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I've been based abroad the last two years, but previous to that I don't think they did any for years.

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1 hour ago, Mr.Carrow said:

I've been based abroad the last two years, but previous to that I don't think they did any for years.

Which is why nobody knows what the potential is..... except that it's way over 26,000.

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10 hours ago, ricardo said:

You keep saying the same thing Purple. I am merely reporting what Bowkett said.

Nobody would argue with McNally's statement and I expect Sheepshank made a similar calculation for them lot down the road.

“You’re more likely to be a consistent Premier League club with average gates of 35,000 then you are with crowds of 26,800 so it’s something that we would wish to do in the mid-term."

But that isn't the problem. It's whether you believe those two things ( Premier League & 35k gates) are likely or even possible. I look to history to give us the answer and in both cases its a No.

You haven't reported what Bowkett said because you haven't answered the question as to  which of two crucially different things he was talking about.

If it was Bowkett at that AGM six years ago, and it was the quotes from the EDP at that time, then Bowkett was talking only about needing virtually full capacity over 20 years to pay off the debt, based on the assumption that the club would in effect need to fund the entire project from debt.

That is nowhere near the same thing as Bowkett saying, as you had him saying, that the project would never more than pay for itself over the entire lifetime of the stand. The point of my post was to emphasis how very different these two financial aspects of expansion are, and how important it is not to confuse them. It is because one or two posters here keep confusing them that I keep making the same point.

As to what McNally said, no, I don't for a moment think there is any justification for expansion to 35,000, and don't advocate that. That six years ago McNally and Bowkett, neither of whom is now connected with the club, talked about an extra 8,000 seats, hardly means that must still be the aim now.

Nor does it take account of the potentially changed financial circumstances. You keep saying that if it made financial sense the club would have done it by now. Yes,. But that is no argument in the future.

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2 hours ago, PurpleCanary said:

As to what McNally said, no, I don't for a moment think there is any justification for expansion to 35,000, and don't advocate that. That six years ago McNally and Bowkett, neither of whom is now connected with the club, talked about an extra 8,000 seats, hardly means that must still be the aim now.

Nor does it take account of the potentially changed financial circumstances. You keep saying that if it made financial sense the club would have done it by now. Yes,. But that is no argument in the future.

Well, I'm glad we agree that the justification for a 35k stadium is not there.

As for a changed financial position I am in no position to comment other than what looks rosey now can quickly change dependant upon a status that cannot be guaranteed.

I would also say that those in senior positions within the club seem to know what they are doing footballwise. I see no reason therefore not to trust their judgement on the financial and logistical feasibility of redeveloping the Main stand. At some time in the future it is bound to happen and I have no beef with that.

What does tend to annoy me is this idea that everything from here on in will be sunshine and lollipops and it won't cost a lot either.

You cannot ignore the cyclical nature of success and failure for clubs of our size. Those that do, often pay the penalty and I don't have to direct you very far to see this being played out in spades.

 

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7 hours ago, splendidrush said:

Which is why nobody knows what the potential is..... except that it's way over 26,000.

It was over 40k in the 1960's and 70's but I can count on the fingers of one hand (and still have some left over) for the number times it actually happened.

 

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5 minutes ago, ricardo said:

It was over 40k in the 1960's and 70's but I can count on the fingers of one hand (and still have some left over) for the number times it actually happened.

 

Moving the goalposts again ric, I'm not talking 40k and have no desire to put the long term stability of the Club at risk. 

 

18 minutes ago, ricardo said:

 

What does tend to annoy me is this idea that everything from here on in will be sunshine and lollipops and it won't cost a lot either.

 

 

Nobody has said this....

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Just now, Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Man said:

OK, stadium debate aside, I just want to say how someone of Ricardo's vintage using this phrase made me smile 🙂

I like beef, especially rump steak.😀

oh and Burgers.👍

8 minutes ago, splendidrush said:

Moving the goalposts again ric, I'm not talking 40k and have no desire to put the long term stability of the Club at risk. 

 

Nobody has said this....

Yes they did.

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1 minute ago, ricardo said:

I like beef, especially rump steak.😀

oh and Burgers.👍

Yes they did.

Oh no they didn't 🎶

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16 hours ago, Jersey Canary said:

We could easily increase the capacity to 40k and fill it and it’s all down to ticketing. If you charged £30 or £20 a ticket Norwich will become the default place for away fans to travel to if it was the one away game to go to a season. Give Man Utd 7,500 tickets they’ll sell them no problem. That would leave us with the problem of selling 3-5k seats and at £20 per go which bearing in mind the teams we will be playing will be easy.

