I’d rather we stay where we are for purely historic reasons, but I have no emotional attachment to any of the 4 stands since both the Holte and Trinity were rebuilt. In these modern times where Birmingham City Council are planning to nuke Perry Barr and the flyover, is it not realistic that the Trinity Road could cease to be a road and a large investment into the area to enable a full rebuild of Villa Park?Trinity Road isn’t a main road and all traffic can continue from Perry Barr to Aston via Witton Lane, so if the road itself is taken out of equation then surely we’d have enough space to rebuild as a modern stadium?
I don't look at the Stadium of Light or the Riverside/ BT Hellnet whatever it's called and feel envious. In fact it concerns me that Herbert Douglas Ellis in his dotage looked at those monstrosities and decided we needed a bit of that for the outside of the new Trinity. I don't know how practical it would be (I believe there used to be a lake at the Aston Lower Grounds close to the land we now play on) but I have always wondered at the possibility of building down rather than up. The lower tiers of the Nou Camp, Bernabeu are set below street level and add to the impact when you step in. Think Porto's old ground had that as well. Would still allow us to have four distinctive stands and reap the benefits of the extra capacity - particularly if safe standing ever truly becomes a thing.
I'm all for optimism, but let's wait until we get into the real action before we see if a new expanded ground is merited. I'd love it to be the case, but even during the relative success at the start of the lerner years it wasn't as if we were consistently selling out our current ground. Things *might* be different now, and obviously there's no harm in discussing it theoretically, but we're miles away from being able to discuss it as a viable option right now.In any event, i would have thought that the north stand could be re-developed to get us up to around 50,000?
I want more than a redeveloped North Stand. As someone prepared to part with my hard-earned disposable at the home of the club I love, my experience of trying to do that in the two bits of the ground I use these days are Lower Holte, useable pre-match, miss 10 minutes of the game at half time Upper Trinity, I'm starting to be consumed by dread that there'll be more than three dozen of us trying to use it this season. It's customer service from another era.
Anfield overcame a similar problem to that faced at Villa Park; in a triangle and bordered by terraced streets. If we could buy the land/houses behind Witton Lane we could increase there and at the Witton End. It's pretty immaterial though as we haven't yet developed the need for a bigger stadium. The Commonwealth Games stadium is a non-starter I reckon. Apart from being designed for athletics, so miles from the pitch, the extended capacity is open temporary seats. Lovely in January.