Villa Park Redevelopment

[VILLA MOLE]

when is this fans meeting ?

[dave.woodhall]

I wonder if part of the decision might be based on how few of the mythical thirty thousand have bought tickets since joining the queue.

[Paul.S]

Villa Park is what makes us unique, and is the one ever present as new generations of fans come along and old generations depart to that Holte End in the sky.

I'd rather sit in 2 hours of traffic to walk up Witton Road, smelling burgers and hotdogs with the glorious Holte End in the distance any day, than take a turn off the motorway into some tarmacced plateau servicing a soulless, plastic bowl.

Really starting to take a dislike to this new guy. If being successful means that we have to set light to our history, then I'd rather not thanks.

Agree with this 100%.

[ChicagoLion]

He's not hiding anything, it's in clear sight: "Over the summer months I became more concerned we were adding too many seats too fast"

He's been here 6 months and the plans were well advanced before he got here.  Let him figure out what is best before criticising him for cancelling plans that weren't even his.

But that is clearly a load of absolute nonsense. As I said before, we've got the 8th biggest stadium in the country, and it's miles smaller than those in the top 7. Also the facilities in the North are shite, and the hospitality offering is terrble too, as behind glass executive boxes went out with the Ark. 10,000 clearly isn't too many seats, and it's certainly not too fast. The stadium expansion is an investment in our future, and unlike many investments it's an almost guaranteed massive boost to revenue. There's only so much further they're going to be able to increase season ticket prices, and that won't go anywhere near to matching what the extra capacity would have brought in.

It's like investing in the first team, if you don't do it and are happy to stand still, sooner or later you get left behind.

You seem to be having almost a meltdown over this and I'm not sure why?   He hasn't said we aren't going to address any of the issues you raised, he just said the current plans are being shelved.  Also you are stating as fact that 10,000 seats isn't too many - how do you know?  He literally said it's too many to fast, so he thinks it is and probably has access to data that you don't.

Again, he's been here 6 months, give him a chance to get his ducks in a row and then let's see what he comes up with.

I agree with Risso here. If West Ham (*and Moyes ball!) can fill a 60k running track when there is competition in London from clubs such as Arsenal, Spurs, Chelsea, etc, we'd easily fill a shiny new North Stand with the catchment area we have at our disposal (*and impending Champions League football). What's he waiting for??

Under Emery, I can only see us improving, so demand isn't going to go away or drop off, it's almost certainly going to increase surely. I'd question why we've waited THIS long, not stop it entirely!

@usav - You seem to really be in Heck's corner on all of this. He's come in with a big reptutation, as a leader in his field, but can you honestly tell me one thing he has got right during his time at the club? Within 6 months, he's fucked the badge launch, vandalised the Holte and stopped the North Stand development. If he can make sweeping decisions like that, why is his priority not to stop the concourses streaming with piss?

First and foremost should be clear and concise communication, and he's even been fucking terrible at that.  Nothing he has done so far has given me even a glimmer of confidence that he 'gets' this football club.

#OnBrand my arse.

Not a great track record is it. Serial fuck ups.

[pauliewalnuts]

One of my problems with Heck is not that I don't think he knows what he is doing - on the contrary, I bet he does.

It is that he just is an absolute fucking loose cannon with PR. The cack-handed excuses made for the badge fiasco - honestly, he must think we're fucking idiots to believe that one year trial thing was their plan from the start, the turning the FAB meetings into everyone listening to him tell us what the ultimate truth is and bad luck if you don't like it, and now this, announcing the halt on the new stand buried away in some pointless fucking in-house interview and then blathering on about focusing on the customers we already have.

Really, I am not too sure stopping bogs over flowing with piss and painting the inside of stands is really something you need to halt all your other ambition to put right.

There are thousands of people who sit in the north stand who have thought they'd have to move and maybe not even get a seat for the next two years. They've heard absolutely nothing about it addressed directly to them from the club, and although they might be happy with these developments, they deserved to be the first to know.

Heck thus far has shown us lots of "we won't be doing that" and hardly any "this is what we are going to do".

[Smithy]

I don't claim to understand the decision to pause the redevelopment of the North stand, except to point out that with a potential Champions League campaign next season the "cost" of lost revenue from a demolished stand is now higher than I suspect they planned it to be.  Maybe they've decided they can live with 42k seats if they're also being used for a champions league campaign for a couple of years?  i.e. "We could get the same gate receipts from 42k+ champions league as we would from 50k in the league only".

What I don't like, is a message of "we're not doing this any more", rather than a message of "we're doing this instead".  It's left a huge void for misinformation and speculation (as we're all proving). 

I'm all for taking stock, and not rushing ahead with a huge infrastructure project if the guy at the top thinks that it might prove a bad decision in 5 years time, but I think they've done a poor job communicating it, considering the general consensus on the North Stand redevelopment was a positive one.

[pauliewalnuts]

The Champions League side of things only guarantees three home matches, though. There is only really properly decent money when you get to play in it regularly and start to see it reflected in your sponsorship deals.

The gate income from another 6,000 people in the North Stand is a piddling small amount.