Yes we’ll lose some revenue via ticket sales compared to what could be charged but I’d rather have a full ground in the Premier League rather than half empty soulless stadium in The Championship.

The sale of Max Aarons next season will pay for the upgrade. Job done. We don’t need to worry about it for 50 years. 😁

Her's one picked at random.

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Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Man    104

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45 minutes ago, ricardo said:

At some time in the future it is bound to happen and I have no beef with that.

OK, stadium debate aside, I just want to say how someone of Ricardo's vintage using this phrase made me smile 🙂

The phrase "What's the beef" has been around since the end of the 19th century.

N.B. I am not suggesting that Ricardo is that old 😜

 

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10 hours ago, splendidrush said:

The reason it's 'the best we can do' is it's an all seater Stadium today and the replacement stand was built at a time of low attendances. 

I wouldn't be advocating a capacity of 40,000 at this point anyway but it's clear that supply and demand have not been matched for a considerable amount of time. 

I agree the City Stand needs a complete rebuild. As for the Season Ticket Holders, I  asked Delia that question when the Jarrold was announced, something about unpopular decisions and the fact that the stand would be condemned eventually. 

Who'd be an owner?

I do understand why we can no longer get 40,000 in the stadium buddy. I was just pointing out that was the original potential. We don't have that potential at Carrow Road now. But with an ambitious new City Stand could maybe reach 35,000.

Eventually I believe we should aim to do that but the logistical problems are probably as much or even more of an obstacle than the financial. To compare it to the Jarrold being rebuilt is a bit chalk and cheese. The Jarrold was basically a shell which housed a few thousand season ticket holders who could be accommodated elsewhere. However with the city stand Delia's unpopular decisions would include telling season ticket holders there's no room at the inn. Even more difficult is managing without the match day infrastructure currently in the city stand. The old South stand had none of that. And of course the dressingrooms are in there. Maybe we could get the old double decker portakabins back (maybe with the Terry butcher damaged door). Perhaps put them in the hotel corner? 🙃

As for your question about advertising. It was aggressive during the first half of last season. Even on a Friday before a weekend game. But of course after Christmas there was no need. If these seats were undesirable for casual sale it is strange that people were prepared to spend hundreds of pounds on them for season tickets. 

So I can see both sides of this debate from my myopic bubble. 🙃

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16 minutes ago, splendidrush said:

Apologies ric, FWIW I don't agree with this either. 

I have no problem with expansion just the idea that is a no brainer, simple and cheap.

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Whenever expansion does take place the question of how will be another headache! For me the only solution is to put that 2nd tier behind the South Stand taking us up to around 31k so that when we eventually do rebuild the city stand we will be able to the season ticket holders sat in there. This would mean in those seasons between (however many that may be) we would need a cap on season tickets to prevent us being in the same situation and also that we will have a lopsided ground for a while but at least fans will get a better view of the city 😎

Once those two are sorted we can then complete the plan of rebuilding the River End to take all the corporate stuff allowing to rebuild our own Barclay Kop - OK, may be going a bit far but one can dream. 😜

Edited by ThorpeCanary

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It might help to explain what Ricardo and I are talking/arguing about if I quote  all that Bowkett and McNally said to the EDP at the 2013 AGM, because it points up some significant potential differences between then and the near future:

Chairman Alan Bowkett said rebuilding the City Stand for a capacity of 35,000 would cost around £30m, which would be mortgaged over 20 years and cost around £2.5m per year in payments, which should be covered by around £3m from new ticket sales each season.

Mr Bowkett said: “You are forecasting for 20 years and you would have to achieve an average occupancy of 35,000 over the 20 years of about 94pc.

“Now the key thing for us is staying in the Premier League, what keeps us in the Premier League is investment in what I term the software, back office, football management, football players, and I cannot guarantee that we are going to be in the Premier League for the next 20 years, no one can.

“So that’s the big question we have to face ourselves with and I think having just taken a huge burden away from the football club, probably the board would prefer to invest in the software rather than the hardware at the moment and that’s what we are doing.”

Mr Bowkett said the other problem would be how to seat season ticket holders in the City Stand for a whole season, with the club having the highest ratio of season tickets to seats in the league.

He added that the potential winter break for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar could even help, continuing: “Then there’s the second question as to how would you do it and we cannot see taking the stand down and rebuilding it without having a full season of non-occupancy.

