Clearly Rob subscribes to this when he claims history is not the reason for some clubs being ‘big’. Errand nonsense demonstrating a fundamental lack of understanding of the game.
If Phil Alexander is the wise council and muse Rob suggests him to be this is his moment to sit the chairman down and explain how it is. It will save him and us a load of time effort and wasted cash.
My thoughts exactly. It may well be an issue for the Trust members to raise 25% of the funds needed to do all these things but would have been more acceptable to me to have the details prior to the meeting.
I just feel that we are once again being rushed into something but why? Surely we can have the meeting on Wednesday to explain the outline ideas and then go away and have time to digest the content before a follow up meeting to arrive at a decision. After all we have video links so Rob, Pete and Missy can attend the follow up meeting from their homes later in the month.
Don’t get me wrong here, I am grateful for all the Couhigs have done for the club in their short and successful time as owners but rushing things does not seem right.
It sounds like the club has already decided that it is going to be all Rock N Roll, all of the time, because er...PC and GA love Rock N Roll and we play Rock N Roll football, whatever that is?
Clearly very interested in what Couhig is going to announce on Wednesday and what his vision of the future is for our club. Some of the things speculated make perfect sense , others seem totally baffling What’s disappointing is the Trust Board seem to have already approved the changes but refuse to share even the smallest amount of detail to Trust members prior to the meeting.
The interesting thing is that at the moment investment in the team has resulted in less success than before. I agree that success on the field will bring more people to Adams Park but we did manage to achieve that with GA in charge with very little in the way of investment.
I remember, as some more mature supporters may also recall, that we were treated to a tour of Adams Park in the spring of 1990 as it was under construction. Brian Lee our wonderful ex manager and at that time project manager of relocating to the new stadium was showing us round what had been built so far and outlining what was to come. As we stood on the Woodlands Terrace he pointed to the pitch and said to our group words to the effect “ we can build a wonderful stadium which I believe we are but it’s what happens on that bit of green that is important “
The trouble is we were told that this season the squad is the best ever. Still trying to work that one out when basically we’ve lost three key players at the end of last season and took us ages to replace two of them. The squad is weaker than last season.
we now hear that Ipswich and possibly Portsmouth are going to be offered seats in the family stand and Frank Adams stand We are basically turning our stadium into away games. I know it won’t generate as much revenue but if they want to fill the ground why don’t they offer the deals to the kids as they did against Morecambe. As far as I’m concerned the “match day experience “at our ground involves our supporters being noisier than the away supporters.
Obviously no-one is going to object to a new access road. I've visited a he'll of a lot of football grounds and can't think of any that, per capita, are as difficult to get to as ours, both driving and by public transport.
I just don't see (a) how planners are going to allow any route (particularly given consequential upgrades that would be necessary; (b) where the money is going to come from; or (c) how ot is going to add more than a few hundred on to any attendance.
Seems RC could do with better advisers. Making the stadium bigger isn't the answer.
Making severe changes to performances on the pitch will go a long way!
I don't buy all this "we haven't got the squad we did".
A team with Max, Taf, Mawson, Wing, Mcleary, Mehmeti and Vokes should be near the top, playing attractive football in the process.
I've brought along numerous friends and family members and have been asked 'how do you watch that', and that was in the good times when were achieving results. None of them will ever come back and its got to the point now we will be losing existing fans due to the price and complete lack of entertainment.
Ainsworth refusal or inability to adapt, make subs and play generally decent football is now a massive problem for me personally, I could put up with it when we were getting results and fighting for promotion. But now matchday is a dull lacklustre affair of hoofball and in all honesty quite depressing.
Something drastically needs to change if RC is to achieve championship promotion and stability. Atm Wycombe are lightyears away from it!
I think it was mentioned at the start of the season possibly by rob himself. Perhaps someone could confirm this or otherwise but I certainly seem to remember that they were talking about the valley end becoming unsafe due to its age.
It was certainly mentioned that improving the home terrace was an option being considered. Including adding a bar and possibly more boxes and other corporate.
However, I don't remember it ever being mentioned that there was any structural issue with the terrace as is.
It certainly did. The signing of Sam Vokes really planted a flag of our intentions and it so nearly paid off.
Which is why I was disappointed that we didn’t take the momentum from Wembley into the summer. Not just with signings but with mouth watering pre-season friendlies. Those fickle fans who went to Wembley and were on the hook should have been landed for the this season at least. I just feel we dropped the ball and I don’t know why.
