Hang on...Joe Anderson said we could be in a new stadium within 3 years....
@bizzaro @theesk @MoutsGoat
Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
Hang on...Joe Anderson said we could be in a new stadium within 3 years....
@bizzaro @theesk @MoutsGoat
DerbyshireAndHarper
Player Valuation: £2.5m
Not when you include what he spent on changing the manager and doing up Goodison.
Roughly a £20m positive spend.
#NegativeFans
Last edited:
DerbyshireAndHarper
Player Valuation: £2.5m
Great article by Paul Hayward on the building of the Minnesota Vikings new stadium:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/american...the-minnesota-vikings-us-bank-stadium-the-wo/
New stadiums tend to disappoint, just ask West Ham fans. There are years of anticipation stoked by Utopian artists' impressions, visions of modernist dreamscapes packed to the rafters with cheering fans celebrating a team that never loses.
The reality is inevitably fraught with logistical difficulties, teething troubles and often, regret.
There's little of that in Minneapolis at the moment, where the NFL's Minnesota Vikings have played four and won four so far this season. They have just opened a new 66,000-capacity stadium that looks so outrageous it feels like it shouldn't exist.
The US Bank Stadium is a vast slab of asymmetric glass and metal that towers over an entire district. It is a building full of architectural superlatives: the largest translucent roof in North America; the biggest opening glass doors in the world. Wembley, which hosted the first of three annual British NFL games last Sunday, looks dated by comparison.
The genesis of the stadium owes much to a public-private partnershipwhich will also be familiar to West Ham fans. Of a total cost of $1.1nb (£850m), $498m (£383m) came from the public purse. This is not an unusual situation in American sports, where teams are invariably referred to as "franchises," with all the veiled threat of relocation that word implies.
Owners often attract criticism for holding their cities to ransom over funding for new stadiums. Stan Kroenke, the majority shareholder of Arsenal, uprooted his St Louis Rams to Los Angeles last summer. Guaranteeing the Vikings' future in Minnesota was dependant on their expensive new home.
"We did four years of work in one year," says R.T. Rybak, the former mayor of Minneapolis who did much to broker the deal. "It's probably not coincidental that two days after I left office I had a heart attack.
"I was expecting to have a final year in office when I went around, gave little speeches, and people gave me little plaques or something, but the only plaque wound up being what developed on my heart."
The Vikings old stadium, on the same site as US Bank, was built in 1982 and showing its age by 2010 when its inflatable roof collapsed under the weight of a particularly vicious blizzard.
There's no danger of that in the new stadium, which has a slanted roof designed to disperse snow during the harsh Minneapolis winters when temperatures regularly reach frightening parts of the thermometer.
When the Vikings played the Seattle Seahawks, in their temporary, roofless stadium in the playoffs last January, it was -21 °C. Yet there were still calls for their new home to have a roof which would open.
"It would have been dramatically more costly to have a retractable roof," says Rybak, "but many people were saying that was essential for a place where winters are very cold but in the summer we are desperate to be outside.
"The breakthrough came when we determined that on a beautiful summer day in Minnesota you don't take the roof off your house, you go on the screen porch. So the walls opened up, and the world's largest glass doors now swing open.
"The Metrodome felt like you were gasping for air in a giant marshmallow. It was dank and stuffy, just one of the least attractive stadium in the world, I think. I never like to see any sort of destruction but we were happy to blow that thing up."
Rybak believes the lure of LA, which was without an NFL team until Kroenke's Rams moved, was tempting to the Vikings' owners.
Despite his reservations about public money being used to help wealthy sports teams, Rybak argued for US Bank partly because of its unusual location. Most NFL teams play in distant suburbs, but the Vikings' new home is a brief stroll from the centre of the city.
"Our old stadium was was surrounded by parking lots, so I liken this to the difference between spaceships," he says. "The old stadium was a ship that landed and everybody ran. This is a spaceship that landed and everybody ran to meet our new friends from outer space.
"I only use that analogy because these structures are monolithic, and they can only be woven into the district if you do it extremely intentionally."
He and Vikings president and co-owner Mark Wilf are keen to talk up the stadium's role in regeneration. "There is a lot of economic development in this area," says Wilf. "Almost a billion dollars has been spent already. There are 20-plus projects ongoing and a new public park for the citizens to enjoy."
But his team's focus has been on what's inside the stadium, and making it an attractive proposition for fans already well-served by TV coverage. Those looking for the prawn sandwich experience are certainly well-served.
Hospitality suites range from pitch-level boxes that put supporters in close proximity with the players as they emerge from the dressing room to "Club Purple", which is effectively an in-stadium nightclub. Members watch the game from plush sofas instead of plastic seats, and can warm up around a fire pit on a deck overlooking the city during breaks in play.
"We have great food choices, wider concourses, great technology," says Wilf. "The stadium Wifi gives fans connectivity from their seats to watch replays or order express food services and get traffic alerts.
"We also have the closest seats in the NFL, our first row general admission is 41 feet from the sideline which puts you so close to the action. All levels of fans from our general admission to our top suite owners are going to have an amazing experience."
