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Our Future? Stadium Expansion Proposal on Season Ticket DVD


Colinjb

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Yes but I would start to get ****ed off if I had to pay £75 for every match I went to and that would also mean the stadium was too small.

 

You see this is where the intelligent posters argument falls down. Apparantly we should expand the stadium to fit in all these causal fans and people in Shepton Mallet that suddenly have a Saturday free so decide to come to Southampton to watch premier league football. Yet these fans that care little for SFC right now and on Thursday suddenly realise their family picnic has been cancelled and now have nothing to do are going to be told that it's going to cost them £75 each to do to fullfil thier dream of being able to come to St Mary's when they aren't busy. Of course it could go the other way, real Saints fans are being fleeced by buying tickets when they go on sale at £75 only to be sitting next to a family of 4 from Shepton Mallet who care little for SFC but had their family picnic cancelled on thursday and they've all got in for a fiver each. I can't really see either scenario being popular. All in my dell sized mentality opinion of course.

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You see this is where the intelligent posters argument falls down. Apparantly we should expand the stadium to fit in all these causal fans and people in Shepton Mallet that suddenly have a Saturday free so decide to come to Southampton to watch premier league football. Yet these fans that care little for SFC right now and on Thursday suddenly realise their family picnic has been cancelled and now have nothing to do are going to be told that it's going to cost them £75 each to do to fullfil thier dream of being able to come to St Mary's when they aren't busy. Of course it could go the other way, real Saints fans are being fleeced by buying tickets when they go on sale at £75 only to be sitting next to a family of 4 from Shepton Mallet who care little for SFC but had their family picnic cancelled on thursday and they've all got in for a fiver each. I can't really see either scenario being popular. All in my dell sized mentality opinion of course.

As I said I'm not really for the easy jet way but I also don't care why people come to watch Saints as their money is the same as anyone elses. As long as the atmosphere is good and the money gets through the door the club benefits. I have watched aussie rules football in oz, baseball in the US, ice hockey in Canada etc and the reason I managed that is their stadiums had the capacity not just to cope with the die hard home fans.

Edited by stev2001
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We all have a common goal here and that is for Saints to be successful. It we want to live within our means, the only way we can afford to become better is to generate more income. One way is to get more money through the gates and if we are turning fans away (plastic or otherwise) then that is not a good thing. Dynamic pricing is a dangerous thing as you risk ****ing off the most loyal fans but if this can be achieved without doing this then I'm all for it if it brings in more money. However I don't think we even need it if we have a big enough flexible stadium. Having a stadium that we sell out most weeks IMO means we are missing out on funds and creating the need for such things like dynamic pricing. Turkish you are right, we need to wait and see what happens in the next season or two. Hopefully we do sell out most games and we do expand :)

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Frank for a start. Plenty of posts from him. Plenty of easyjet comparisons from him. Wes tender posts plenty of drivel about flexible pricing. Some plank suggested the sell tickets at price A then put them up or down on the strength of whether the game is selling well or not.

 

Nice try at being a smart cu nt but flexible pricing is a common theme on here and you know it.

 

No I don't. Before you spout such drivel, I defy you to post anything where I've commented on flexible pricing.

 

I won't hold my breath on you being able to come up with anything. As usual, you're all p*ss and wind, throwing mud at other posters and hoping that some of it will stick.

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No I don't. Before you spout such drivel, I defy you to post anything where I've commented on flexible pricing.

 

I won't hold my breath on you being able to come up with anything. As usual, you're all p*ss and wind, throwing mud at other posters and hoping that some of it will stick.

 

Start naming those who think we "can never play in Europe" and I pwomise I sway sowwy for saying you mention flexy-wexy pricing.

 

Thanks for the usual pompous weasel words, sniding to the gallery based on made up stuff in your own pathetic mind.

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Start naming those who think we "can never play in Europe" and I pwomise I sway sowwy for saying you mention flexy-wexy pricing.

 

Thanks for the usual pompous weasel words, sniding to the gallery based on made up stuff in your own pathetic mind.

 

No need to thank me, CB. But which gallery is this that I am apparently playing to?

 

Do I detect a certain tetchiness in your response? Do I get up your nose? Poor diddums.

 

I really can't be arsed to trawl though the various threads to substantiate who said that "anybody on here who thought that we could achieve European CL football was a fantasist", so I'll just leave it to other posters to make up their minds as to whether I was mistaken or not. I'm sure that they will have ideas of who the usual suspects might be. Needless to say, I won't be taking your word for it that there weren't any.

