Putting our money where our mouth is

usually due to the ability to sell it and demand for it. If the club have a rent free lease who would want to pay anything for it when it generates no income whatsoever and there is no demand for it.

if there is demand for it then it ruins your argument about playing hard ball and walking away. Either there is demand for the land, in which case it could increase in value but then the current owners have other options, or there is no demand, in which case it will not be rise in value.

 

Fair point so rather than it be rent free, I think there would need to be some incentive for anyone buying a share of the stadium.

 

What was the return given to Mark Lawn when he loaned the club some cash? And that was to his own company.

 

From that assessment neither side are in a good position. We can bot afford to leave and if we do they are left with a piece of land worth zilch.

the question is who will blink, and I think it will be us as I think the land will have some value. The small piece of land at bottom of Bolton Road at side of the barbers is on sale for £400k

 

That really has nothing to do with the debate as we've seen in the past we've had promotions from league two, the rent is now much more manageable than before Julian & Mark bought the old store/offices.
We were all excited with regards the two Germans purchasing the club etc, some got giddy with regards talk about them building a new stadium at that time I would have been happy to move to a new stadium, so yes given the chance to move away I would be in favour of a move as long as it was a suitable size to accommodate future attendances, but I think we both know in these times we aren't going to get a mystery benefactor who would do that especially when we have a fit for purpose stadium already, it might not be to everyone's liking but it serves a purpose.

 

Based on that it seems the options are
1. We have funding in place to purchase VP back from Gibb
2. A new site is identified with funding in place to build a new modern stadium.

but under no circumstances should we enter another lease agreement where we are paying £500k a year even if that means walking away and ground sharing until either of points 1 or 2 can be sorted.

people can laugh all they want on here about it not being ‘viable’ but I’d rather play at the Shay for a few seasons than sign another lease with Gibb.

 

This thread is one of the key reasons a fan ownership model of Bradford City could not work. Some of our fans are fecking idiots.

 

So you’d be happy signing a long term lease where the club committing to pay £500k in rent as a league 2 club ? Maybe you’re happy fishing in the shit pond for players every season and having to sell players to fund bringing in free agents.

 

Good for you. Much as I love bradford city, if I had that kind of money to burn it would not be on BCFC.

Neither would I buy the ground if I won the lottery.

 

What Gibb realises is that if there was a genuine attempt at wanting to build a new stadium then we wouldn't even be discussing rental terms with him or renegotiating the lease. We would just leave on the date the new stadium was ready. But there is emotional attachment to Valley Parade and again Gibb isn't stupid and knows this. We will sign a new lease agreement with FLPF, as you allude to in earlier posts our only bargaining chip is that the stadium is getting pretty old and as such needs a lot of TLC for its upkeep. This may bring the annual cost down though I'm no expert. Put it this way I can't speak for others but if the notion is to relocate this club outside of Bradford as some negotiating tool then that's me finished with the club.

 

So you are in charge of negotiations. Which club are we in talks with about sharing their stadium? Because you are going to have to have an alternative venue if you are leaving Bradford. Don't forget we have 13,000 season ticket holders who will be looking for seats.

 

The point you've missed is Boris is only levelling up in former red wall constituencies that went Blue. Bradford won't get a penny as punishment for staying Red.

After reading a recent article on City of Culture, I don't think we will even be shortlisted for that.

 

With a reply like this he obviously doesn't care about a facility that can accommodate 13,000 -15,000 +.


We are a league 2 club and could play at any stadium with at least 1000 seats. Of course that’s extreme but still ‘viable’ if it meant being able to tell Gibb to shove his rent where the sun don’t shine. We have no divine obligation to accommodate 15,000 season ticket holders. Harrogate are more than just surviving in their ‘non league’ standard stadium.
Like I say though, if the rent we pay is manageable then let’s stop bitching about it but I want to see us operating at the top end of the league 2 playing budgets without hearing the annual excuses that our overheads prevent this.

 

How many season ticket holders will we have next season when prices go up again and we’re still in league 2 and no pandemic starving people of live football for 2 years ?

 

Answer the question don't move the goal posts.

 

The shay could accommodate 15,000 with a bit of safety work to bring the terracing behind one goal up to scratch

 

That wasn't the question. Going by this years parameters, and I have no reason to think that prices or season ticket numbers will change much if at all then where are you going to play?

 

It already has two sports played on it. And it's not in Bradford.