That's if they can afford it. Season ticket holders had to fork out a one-off fee of $3,500 (£2,690) for a "personal seat licence" on top of the annual cost of their ticket. That has rankled for local fans who already like they've paid more than their fair share for the stadium through taxes.
Wilf describes the public funding of the stadium as "economic necessity," and justified. "We think we've created an asset that the whole community and the whole country can appreciate," he says. "The whole world, really. We think this is the finest sports and entertainment facility in the world."
On opening night against the Green Bay Packers this statement looked justified. Vast concourses teemed with purple jerseys, two enormous screens inside the main bowl means there's not a bad seat in the house and the Vikings emerged through a ship spitting out an enormous ball of fire.
The noise levels are comparable to anything in European football, if less sustained, given the sportus interruptus nature of American Football. Yes, it's excessive, but it's such thorough, and well-planned excess. The experience is streets ahead of anything available in the UK.
"As I was coming out of the stadium and seeing 60,000 people streaming out into the city right onto the park, I looked at my wife and said 'this is exactly what it looked like when I was daydreaming'," says R.T. Rybak. "My wife told me about childbirth, how after all the pain goes away all you think about is the good stuff - I finally understand."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/american...the-minnesota-vikings-us-bank-stadium-the-wo/
New stadiums tend to disappoint, just ask West Ham fans. There are years of anticipation stoked by Utopian artists' impressions, visions of modernist dreamscapes packed to the rafters with cheering fans celebrating a team that never loses.
The reality is inevitably fraught with logistical difficulties, teething troubles and often, regret.
There's little of that in Minneapolis at the moment, where the NFL's Minnesota Vikings have played four and won four so far this season. They have just opened a new 66,000-capacity stadium that looks so outrageous it feels like it shouldn't exist.
The US Bank Stadium is a vast slab of asymmetric glass and metal that towers over an entire district. It is a building full of architectural superlatives: the largest translucent roof in North America; the biggest opening glass doors in the world. Wembley, which hosted the first of three annual British NFL games last Sunday, looks dated by comparison.
The genesis of the stadium owes much to a public-private partnershipwhich will also be familiar to West Ham fans. Of a total cost of $1.1nb (£850m), $498m (£383m) came from the public purse. This is not an unusual situation in American sports, where teams are invariably referred to as "franchises," with all the veiled threat of relocation that word implies.
Owners often attract criticism for holding their cities to ransom over funding for new stadiums. Stan Kroenke, the majority shareholder of Arsenal, uprooted his St Louis Rams to Los Angeles last summer. Guaranteeing the Vikings' future in Minnesota was dependant on their expensive new home.
"We did four years of work in one year," says R.T. Rybak, the former mayor of Minneapolis who did much to broker the deal. "It's probably not coincidental that two days after I left office I had a heart attack.
"I was expecting to have a final year in office when I went around, gave little speeches, and people gave me little plaques or something, but the only plaque wound up being what developed on my heart."
The Vikings old stadium, on the same site as US Bank, was built in 1982 and showing its age by 2010 when its inflatable roof collapsed under the weight of a particularly vicious blizzard.
There's no danger of that in the new stadium, which has a slanted roof designed to disperse snow during the harsh Minneapolis winters when temperatures regularly reach frightening parts of the thermometer.
When the Vikings played the Seattle Seahawks, in their temporary, roofless stadium in the playoffs last January, it was -21 °C. Yet there were still calls for their new home to have a roof which would open.
"It would have been dramatically more costly to have a retractable roof," says Rybak, "but many people were saying that was essential for a place where winters are very cold but in the summer we are desperate to be outside.
"The breakthrough came when we determined that on a beautiful summer day in Minnesota you don't take the roof off your house, you go on the screen porch. So the walls opened up, and the world's largest glass doors now swing open.
"The Metrodome felt like you were gasping for air in a giant marshmallow. It was dank and stuffy, just one of the least attractive stadium in the world, I think. I never like to see any sort of destruction but we were happy to blow that thing up."
Rybak believes the lure of LA, which was without an NFL team until Kroenke's Rams moved, was tempting to the Vikings' owners.
Despite his reservations about public money being used to help wealthy sports teams, Rybak argued for US Bank partly because of its unusual location. Most NFL teams play in distant suburbs, but the Vikings' new home is a brief stroll from the centre of the city.
"Our old stadium was was surrounded by parking lots, so I liken this to the difference between spaceships," he says. "The old stadium was a ship that landed and everybody ran. This is a spaceship that landed and everybody ran to meet our new friends from outer space.
"I only use that analogy because these structures are monolithic, and they can only be woven into the district if you do it extremely intentionally."
He and Vikings president and co-owner Mark Wilf are keen to talk up the stadium's role in regeneration. "There is a lot of economic development in this area," says Wilf. "Almost a billion dollars has been spent already. There are 20-plus projects ongoing and a new public park for the citizens to enjoy."
But his team's focus has been on what's inside the stadium, and making it an attractive proposition for fans already well-served by TV coverage. Those looking for the prawn sandwich experience are certainly well-served.