“So as I jokingly said to David (McNally), well maybe if we drop back down to League One again we could do it, but he said ‘we still got 23,000 people turning up then’, so that’s the physical difficulty.”

Chief executive David McNally added: “You’re more likely to be a consistent Premier League club with average gates of 35,000 then you are with crowds of 26,800 so it’s something that we would wish to do in the mid-term but we have the dilemmas of the practical solution of the accounting supporters, which seems really difficult, and of course the cash”

Bowkett and McNally both assumed a 35,000-seat stadium. That would mean a 12,000-seat City Stand, so half the size again of the South Stand, dwarfing the rest of the ground. Neither is still at the club, so there is no certainty the plan is still to expand that much. I would be very surprised if it was, and I would not be in favour.

Bowkett was assuming the whole of the then
£30m cost would be funded by going that much into debt, having to pay off that debt over 20 years, and only using extra tickets sales to meet the annual repayments, because this was the era of “every last penny goes into the football side”, as he explains with that “software” analogy.

On the basis of a 35,000-seat stadium and the financial realities the club was operating under then, linked to the “every penny” mantra, Bowkett and McNally were right to regard expansion as unfeasible. To think that in essence only continued membership of the Premier  League would make the figures add up and that such continued membership could hardly be guaranteed. Indeed was unlikely.

They were both talking in the immediate aftermath of all the external debt being paid off, and were understandably unwilling to go back into serious debt any time soon.

But. Fast-forward to this time next year, and a perfectly possible scenario. We have stayed up, meaning another year of PL money and three years of parachute payments if we later get relegated. And Buendia, Lewis, Godfrey, Aarons etc have proved themselves PL class.

Oh so reluctantly, we accept an offer from Spurs of £55m for Aarons. What to do with the money? There is no black hole to fill in the accounts, and no likelihood of one if and when we get relegated, because we have learned from the recent past.

Colney is paid for, as Jim Smith says, thanks to the generosity of fans.😎 We will spend some money on upgrading the squad, but hardly all that £55m. Not least since we have already picked up Aarons’ replacement for £650,000 from Fortuna Dusseldorf Reserves.

What about adding 4,000 or at most 5,000 seats to the Main Stand, at a cost of £35m? Suddenly those Bowkett figures become outdated. Putting £25m of the Aarons money towards the project means borrowing only £10m (to be clear, these rough figures are only to make the general point).

Not only is there less debt to pay off, it is unlikely that the annual debt repayments would have to be entirely funded by tickets sales, let alone  sales predicated on staying in the PL for two straight decades and selling every extra seat.

 If the club continues to be run as we are told it is going to be then there should be the odd million a year to put into debt repayment. In short less debt than had been envisaged six years ago, and quite manageable.

 And crucially not a project predicated on (unlikely) continued success. A project financially feasible and justified in terms of the extra seats even if over the next four or so decades we spend as much or even more time in the Championship than we do in the PL.

And why extra seats? Because McNally, at the end, explodes the common misconception that tickets sales don’t matter in the PL, because of the TV money. “You’re more likely to be a consistent Premier League club with average gates of 35,000 then you are with crowds of 26,800.”

Extra seats mean more money to give us an edge over clubs that get the same TV money and bridge the gap to those – ie the majority- that get more.

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24 minutes ago, PurpleCanary said:

Fast-forward to this time next year, and a perfectly possible scenario. We have stayed up, meaning another year of PL money and three years of parachute payments if we later get relegated. And Buendia, Lewis, Godfrey, Aarons etc have proved themselves PL class.

 

Oh so reluctantly, we accept an offer from Spurs of £55m for Aarons. What to do with the money? There is no black hole to fill in the accounts, and no likelihood of one if and when we get relegated, because we have learned from the recent past.

Aside from the fact that I can't see us even getting close to £55m for Aarons after a good season (£55m for any two of those four would be easily achievable though should we stay up), this is exactly my thought process.

What do we spend this sort of money on? Something to benefit the club for several decades, or take a punt on two £20m signings? Because nowadays in the Premier League, even £20m players come with the risk of being big flops which also leave the club lumbered with big wages to pay for the next three years.

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2 hours ago, ThorpeCanary said:

 For me the only solution is to put that 2nd tier behind the South Stand

Would make the ground look even more unbalanced than it does now, with such a low stand on the city side and one sticking up even further on the other side.

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2 hours ago, lake district canary said:

Would make the ground look even more unbalanced than it does now, with such a low stand on the city side and one sticking up even further on the other side.