[DB]

He's not hiding anything, it's in clear sight: "Over the summer months I became more concerned we were adding too many seats too fast"

He's been here 6 months and the plans were well advanced before he got here.  Let him figure out what is best before criticising him for cancelling plans that weren't even his.

But that is clearly a load of absolute nonsense. As I said before, we've got the 8th biggest stadium in the country, and it's miles smaller than those in the top 7. Also the facilities in the North are shite, and the hospitality offering is terrble too, as behind glass executive boxes went out with the Ark. 10,000 clearly isn't too many seats, and it's certainly not too fast. The stadium expansion is an investment in our future, and unlike many investments it's an almost guaranteed massive boost to revenue. There's only so much further they're going to be able to increase season ticket prices, and that won't go anywhere near to matching what the extra capacity would have brought in.

It's like investing in the first team, if you don't do it and are happy to stand still, sooner or later you get left behind.

You seem to be having almost a meltdown over this and I'm not sure why?   He hasn't said we aren't going to address any of the issues you raised, he just said the current plans are being shelved.  Also you are stating as fact that 10,000 seats isn't too many - how do you know?  He literally said it's too many to fast, so he thinks it is and probably has access to data that you don't.

Again, he's been here 6 months, give him a chance to get his ducks in a row and then let's see what he comes up with.

I agree with Risso here. If West Ham (*and Moyes ball!) can fill a 60k running track when there is competition in London from clubs such as Arsenal, Spurs, Chelsea, etc, we'd easily fill a shiny new North Stand with the catchment area we have at our disposal (*and impending Champions League football). What's he waiting for??

Under Emery, I can only see us improving, so demand isn't going to go away or drop off, it's almost certainly going to increase surely. I'd question why we've waited THIS long, not stop it entirely!

@usav - You seem to really be in Heck's corner on all of this. He's come in with a big reptutation, as a leader in his field, but can you honestly tell me one thing he has got right during his time at the club? Within 6 months, he's fucked the badge launch, vandalised the Holte and stopped the North Stand development. If he can make sweeping decisions like that, why is his priority not to stop the concourses streaming with piss?

First and foremost should be clear and concise communication, and he's even been fucking terrible at that.  Nothing he has done so far has given me even a glimmer of confidence that he 'gets' this football club.

#OnBrand my arse.

Well said

[Bad English]

...when you retire you have a pension pot to full back on.

Yes. A defensive management strategy is often advised when less that 8 years from retirement.*

*This does not constitute financial advice as if you took it from me you'd be living in the street in Newtown. ;-)

[Clampy]

I understand the differing views on it. It wouldn't be an ideal time to knock down a stand if we're playing Champions League football, it would actually be a shame because fans would miss out and we'd lose revenue but like someone else said, we might only last a couple of games in it anyway if we did make it. If that's one of his reasons for halting it, I kind of get it. I'd have liked them to have gone ahead with though personally.

[Drummond]

I don't really see the point in a massive new club shop. How about a decent kit first, and then having it available for purchase in the summer? I would guess that 99% of shirt sales are done over the internet anyway. We don't really have a high proprtion of daytrippers like Man U get for the Old Trafford megastore. I think I've been in once in the last 3 or 4 years, and it mostly seems to be full of people killing half an hour rather than filling their shopping bags.

If you've been in once in 3 or 4 years how on earth would you know what it's full of? 

[Simon Page]

I assume decisions like spending a third of a Rwanda on a building project isn't based on the whim of one man, which makes me wonder what's changed to make all the others involved in this shift their stance. And what gymnastics they'll do when the next man unveils his design for the new North Stand.

We should move to Salford Park. We've built over a lake before, we can do it again.

[pauliewalnuts]

I assume decisions like spending a third of a Rwanda on a building project isn't based on the whim of one man, which makes me wonder what's changed to make all the others involved in this shift their stance. And what gymnastics they'll do when the next man unveils his design for the new North Stand.

We should move to Salford Park. We've built over a lake before, we can do it again.

The Atairos investment timing can not be coincidental.

[eamonn]

The Champions League side of things only guarantees three home matches, though. There is only really properly decent money when you get to play in it regularly and start to see it reflected in your sponsorship deals.

The gate income from another 6,000 people in the North Stand is a piddling small amount.

What is the average spend per head predicted for the next two seasons in the North Stand - say £50?

£50 * 6,000 fans * 25 games (19 League + estimated 6 in various cups) = £7.5m per season

£15m revenue then for the next two seasons, with things kept as is.

But if we had gone through with the re-build, how long would it take to make back that £15m?

£60 per head (higher ticket prices/improved food & beverage offer etc.) * 25 games * 14,000 fans (8k extra compared to old capacity) = £21m generated in first season with new capacity.

Obviously pay-back on the reconstruction would have to be factored-in too but it seems clear that we could quickly make a lot more money than before. Heck's main reticence seems to be that he's not confident we can fill a 50k stadium 25 times a year.
 

[paul_e]

I understand the differing views on it. It wouldn't be an ideal time to knock down a stand if we're playing Champions League football, it would actually be a shame because fans would miss out and we'd lose revenue but like someone else said, we might only last a couple of games in it anyway if we did make it. If that's one of his reasons for halting it, I kind of get it. I'd have liked them to have gone ahead with though personally.

That's about where I am.