Mike, you're right when you say there is no Plan B but the truth is there is no Plan A. Kirkby is con and a cop-out for Kenwright. No sane buisness man would entertain DK so I wonder what the fuck is going on?

My worry is in 10 years time when Liverpool are playing games in a newly formed European League against AC Milan, Barcelona, Man Utd etc at the New Anfield, we will be trying to attract fans out to Kirkby to watch Everton take on Wigan, Bolton, Stoke etc. Make no mistake, the club will be fucked as the fan base ebbs away.

I wonder just how many of those fans who have made it clear they will never set foot in the Kirbydrome would actually stick to their guns if we began playing every game in the same way we played the first half on Thursday! I love Goodison, but I know it has not got long left the way things stand.

My main concern though will always be how well we perform on the pitch and Thursday's first half was proof we can do things the right way. Now we need to be consistent. Finally I believe we have a squad to compete. I hope.....

Tony, couldn’t agree with you more.

If anything, the current economic climate should have brought the clubs together to build a joint new stadium. The council should have forced the clubs to make it happen.

Unfortunately, we have a fucking idiot as a chairman who wouldn’t know a good deal if it poked him in the face. He is trapped hook line and sinker by the moneymen he prostituted himself to who could not care less where Everton play as long as they get their retail development. He should be driven out of Goodison, the twat.

"I cannot see us developing a ground within the city unless Tesco are offered a prime piece of land"

...but Tesco were assured by LCC that they’d work with them on securing such a deal. The only thing stopping it wasTesco’s determination to launch a massive retail park in north Merseyside that they knew was easier to gain planning permission for from a pliant, cowboy council like Knowsley.

Plan B, by the way, is to stay at Goodison and wait for the implosion to occur at boardroom level that will remove their stain from Everton’s history. And that’s a good Plan B as far as I’m concerned.

Sorry Steve and Dave, could you please explain to me what Kenwright has done that is so bad?

Do you think it’s all Moyes that has got us from perennial relegation candidates into regular top 6 finishers?

Well, I know what Moyes has done - he’s mouded a reasonable squad together and aded discipline and team spirit that gets you up the table in this over-hyped Premier League. I’m struggling to understand where Kenwright fits in. Provided Moyes with a net spend of around £3M for each of the seasons he’s been with us whilst running up massive debts and selling almost every asset the club has in the process? That’s impressive.

So Fellaini, Rodwell, Jagielka, Pienaar, Baines, Saha, Bily aren';t all assets worth a sell on value of £10million or more each? He has also enabled Moyes to break our transfer record on numerous occasions.

Without a big money takeover, no Premier League club makes that much money after all the costs are taken into consideration. It might just be (and I do mean might, I don’t know or believe that I am definitely right) that Kenwright has the long-term best interests of the club at heart and doesn’t want to sell to someone whose business plan is unstainable in the long run. It wouldn’t surprise me if he wants to make a bit of money as well (he is running a business), but I don’t think he’d do it to the detriment of the club.

So Steve Smith, because Bill Kenwright would not do it if it was to the detriment of the club, then you are comfortable in the conviction that the move to Kirkby will not be detrimental to the club?

That seems really weak logic to my mind.

This is the puzzle: Kirkby looks like a pretty poor move for all the reasons stated ad nauseam on these pages... yes, it may provide a short-term boost to the club before the long-term decline many predict sets in.

However, part of the short-benefit will likely be very profitable for Bill Kenwright and/or his monetary backers. When you have that dynamic going on, it becomes hard to remain convinced that nothing Bill Kenwright does or oversees will be of detriment to the club — especially if he personally stands to make a massive profit on his capital investment in Everton FC shares.

Well I must confess I cannot fathom out what Kenwright is up to but I do believe he is a trueblue. What we should all ask ourselves is do we really want to get into bed with billionaires who dont’t give a toss for Everton and who, at the end of the day, will walk away having made (hopefully) a shedload of money ? Look at the mess Liverpool have got themselves into. It’s sustainable - just - as long as they keep getting results but what would happen if they really messed up and finished a season out of CL qualification ? They’re already having problems meeting interest payments if media reports are to be believed. The chairmen or CEOs of both clubs should have their heads knocked together and put in a room without windows until they can reach a sensible plan to build a joint stadium in Stanley Park. Forget whether the seats are blue or red or custard yellow. We both need a modern stadium with up to 60000 capacity and if it has to have a bloody Tesco hypermarket attached, so be it. I never shop at Tesco anyway but don’t tell Tery Leahy !