Lovely view over the Wensum valley though.

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Thank you purple. 

 fact is the club could probably fund this project without any or much external debt if it wanted to. It just means modest recruitment or player sales over the next year or two.

It's a choice for the club.  Take a punt on a  player or two and hope they come up more Klose than Naismith or RVW or look to the future and build.  

 

 

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20 hours ago, Barbe bleu said:

Thank you purple. 

 fact is the club could probably fund this project without any or much external debt if it wanted to. It just means modest recruitment or player sales over the next year or two.

It's a choice for the club.  Take a punt on a  player or two and hope they come up more Klose than Naismith or RVW or look to the future and build.  

 

 

BB, I think those quotes from Bowkett and McNally are useful in  listing the key factors in any decision on expansion and explaining how they related to the financial position then. And by extension why expansion has not taken place since, because the financial fundamentals had not changed. But that may not be true now, or over the next few years.

And this relates to the crucial point that sometimes get blurred or totally misunderstood - that in the long-term expansion can be profitable even if in the short- and medium-term it is not. Bowkett was in effect saying the club could not afford expansion, even though in the long run it would more than pay for itself, because in the shorter run it would not.

I am not predicting this, but there is this perfectly possible scenario in which the club can well afford that temporary loss (or even have no serious loss to speak of) in a way it could not before.

What would be informative for us all, since I think those Bowkett and McNally quotes from six years ago are probably the most recent comprehensive review of the situation, would be an update on whether the club is still keen on expansion, when possible, what increase in capacity it envisages, and whether it believes the financial position may be changing for the better.

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To be honest, up to now there’s not much in spending on the squad, not complaining about who we’ve signed as it’s refreshing to get young players and seasoned internationals who want to be here than spending multi millions on the likes of Naismith’s of this world, so if we save 10 million plus on player budget this could always be put into a future fund to spend on the new stand instead of paying tax on  profits.

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I think you'll find that investment in infrastructure goes onto the capital account and is relieved against profit when the club is sold, if ever.

Somebody correct this if I am wrong, it's different for football clubs or for a club business owned by shareholders, but this was the way I did it when in business.

Transfer business and wages and general running costs along with income constitute the current account which is taxed according to profit annually.

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6 minutes ago, BroadstairsR said:

I think you'll find that investment in infrastructure goes onto the capital account and is relieved against profit when the club is sold, if ever.

Somebody correct this if I am wrong, it's different for football clubs or for a club business owned by shareholders, but this was the way I did it when in business.

Transfer business and wages and general running costs along with income constitute the current account which is taxed according to profit annually.

I don’t really know the inner working, but should we start any investment into the south stand including feasibility and plans surely that money would be subject to offset any profits in that financial year.

 

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Don't think so, but I always tried to push as much as possible into the current account to save on tax at the end of the year.

VAT is the big crippler now  ...and we know where much of that goes.

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On 28/06/2019 at 09:52, splendidrush said:

Which is why nobody knows what the potential is..... except that it's way over 26,000.

Very roughly clubs have three levels of support- one when they are rubbish, one when things are looking hopeful and one when everything comes together and they are successful. For many clubs crowds can almost double between the first and last phases (look at Leeds and Sheff.Utd in the last few years). The ones who turn up during the terrible times are the clubs bedrock hardcore- and every single one of ours deserve a medal because they are an enormous part of why we are in such a healthy position. But that does not negate the fact that there are many who, for many different reasons, cannot/don't want to attend regularly. I'm sure Leeds fans aren't moaning about gloryhunters when they are boasting about having the biggest gates in the league.

Apparently to some we are the only club in world football for whom our support when at the lower end of the Championship and even in League One is virtually the same as when we're playing Man United or Liverpool. There is no logic to that viewpoint.

It may interest some that both in our relegation season and promotion back to the Championship, we averaged several thousand more than Leicester, Wolves, Southampton, Sheffield Wednesday and United did when they were promoted from league one. We were virtually on a par with Leeds. If we hadn't had such a restricted capacity I'd wager we'd have been similar to the 28,000 Manchester City achieved in the same position. But there's no evidence of the need for extra seats at all...🙄

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On 28/06/2019 at 11:10, ricardo said:

It was over 40k in the 1960's and 70's but I can count on the fingers of one hand (and still have some left over) for the number times it actually happened.

 

What else was there to do other than go to the pub or go to watch football ? Only two channels on the tellybox and hardly anybody had a car.

Edited by TIL 1010

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