Is that what the annoying sound coming from the tannoy is for the first 5 minutes after kick-off each week lately? The ground slowly opening up to swallow us ...
Seeing as there are very extreme, expensive and somewhat unrealistic proposals afoot for increasing our capacity, I would like to submit that instead of making the stadium bigger, we just need to make the fans smaller, and increase capacity that way.
Two main strategies stand out - we could either only recruit fans under 5"8 with narrow bottoms, or build a massive Acme Shrink Ray, and shrink fans as they come in through the turnstile. We could probably increase our capacity to 20,000 either way. Now it might be a little weird to hear fans celebrating in tiny high pitched voices, but surely worth it.
Or just shrink the travelling support. Two Ipswich to a seat and that’s over 3000 in the away end….
In all seriousness the only argument I can see for an expanded ground before we have an expanded supporter base is that we give big sections to the away support from clubs with a larger following (see how I carefully avoided the contentions big club label). I’m not sure US owners get the idea of why that does not sit well in UK football. Although thinking if through, if the home end need major work, I guess it may make sense to expand it at the same time. Not sure we should expand anything else and the access road should surely only be delivered if ‘cheap’. It alone will not bring thousands more just like that. Attractive (Championship perhaps) football and a decently priced day out might slowly grow a base over some years. Or it might never. And the ground is surely never going to become a destination for anything else (hotel, shops and the like) however nice it is in isolation.
I’m very interested in what Wednesday brings. I have my pessimistic cynical thoughts (give us the ground and the club or else - which football has seen too often) very much tempered by never having that vibe from Rob Pete and Missy.
Comments
Having a proper home end will make a big difference in terms of atmosphere, adding to the match day experience.
Its always been such an own goal giving away fans a much larger end, we can never compete when that end is full and it’s as good as a goal head start.
Our record against teams who’ve sold out their allocation must be horrific.
‘History is more or less bunk’. Henry Ford
Clearly Rob subscribes to this when he claims history is not the reason for some clubs being ‘big’. Errand nonsense demonstrating a fundamental lack of understanding of the game.
If Phil Alexander is the wise council and muse Rob suggests him to be this is his moment to sit the chairman down and explain how it is. It will save him and us a load of time effort and wasted cash.
Yep done that one and agree. I can still remember thinking why on earth am I doing this mountain climb.
My thoughts exactly. It may well be an issue for the Trust members to raise 25% of the funds needed to do all these things but would have been more acceptable to me to have the details prior to the meeting.
I just feel that we are once again being rushed into something but why? Surely we can have the meeting on Wednesday to explain the outline ideas and then go away and have time to digest the content before a follow up meeting to arrive at a decision. After all we have video links so Rob, Pete and Missy can attend the follow up meeting from their homes later in the month.
Don’t get me wrong here, I am grateful for all the Couhigs have done for the club in their short and successful time as owners but rushing things does not seem right.
It sounds like the club has already decided that it is going to be all Rock N Roll, all of the time, because er...PC and GA love Rock N Roll and we play Rock N Roll football, whatever that is?
Is rock and roll football smashing the ball up in the air ?
Clearly very interested in what Couhig is going to announce on Wednesday and what his vision of the future is for our club. Some of the things speculated make perfect sense , others seem totally baffling What’s disappointing is the Trust Board seem to have already approved the changes but refuse to share even the smallest amount of detail to Trust members prior to the meeting.
On the plus side at least the football at the moment is more tolerable after a couple of extra beers.
(And you miss half of it disappearing to the toilet…)
The interesting thing is that at the moment investment in the team has resulted in less success than before. I agree that success on the field will bring more people to Adams Park but we did manage to achieve that with GA in charge with very little in the way of investment.
I remember, as some more mature supporters may also recall, that we were treated to a tour of Adams Park in the spring of 1990 as it was under construction. Brian Lee our wonderful ex manager and at that time project manager of relocating to the new stadium was showing us round what had been built so far and outlining what was to come. As we stood on the Woodlands Terrace he pointed to the pitch and said to our group words to the effect “ we can build a wonderful stadium which I believe we are but it’s what happens on that bit of green that is important “
But don’t forget that investment in the squad helped us to achieve our club EFL record of 83 points only last season.
The trouble is we were told that this season the squad is the best ever. Still trying to work that one out when basically we’ve lost three key players at the end of last season and took us ages to replace two of them. The squad is weaker than last season.
we now hear that Ipswich and possibly Portsmouth are going to be offered seats in the family stand and Frank Adams stand We are basically turning our stadium into away games. I know it won’t generate as much revenue but if they want to fill the ground why don’t they offer the deals to the kids as they did against Morecambe. As far as I’m concerned the “match day experience “at our ground involves our supporters being noisier than the away supporters.
