subs to try and improve the team. The depth in the squad is zero. God help us at Ipswich this week,that is a side as good and may be better than Reading.
Wrong City will lose millions again as they have for seasons without a ball being kicked. Then there are tens of millions on top for the redevelopment from Steve Lansdown. its not pennies.
Angelic and RR. I've felt very similar to you guys, especially about the non summer signings and the seemingly panic attempts to buy £8million strikers. But we are where we are. 'We have two kids that were playing at oxford and plymouth coming on as subs to try and improve the team. The depth in the squad is zero'. That to a blind man is obvious and all at AG know as well. Going over it again and again just brings negativity. Somehow we have to trust the 'powers' at AG to put things right because continual knocking SL/the Board won't get us anywhere.