Hospitality suites range from pitch-level boxes that put supporters in close proximity with the players as they emerge from the dressing room to "Club Purple", which is effectively an in-stadium nightclub. Members watch the game from plush sofas instead of plastic seats, and can warm up around a fire pit on a deck overlooking the city during breaks in play.
"We have great food choices, wider concourses, great technology," says Wilf. "The stadium Wifi gives fans connectivity from their seats to watch replays or order express food services and get traffic alerts.
"We also have the closest seats in the NFL, our first row general admission is 41 feet from the sideline which puts you so close to the action. All levels of fans from our general admission to our top suite owners are going to have an amazing experience."
That's if they can afford it. Season ticket holders had to fork out a one-off fee of $3,500 (£2,690) for a "personal seat licence" on top of the annual cost of their ticket. That has rankled for local fans who already like they've paid more than their fair share for the stadium through taxes.
Wilf describes the public funding of the stadium as "economic necessity," and justified. "We think we've created an asset that the whole community and the whole country can appreciate," he says. "The whole world, really. We think this is the finest sports and entertainment facility in the world."
On opening night against the Green Bay Packers this statement looked justified. Vast concourses teemed with purple jerseys, two enormous screens inside the main bowl means there's not a bad seat in the house and the Vikings emerged through a ship spitting out an enormous ball of fire.
The noise levels are comparable to anything in European football, if less sustained, given the sportus interruptus nature of American Football. Yes, it's excessive, but it's such thorough, and well-planned excess. The experience is streets ahead of anything available in the UK.
"As I was coming out of the stadium and seeing 60,000 people streaming out into the city right onto the park, I looked at my wife and said 'this is exactly what it looked like when I was daydreaming'," says R.T. Rybak. "My wife told me about childbirth, how after all the pain goes away all you think about is the good stuff - I finally understand."
DerbyshireAndHarper
Player Valuation: £2.5m
tlefc
Player Valuation: £750k
I don't think sacking an underperforming manager is anything worthy of praise. It's what anyone would do. You could actually argue that he waited far too long to actually sack him.
DerbyshireAndHarper
Player Valuation: £2.5m
He took over in February. He sacked him in early May.
New owners very rarely come straight in and sack a manager after 3 months, especially before the end of the season.
If we had not have been taken over/saved by Moshiri, Martinez would still be in place now, as Kenwright would not have been able to afford to sack him.
It's ridiculous to have such a negative opinion of Moshiri at this early stage when he's already done and is doing a lot of good for the club in moving us forward after 2 decades of stagnation under Kenwright.
Anyway, I'd rather we stick to the new stadium topic. There's other threads for Moshiri discussion.
Would love a stadium like that Minnesota Vikings one.
What are you on about 'even smaller than St James Park'? Have you seen our current ground compared with St James?
DerbyshireAndHarper
Player Valuation: £2.5m
We should be aspiring to be at least matching the likes of West Ham, Tottenham and Arsenal. So 60,000 is what we should be aiming for. No less than that. New stadiums ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS attract a significant increase of new fans. There are so many examples of this.
Jacko93
Player Valuation: £35m
I very much doubt the new ground will be below 60k. I would assume 65k but have heard higher, though I believe the higher figure to be one plucked out of the air.
tlefc
Player Valuation: £750k
How have we actually moved forward though? All I saw in the summer was the same as usual clownish transfer window from us with a negative net spend. Leaving us with no back up in several positions all over the pitch. If Bill was still in charge he'd have been absolutely slaughtered for that window.
Gladystweet
Player Valuation: £50m
Bill DID get absolutely slaughtered in that transfer window. Give him a chance mate. He's been here 5 minutes and is just getting to see how this club is run. Anyone not doing their job right, and he'll move them on. He's a multi squillionaire, I'm sure he knows what he's doing but it's not going to happen overnight. I've never ran a business but I'm sure that if you were to take over a relatively stable one, you don't rip it up and start again the same day.
DerbyshireAndHarper
Player Valuation: £2.5m
We have a better manager, a more professional approach and the team are fitter. We've started the season well, we're 5th in the league, above Man Utd who spent £120m more than us on players this past summer. Some of the teams we have played and beaten/drawn with have took points off our rivals (Stoke drew with City, Spurs beat City). The manager and Walsh came in June. When a team target players, they plan 2-3 windows ahead. They had less than 3 months of one window to suddenly magic up players who a ) Koeman & Walsh wanted; and b ) Would actually improve us. Buying a load of squad filling crap is what led us to consecutive 11th place finishes in the first place. There's a ridiculous lack of patience amongst our fanbase, and a total lack of perspective. Things have blatantly improved, even if the initial feeling following say a draw vs Palace at home is one of negativity. You need to look at the much bigger picture.
Last edited:
DerbyshireAndHarper
Player Valuation: £2.5m
St Louis Rams stadium planned for the riverfront, next to the Mississippi River:
deipnosophist
Player Valuation: £80m
The Minnesota Vikings are the team I support in the NFL. I started supporting them after watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show reruns about 5 years ago. They (the Vikings) have been rubbish until recently. Their new stadium has without question improved them from rubbish status to 'decent'.
Everton are currently decent...with a new stadium we will become a footballing super power.
Everton are currently decent...with a new stadium we will become a footballing super power.
