I love the word experts!
It can cover absolutely anything and broken down could mean a former drip not that I’m suggesting this is the case with a certain Paul Fletcher who is the latest to give his opinion on the London Stadium.
Fletcher – for those who don’t know – is a former Burnley striker and chief executive officer who has apparently been involved in the building of new grounds for Bolton, Huddersfield, Coventry and Wembley.
The extent of his involvement is not known nor has he yet told us although he has been very quick to give his assessment of what should happen to the London Stadium.
He reckons it should be demolished and rebuilt – yep, you heard me correctly!
Here’s his opinion as told to the BBC in what appears to be an unnecessary piece of self promotion for its own sake on the back of a club trying hard to get things right .
He said: “Either we go on as we are for the next 30 or 40 years or we knock it down and start again. Something has to give.
“If you want to satisfy spectators the only way to get those spectators near that pitch is to knock it down and start again.
“I said what you must do is design a football stadium that converts to an athletics stadium for two weeks of its lifetime.
When I build my football stadiums, my number one concern is the spectator. What they’ve done is tried to convert an athletics stadium into a football pitch and, in my opinion, it doesn’t work.”
The trouble with all of this is it really doesn’t address the issue which is how we win games in a new stadium on a regular basis.
All this chat about keeping the customers happy is all well and good but that’s only generated by those who would sooner be at the Boleyn anyway.
The vast majority are more than happy with the LS and the major problem has been a bit of coin throwing for which demolition seems a bit extreme!
And it’s interesting that Mr Fletcher had little to say for himself until after the events of last Wednesday evening!
What a ridiculous idea – God save us from experts!
Totally agree that it would be ridiculous to demolish an iconic state of the art sporting venue, but it is equally ridiculous trying to pretend it is a football stadium.
It isn’t and never will be, but we are now stuck with it.
I think he is spot on. As it is, we have a facility to host football and use as our home ground.
It’s not suitable as a football spectator friendly stadium, it just does not work. Hate to say it, but Levy was right, build a new football stadium and as part of the deal build a state of the art athletics track at Crystal Palace
Whatever..im completely bored of the whole subject..sorry i just am..
Three months of reading the same moaning from the same fans on Tiddlies has tipped me over the edge 🙂
The original plan if UK got the Olympics WAS to build a stadium that could be permanently transformed from an athletics arena and would have been offered to West Ham , Orient or in extremis Spurs. THEN Seb Coe got involved and decided legacy was the way forwards and totally messed things up.
It is less than ideal, but we are where we are and it ain’t gonna change any time soon.
With regards to experts, they say if you can’t do -teach, if you can’t teach – become a consultant! I guess ‘expert’ falls in there somewhere too.
so he was involved in Wembley? Has he ever been to Wembley in the cheap seats and not in a box? Yes the seating is not as close as promised. At Wembley the seats are further away. Mt current ticket is row 73 the very back row of the west stand. I can see all of the pitch, I don’t need a telescope to see who’s on the ball. ALL that needs sorting is the segregation issues. The poor ingress and egress for the away fans was highlighted against Chelsea with the added security measures, with some fans not getting to their seats until nearer half time. The away fans should be kept back until the home fans have dispersed like every other ground in the country.
Personally I think he’s right but it’s entirely not sensible to do. Call me stupid but being at the Everton match this past weekend made me yearn for the past. That being said, their home support was atrocious. What am I missing though, Everton plays in an older, smaller stadium yet they are fielding a top 10 team yet we continue to rationalize the LS as a means to generate revenue to ‘evolve’ into a consistent top of the table club.
Although I agree it was self promotion, everything he has said is correct and he was defending our owners, they should have been involved a lot earlier, the fact that the site had to be offered to others in itself makes a mockery of the whole bidding process, it was always only ever going to be us that moved in and we should have been involved at least so much as being consulted on what our needs would be when moving into the stadium. It also would have made it easier to convert back to an athletics stadium for when that was required, god knows how many 100’s of millions could have been saved. Personally I still don’t think it’s impossible to fix and they should look at installing safe standing areas as an opportunity to invest in fixing the design and making the transition from athletics to football and vice versa much simpler, chiefly by designing those sections in such a way as they can be wheeled out during the athletics phased and wheeled back in afterwards reducing an operation that takes 2 weeks to one that takes 2 days or less.