I can definitely imagine 'Living On A Prayer' playing each time we do that.
So what would you do? Only allow as many away fans as we have in the terrace each week?
I think the point being made if I may be so bold is that a redesigned home and will improve acoustics. Not necessarily a question of numbers
I'm surprised we haven't run out to "Smash It Up (in the air)" by The Damned at some point.
I've only heard rumblings about the Woodlands roof being due for scheduled work, the Valley End having structural deficiencies is new to me.
Get Off of My Cloud surely?
Obviously no-one is going to object to a new access road. I've visited a he'll of a lot of football grounds and can't think of any that, per capita, are as difficult to get to as ours, both driving and by public transport.
I just don't see (a) how planners are going to allow any route (particularly given consequential upgrades that would be necessary; (b) where the money is going to come from; or (c) how ot is going to add more than a few hundred on to any attendance.
I would double the size of the home end as to not give away clubs an advantage.
Seems RC could do with better advisers. Making the stadium bigger isn't the answer.
Making severe changes to performances on the pitch will go a long way!
I don't buy all this "we haven't got the squad we did".
A team with Max, Taf, Mawson, Wing, Mcleary, Mehmeti and Vokes should be near the top, playing attractive football in the process.
I've brought along numerous friends and family members and have been asked 'how do you watch that', and that was in the good times when were achieving results. None of them will ever come back and its got to the point now we will be losing existing fans due to the price and complete lack of entertainment.
Ainsworth refusal or inability to adapt, make subs and play generally decent football is now a massive problem for me personally, I could put up with it when we were getting results and fighting for promotion. But now matchday is a dull lacklustre affair of hoofball and in all honesty quite depressing.
Something drastically needs to change if RC is to achieve championship promotion and stability. Atm Wycombe are lightyears away from it!
I think it was mentioned at the start of the season possibly by rob himself. Perhaps someone could confirm this or otherwise but I certainly seem to remember that they were talking about the valley end becoming unsafe due to its age.
It was certainly mentioned that improving the home terrace was an option being considered. Including adding a bar and possibly more boxes and other corporate.
However, I don't remember it ever being mentioned that there was any structural issue with the terrace as is.
It's rumoured the stand is gradually disappearing into a sinkhole and is liable to collapse if there is a mass limbs celebration!
Well thank God our performances are preventing that from happening.
It certainly did. The signing of Sam Vokes really planted a flag of our intentions and it so nearly paid off.
Which is why I was disappointed that we didn’t take the momentum from Wembley into the summer. Not just with signings but with mouth watering pre-season friendlies. Those fickle fans who went to Wembley and were on the hook should have been landed for the this season at least. I just feel we dropped the ball and I don’t know why.
The way things are going on the patch, there is no danger of that!
Is that what the annoying sound coming from the tannoy is for the first 5 minutes after kick-off each week lately? The ground slowly opening up to swallow us ...
Seeing as there are very extreme, expensive and somewhat unrealistic proposals afoot for increasing our capacity, I would like to submit that instead of making the stadium bigger, we just need to make the fans smaller, and increase capacity that way.
Two main strategies stand out - we could either only recruit fans under 5"8 with narrow bottoms, or build a massive Acme Shrink Ray, and shrink fans as they come in through the turnstile. We could probably increase our capacity to 20,000 either way. Now it might be a little weird to hear fans celebrating in tiny high pitched voices, but surely worth it.
Or just shrink the travelling support. Two Ipswich to a seat and that’s over 3000 in the away end….
In all seriousness the only argument I can see for an expanded ground before we have an expanded supporter base is that we give big sections to the away support from clubs with a larger following (see how I carefully avoided the contentions big club label). I’m not sure US owners get the idea of why that does not sit well in UK football. Although thinking if through, if the home end need major work, I guess it may make sense to expand it at the same time. Not sure we should expand anything else and the access road should surely only be delivered if ‘cheap’. It alone will not bring thousands more just like that. Attractive (Championship perhaps) football and a decently priced day out might slowly grow a base over some years. Or it might never. And the ground is surely never going to become a destination for anything else (hotel, shops and the like) however nice it is in isolation.
I’m very interested in what Wednesday brings. I have my pessimistic cynical thoughts (give us the ground and the club or else - which football has seen too often) very much tempered by never having that vibe from Rob Pete and Missy.
I guess we’ll see.