 

However, your accusation that I have posted drivel about flexible pricing is something that I asked you to substantiate with evidence and I take your childish playground retort to mean that you cannot find anything from me regarding that. It shouldn't be difficult to find any such statements if they existed, but I'm afraid to tell you that they don't. You must be thinking of somebody else. No doubt you will be issuing an apology quite soon.

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No need to thank me, CB. But which gallery is this that I am apparently playing to?

 

Do I detect a certain tetchiness in your response? Do I get up your nose? Poor diddums.

 

I really can't be arsed to trawl though the various threads to substantiate who said that "anybody on here who thought that we could achieve European CL football was a fantasist", so I'll just leave it to other posters to make up their minds as to whether I was mistaken or not. I'm sure that they will have ideas of who the usual suspects might be. Needless to say, I won't be taking your word for it that there weren't any.

 

However, your accusation that I have posted drivel about flexible pricing is something that I asked you to substantiate with evidence and I take your childish playground retort to mean that you cannot find anything from me regarding that. It shouldn't be difficult to find any such statements if they existed, but I'm afraid to tell you that they don't. You must be thinking of somebody else. No doubt you will be issuing an apology quite soon.

 

Ever thought you might be taking Internet mong boarding a bit too seriously Les?

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Start naming those who think we "can never play in Europe" and I pwomise I sway sowwy for saying you mention flexy-wexy pricing.

 

Do you act down the pub like you do on here? If you don't, please have the grace not do so here. You really are insufferable.

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Do you act down the pub like you do on here? If you don't, please have the grace not do so here. You really are insufferable.

 

Christ, here comes the other one. Come on Suzy, tell us you live in Italy again or who's on your ignore list today, we've not heard that one for at least a week.

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Christ, here comes the other one. Come on Suzy, tell us you live in Italy again or who's on your ignore list today, we've not heard that one for at least a week.

 

She has you on ignore so can't read this.

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Only at times?

 

Well especially in the summer when there's no football to discuss.

 

Personally I just don't understand all the bickering and why people either get so angry about things that don't matter, or just keep repeating the same old crap day in day out.

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Well especially in the summer when there's no football to discuss.

 

Personally I just don't understand all the bickering and why people either get so angry about things that don't matter, or just keep repeating the same old crap day in day out.

 

TBH I don't think anyone does take all the b/llocks seriously.

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Make up a story that most people on the board are advocating something stupid, then rail against it to show how smart and superior you are and how many genuine normal non trolling posters you can snare into replying. Thats entertaintment for half a dozen saddos. Why dont you go and do something equally anti social but less embarrassing, like ****ing on the wheels of cars then running away.

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TBH I don't think anyone does take all the b/llocks seriously.

 

Make up a story that most people on the board are advocating something stupid, then rail against it to show how smart and superior you are and how many genuine normal non trolling posters you can snare into replying. Thats entertaintment for half a dozen saddos. Why dont you go and do something equally anti social but less embarrassing, like ****ing on the wheels of cars then running away.

 

I take back my previous post.

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No need to thank me, CB. But which gallery is this that I am apparently playing to?

 

Do I detect a certain tetchiness in your response? Do I get up your nose? Poor diddums.

 

I really can't be arsed to trawl though the various threads to substantiate who said that "anybody on here who thought that we could achieve European CL football was a fantasist", so I'll just leave it to other posters to make up their minds as to whether I was mistaken or not. I'm sure that they will have ideas of who the usual suspects might be. Needless to say, I won't be taking your word for it that there weren't any.

 

However, your accusation that I have posted drivel about flexible pricing is something that I asked you to substantiate with evidence and I take your childish playground retort to mean that you cannot find anything from me regarding that. It shouldn't be difficult to find any such statements if they existed, but I'm afraid to tell you that they don't. You must be thinking of somebody else. No doubt you will be issuing an apology quite soon.

 

You seriously think I have been trawling the forum to read your posts about flexible pricing? F uck me you are odd.

 

And, as expected nothing from you about these Saints fans who think "we will never play in Europe".

 

Because there are none. Just a fiction made up by you to get the rest of the arse-aching bores on here excited.

 

Not one person on this forum thinks we can never play in Europe. Not one person.

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Yeah i thought CB Fry would be quicker than dat!

 

Only jokes Fry i love you really even though i don't know you or particularly understand what ur going on about i like that ur posts is angry and contains swearings!

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it is quite obvious that you don't need to be selling out for years to build a bigger stadium (if cost is no great issue)

 

lets pretend SMS was 40k for a moment

 

would we sell out against wigan, norwich, stoke...no

 

would we sellout against Man U, Man city, Arsenal, Liverpool, Spurs, West Ham, Reading (localish interest), Newcastle...probably

 

the rest we would probably get over the 32k capacity.....some will...a couple won't...

