Just show us these plans FFS!
Idea scenario you'd buy the land behind the Witton, flatten that and the North, wrap the Trinity round in a giant horseshoe, make the Holte a single tier behemoth and sit back to look at the best ground... in the world.
Quote from: Ads on March 27, 2018, 01:00:45 PMIdea scenario you'd buy the land behind the Witton, flatten that and the North, wrap the Trinity round in a giant horseshoe, make the Holte a single tier behemoth and sit back to look at the best ground... in the world. I agree, I suspect part of the reason they're talking investing heavily in the whole area is to allow for that sort of development.
I think internal re-design of the older parts in the Witton and perhaps areas of the lower Holte etc is the more straight forward aspect to accomplish. The design for a new North stand is where the difficulty lies as whatever comes has to blend what people almost universally love about Villa Park, that it is the finest "football" stadium in the country, with modernity. There is absolutely acres of space to work with, which helps and it would likely lead to an improvement in the Witton as you could focus an area around where block R is now for concourse space for the upper and lower Witton that would dramatically improve it.I would like to see a horseshoe myself. I think it would be the best way to utilise the space available and lead to improvements in the Trinity and Witton as a result too. You could have a large two tier that wraps around from the Trinity [sort of like St Jame's Park] and then you'd likely need to take out Q3/2 and P11/10 of the Witton for a smoother joining of the stands. End result is you have a large North stand, with all the improvements that brings. You've got additional concourse space in the Trinity corner and Witton corner to alleviate issues that may exist there. I think atmosphere would improve as the noise would be retained in the U of the design of the ground and the lower North would have far more depth to it. You're not going to be able to dramatically do anything about the Witton Lane without purchasing the open space behind the Witton Lane and likely the houses, shifting the road- which just isn't worth it for another 4-5000 seats there.As an aside, I'd like the Pavilions between the Holte and Trinity to go.
We'd get bigger crowds if we showed more ambition.One thing that always made me feel a bit sorry for Lerner was that when MON was spending huge amounts of money, he spunked it mostly on solid but uninspiring players in the 5-6m mark. What he didn't get for his money was a single bums-on-seats player.Ashley Young was closest and even then, he wasn't much of a sells-tickets player.Another unfortunate thing about the MON era was that even when we were finishing sixth, we were doing so by way of being brilliant to watch away from home when we got to counter attack and extremely uninspiring (by comparison) at home. Yes, we were much better at home than in the last seven years or so, but other than our annual five goal drubbing of Bolton, we were hardly entertaining - take away that once a year five goal game and we averaged about a goal a game at home. Poor return and hardly a putter of bums on seats, but even then, we had 40k averages.
Another factor I forgot to add was the number of people living in and around Brum who do not support local clubs - ie the amount of "plastic" Liverpool/Citeh/Man Utd/ fans there appears to be - I've not lived in Brum for over 20 years but when last working in the City I was astonished by the number of locals who claimed to support Man Utd or Liverpool- Likewise whenever I meet Brummies on holiday or through work I seem to get the same response to my question (when I realise they are are Brummie)- "Villa or Small Heath?""Neither I'm a Red"I don't know why This is- I don't believe it's like this in Manchester, Liverpool or Newcastle where the locals support the local teamsWe appear to have a large catchment of fans in the West Country though!I appreciate that kids want to support a successful team but maybe if the club did more to recruit fans from schools across the City as well as in B6 we would see an upswell in supportBut even so it's still a big leap of faith to start pulling in an extra 20k+Finally we now have a generation who probably no longer consider football (playing or watching) top of the list of favourite things to do - it saddens me that even in a soccer mad city like Liverpool parks are empty on beautiful sunny days like today and its half term - when I was a kid growing up in Hall Green I'd spend every minute I could playing football in the road or Trittiford/Shirley parks. Now there appears more bloody dogs in parks than kids !!!!! I know ........jumpers for goalposts etc
Quote from: pauliewalnuts on March 26, 2018, 07:58:10 PMWe'd get bigger crowds if we showed more ambition.One thing that always made me feel a bit sorry for Lerner was that when MON was spending huge amounts of money, he spunked it mostly on solid but uninspiring players in the 5-6m mark. What he didn't get for his money was a single bums-on-seats player.Ashley Young was closest and even then, he wasn't much of a sells-tickets player.Another unfortunate thing about the MON era was that even when we were finishing sixth, we were doing so by way of being brilliant to watch away from home when we got to counter attack and extremely uninspiring (by comparison) at home. Yes, we were much better at home than in the last seven years or so, but other than our annual five goal drubbing of Bolton, we were hardly entertaining - take away that once a year five goal game and we averaged about a goal a game at home. Poor return and hardly a putter of bums on seats, but even then, we had 40k averages.The only time we have bought bums on seats players that other top sides would have coveted was under BFR.
Quote from: Damo70 on March 27, 2018, 04:01:28 PMQuote from: pauliewalnuts on March 26, 2018, 07:58:10 PMWe'd get bigger crowds if we showed more ambition.One thing that always made me feel a bit sorry for Lerner was that when MON was spending huge amounts of money, he spunked it mostly on solid but uninspiring players in the 5-6m mark. What he didn't get for his money was a single bums-on-seats player.Ashley Young was closest and even then, he wasn't much of a sells-tickets player.Another unfortunate thing about the MON era was that even when we were finishing sixth, we were doing so by way of being brilliant to watch away from home when we got to counter attack and extremely uninspiring (by comparison) at home. Yes, we were much better at home than in the last seven years or so, but other than our annual five goal drubbing of Bolton, we were hardly entertaining - take away that once a year five goal game and we averaged about a goal a game at home. Poor return and hardly a putter of bums on seats, but even then, we had 40k averages.The only time we have bought bums on seats players that other top sides would have coveted was under BFR."When the best players in the land become available, Aston Villa should be signing them." - BFR, 1992. Admittedly he said that after the signing of Earl Barrett, but so what.