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Amen!! Amen to this post!

Finally, someone who would be willing to ask serious questions instead of being scared losing a free meat pie in the VP lounge.

The club needs assets! Let's not stop making excuses for not.

 

Please don't exaggerate.

Lincoln City - £1.5m new facility consisting of pitches, gym, changing rooms, offices etc.
https://thelincolnite.co.uk/2018/11/first-look-at-imps-1-3m-training-facility/

Mansfield Town - £2m new facility, 3G pitch, 3 grass pitches, changing rooms, physio rooms and a community centre.
https://www.chad.co.uk/sport/football/mansfield-town/mansfield-town-enjoying-life-at-new-training-ground-1-9535203/amp

Granted Mansfield had theirs paid mostly for by their owner but Lincoln's was fully funded by their FA cup run.

 

I’d rather spend money on a decent squad than on facilities no better, or even worse than our current lot just to say they’re ours. We’ve got some of the best outside the top 2 leagues, get there first then worry about new bloody facilities! One season in the Premier League and we could get 10x better facilities than we have now and still pay for a squad, pointless at this level spending big money on anything other than players, they’re the biggest asset to any club wanting to progress.

 

Buying the ground would be a much better use of those funds.
What we should be doing is enquiring about the cost of buying Odsal and turning that into a viable football stadium. Once we have the information we can then start negotiating with the pension fund to buy the ground back, we would have a bargaining chip in our pocket.
If as you believe Rupp is only here for the short term, why would you expect him to chuck that sort of money in to buying anything. He would then only need to ask for more money as a sale to recoup it. If he is staying long term then yes I can see a benefit but certainly not short term for him.

 

We have 9 years left of the lease at VP at nearly 500k per annum rent, The smart move would be to take out a 10 year mortgage and buy the ground, The payments would roughly be the same but we would own the ground at the end instead of having to sign another 25 year lease with 3 yearly rent reviews

 

The questions asked regarding the end of the current lease at Valley Parade are interesting. I’m presuming by the time the lease is up that reports have been done into the projected maintenance costs that would clearly be incurred when signing up to a new long term lease. Tying us down for another 25 years is a big commitmemt in what will be a stadium where nearly all the infrastructure will be over 25 years old. I’m not advocating a move per se but i would hope this will come into the discussions when negotiating future rent demands.

 

No thanks. Terrible location, nothing to do around the area, pain in the arse to get there unless you're an away fan straight off the motorway. VP is in a great location. Right on the bus routes, 10 min walk from the Train station, walking distance from bars and restaurants pre and post match. I would despise going to Odsal, maybe even consider not going.

 

Do you not think they've already up't their game?

Find it funny that even though they answer about Drury has been answered you still don't believe it.

 

I haven’t seen the finances but I’d guess by the end of the current lease we’ll have already paid more than the place is worth. So I’d hope we wouldn’t sign a new lease as it would just be short term thinking again. We should really be thinking about this now really, either a long term plan to buy the place or relocate.

 

I am not advocating going there, I am saying if the only other option is being tied into another lengthy lease, that will be very costly we should look at it as an alternative. This would give us more power in negotiations.
By the time the lease is up the youngest part of the ground will be 30 years old, any lease would include liability for upkeep and maintainance as it does now.

 

You live in cloud cuckoo land.

 

You buy assets that are likely to increase in value.

Those likely to decrease, you lease. As a titan of industry, with a Merc and everything, you obviously know this Fordy....

Is VP likely to increase, or even retain its value?

 

'Focus on getting a conveyor belt of youth talent going again'

Again...?!

 

It would be interesting to hear who's idea that was, great if we bring a kid in and we develop him and sell him on as we have in the past with Delph, Wisdom, Cleverly etc, but we should not be using money that might help Bowyer do his job in getting us out of this khazi league.

 

I find it disappointing that we've had to sell another promising kid to the big leagues before he's anywhere near the first team. There's risk in turning down short term windfalls for the chance of something more lucrative down the line, but I'd hoped that having a wealth(ish) owner would allow us to underwrite taking such risks, especially with the latest shortfall being covered by the McBurnie money.

 

The problem City have is renting the ground and
training facilities stunts growth as a business.Profit
= Success providing it's a big enough one.

IMO the club should of had some strategy in place
to get to a financial position to be able to buy the
ground back.

 

Who was it we let go?, let's hope Julian has done his homework again with add on's during their development and possible promotions and future transfers.
As you say with an owner with a bob or two we should have possibly kept him longer and seen him develop and his value increase, I wonder if that side of any deal was sold to Stefan obviously not.

 

Under the new rules can’t category 1 clubs just take a youth player for something like £50k and you don’t have a choice? Sure I read that somewhere, so we probably didn’t have much choice.