I doubt the club look at the 29k we will get against wigan and think....nope, not worth it.

what would be a certainty, is that MORE fans come through the gates over the year and our average attendance will rise a few thousand easily....whether that is a sellout every single game...(which i doubt) or not...

Edited by Thedelldays
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You seriously think I have been trawling the forum to read your posts about flexible pricing? F uck me you are odd.

 

And, as expected nothing from you about these Saints fans who think "we will never play in Europe".

 

Because there are none. Just a fiction made up by you to get the rest of the arse-aching bores on here excited.

 

Not one person on this forum thinks we can never play in Europe. Not one person.

 

You seriously think that I will trawl the forum to find posts about whether others expressed views that we can never expect to play in Europe? F uck me, you are odd.

 

And as expected, nothing from you about those posts you said I made about flexible pricing.

 

Because there are none. Just a fiction made up by you to get the rest of the half dozen or so arse-aching trolls on here excited.

 

But when you say that there is nobody who has said that we could never play in Europe, let us please make a clear distinction here. I believe that most accept that it is possible to gain access to European competition via Cup wins. We have achieved qualification for that as recently as 2003, with a squad arguably not as good as this one. But qualification for the Champions League? I seem to recall that some posters stated that was an impossible target, that anybody who thought we could get into the CL was living in a fantasy world. I may have been mistaken on that and perhaps somebody could confirm or deny that to be the case.

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Oh hold on i've been reading this argument quite carefully so I can moderate:

 

"anybody on here who thought that we could achieve European CL football was a fantasist"

 

I don't mind being the idiot who said that! I mean it's pretty hard to see us making the Champions League!

 

Saints fans who think "we will never play in Europe".

 

Oh but wait! I ain't saying dat! We could make Europa, you can get Europa sometimes by not winning the FA Cup. We is plenty good enought to not win the FA Cup!

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  • 2 months later...

Simon Peach ‏@SimonPeach

Remember those images of a new-look St Mary's that came in the DVD sent to season ticket holders? Well, I've done a bit of digging...

 

Simon Peach ‏@SimonPeach

Just spoken to AFL Architects, who designed #SaintsFC's new training ground. Confirmed they produced images on new-look St Mary's

 

Simon Peach ‏@SimonPeach

AFL Architects told me #SaintsFC were "very serious" about plans to develop St Mary's, but depends on growth of the club. Sounds interesting

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it is quite obvious that you don't need to be selling out for years to build a bigger stadium (if cost is no great issue)

 

lets pretend SMS was 40k for a moment

 

would we sell out against wigan, norwich, stoke...no

 

would we sellout against Man U, Man city, Arsenal, Liverpool, Spurs, West Ham, Reading (localish interest), Newcastle...probably

 

the rest we would probably get over the 32k capacity.....some will...a couple won't...

I doubt the club look at the 29k we will get against wigan and think....nope, not worth it.

what would be a certainty, is that MORE fans come through the gates over the year and our average attendance will rise a few thousand easily....whether that is a sellout every single game...(which i doubt) or not...

 

I agree with you, Whether it's worth expanding is not about selling out every game now it's all about averages...If we average 30k now and increase the capacity the average will increase just on the big 4 filling a bigger ground for those games alone. If other games sell more than now as well obviously that will raise it further. A cup run or drawing our nearest and dearest neighbours would see potential further sell outs.

It depends if that projected average rise over the season is enough to justify the initial outlay.

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Simon Peach ‏@SimonPeach

Remember those images of a new-look St Mary's that came in the DVD sent to season ticket holders? Well, I've done a bit of digging...

 

Simon Peach ‏@SimonPeach

Just spoken to AFL Architects, who designed #SaintsFC's new training ground. Confirmed they produced images on new-look St Mary's

 

Simon Peach ‏@SimonPeach

AFL Architects told me #SaintsFC were "very serious" about plans to develop St Mary's, but depends on growth of the club. Sounds interesting

 

Oh dear god. We don't need to expand!!

 

We don't sell out and we won't sell out given current prices, the state of economy, free matches to watch online and diving tosser Premiership footballers.

 

I keep using White Hart Lane as an example, capacity circa 36,000. Spurs ARE a "bigger" club than Saints, that does them fine. Chelsea play in a stadium of about 42,000. That does them fine and they are a massive club - now.

 

It's bad enough having empty seats in a 32,000 seater stadium, expanding is madness. Okay, if we expanded to 36,000 for example, then maybe that might pay off, but any larger would be ridiculous. We'd end up looking like Wigan or Middlesbrough every week with a half empty stadium.

 

There are far more important things to spend the money on - like a defensive back line for a start.

 

Utterly ridiculous at the moment to suggest we need a bigger ground.

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Oh dear god. We don't need to expand!!

 

We don't sell out and we won't sell out given current prices, the state of economy, free matches to watch online and diving tosser Premiership footballers.

 

I keep using White Hart Lane as an example, capacity circa 36,000. Spurs ARE a "bigger" club than Saints, that does them fine. Chelsea play in a stadium of about 42,000. That does them fine and they are a massive club - now.

 

It's bad enough having empty seats in a 32,000 seater stadium, expanding is madness. Okay, if we expanded to 36,000 for example, then maybe that might pay off, but any larger would be ridiculous. We'd end up looking like Wigan or Middlesbrough every week with a half empty stadium.

 

There are far more important things to spend the money on - like a defensive back line for a start.

 

Utterly ridiculous at the moment to suggest we need a bigger ground.

 

Such a dell sized mentality. Build it and they will come.

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Oh dear god. We don't need to expand!!

 

We don't sell out and we won't sell out given current prices, the state of economy, free matches to watch online and diving tosser Premiership footballers.

 

I keep using White Hart Lane as an example, capacity circa 36,000. Spurs ARE a "bigger" club than Saints, that does them fine. Chelsea play in a stadium of about 42,000. That does them fine and they are a massive club - now.

 

It's bad enough having empty seats in a 32,000 seater stadium, expanding is madness. Okay, if we expanded to 36,000 for example, then maybe that might pay off, but any larger would be ridiculous. We'd end up looking like Wigan or Middlesbrough every week with a half empty stadium.

 

There are far more important things to spend the money on - like a defensive back line for a start.

 

Utterly ridiculous at the moment to suggest we need a bigger ground.

 

But I don't think it's anything imminent. It makes sense for the club to explore the possibility of it, what the logistics are - what area's can and can't be upgraded. No harm in that, but it doesn't mean we're going to do that rather than buy defenders!

 

We need to be an established PL team before we will even attempt to do this, and that's a few years away. (if we stay up this year that is).

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You know it!

 

Seriously, every time I read about expansion, I just want to "facepalm".

 

The only people that seem to think its nessasary are ones that post on Internet spaz boards. In fact if it wasnt for this forum id have no idea we were such a massive club.

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I honestly think that stadium expansion should not be on our agenda until we have proved as a club that we have progressed further than ever before, and that right now means achieving at least 2 seasons in the top 5 in close succession (not immediate though) and getting some Euro football under our belt, which is still very far away from where we stand.

 

Let's face it, catchment base expansion in the South is limited and we face tough competition from the more successful, mainstream London clubs which even for people from around Hampshire look a better shout for a football day out than St.Mary's (not looking at Arsenal and Chelsea only- WHU and Tottenham certainly fit the category). Unless we can reach a position that gets us more mainstream attention and puts us in competition with them (ala Tottenham in recent years), we will not be able to attract many more people to the cause, be it ST holders or just supporters who come once every other month/semester.

 

We were close to achieving that position in 2003 before our post-Strachan managerial suicide bombing. And we are now coming from quite a distance to catch up.

 

I'd say that currently our regular match-attending fan base stands at 26-27k. Alongside the performance standard I mentioned, we need to be scoring regular near or sellouts at SMS (big 4 games not enough) like we did at the Dell to make an expanded stadium a wise and assertive shout.

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I honestly think that stadium expansion should not be on our agenda until we have proved as a club that we have progressed further than ever before, and that right now means achieving at least 2 seasons in the top 5 in close succession (not immediate though) and getting some Euro football under our belt, which is still very far away from where we stand.

 

Let's face it, catchment base expansion in the South is limited and we face tough competition from the more successful, mainstream London clubs which even for people from around Hampshire look a better shout for a football day out than St.Mary's (not looking at Arsenal and Chelsea only- WHU and Tottenham certainly fit the category). Unless we can reach a position that gets us more mainstream attention and puts us in competition with them (ala Tottenham in recent years), we will not be able to attract many more people to the cause, be it ST holders or just supporters who come once every other month/semester.

 

We were close to achieving that position in 2003 before our post-Strachan managerial suicide bombing. And we are now coming from quite a distance to catch up.

 

I'd say that currently our regular match-attending fan base stands at 26-27k. Alongside the performance standard I mentioned, we need to be scoring regular near or sellouts at SMS (big 4 games not enough) like we did at the Dell to make an expanded stadium a wise and assertive shout.

 

That's how I see it. There is definitely potential for growth (no matter what the dell brains on here say) but it will take a sustained period of success.

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