Dean, I’ll never set foot in Kirkby if it gets the go ahead as it has alienated my family members who I take to the match and is wrong for me on countless levels too. It doesn’t stop me being an Evertonian nor would it stop my attendance at selected away games where the opposition realises disabled fans need to be able to park close enough to the stadium to make is usable or have to potentially walk some distance then wait hours in all weathers to get to or from the match.

To say Goodison Park is going to fall down is a blatant lie as proven many months ago when the club came out with the lies of it not being able to secure a H&S certificate and my posting of the H&S reply. Until I saw or heard truly independent clarification that GP couldn’t be upgraded and modernised piece meal for a similar costing to DK then I’ll also be inclined to err on that too being more club funded lies.

What exactly does a hard to access stadium of maximum 40k capacity with no off field income streams and with new debt incurred to build it give us above GP?

I have this theory right...

Whatever happens with Kirkby, someone will make a move to buy the club. We’ll be fine.

Agree with TM’s opinions for once.

Bottom line, Kirkby is not good enough, and i’m fairly sure another plan will emerge once (if) it gets called in.

Steve Smith I believe BK has only spent the monies any Premiership Chariman would have had from Sky, the documentation for DK in black and white shows that not one board member has or is willing to spend a penny of their own money on the club. With that in mind can you explain what exactly BK has done that anyone else in that position couldn’t have done? Can you shed some light on his fabulous business acumen that shows the club debt has grown consistently, that the only assets left are the player contracts, everything else is rented or mortgaged, the club hasn’t had any outside investment despite the laughable "24/7" bullshitisms?

Sticking to the original question:

If it does not get the go ahead ( and I admit I am opposed to it ) then one of 2 things will happen:

1/ We carry on as now and another plan involving Goodison being slowly developed ( as it should have been over the last 20 years ) or a groundshare will eventually emerge.

2/ There will be a massive Boardroom shake up with Green and Earl withdrawing their support as there will be nothing left of interest to a pair of Spurs fans. BK may go and a foreign investor takes over or he may stay and be joined by new Board members.

The latter is preferable to me, although in the short term some money may have to be raised by selling players I fear. Although this would not be good, it would still be better for the long term good than going to Kirkby.

In essence:

Kirkby = modest short term gain for the Club and a big win for a few individuals.

Anything else = a probable short term period of instability followed by better long term prospects.

I know which I would prefer.

As my views on the deceitful Charlatan are already well documneted I will concentrate on the thread’s theme which is Kirkby and a plan B.

Mike as has been stated on this site so many times before GP is not about to fall down or be closed down.

Yes it is out of date and has many restricted views but that is only because this board and previous boards that Kenwright served on failed to spend a penny on the stadium to keep it up to date.

In fact the much maligned Peter Johnson is the only one to do it when he commissioned the Park end.

Experts on stadium develepment have posted to the effect that GP could be developed to the same capacity as Kirkby for about the same money.

In fact from the little knowledge I have gleaned it seems possible to create an extra 8000 seats just by putting another tier on the park end for a cost of about 20 million.

That IMO would be enough for now until we get a proper board with vision and business acumen.

I take your points on board Michael but like I said previously, he is running a business and will want to be profitable.

If you or I were in charge of the club, we would want to be profitable too, no matter our love for the club.

I think we are all in agreement that we can’t stay at Goodison for much longer, and I think Kirkby is the best option at this moment in time.

I am not hugely knowledgable on the Kirkby debate (somehow avoided it), so don’t want to shoot myself in the foot with comments I make, but it seems (my opinion) alot of the negative comments stem from the fact that other clubs who have moved ground in a similar fashion to Kirkby, are not doing well since, and also of course that we are moving out of the city.

My only thought on this is that we are not a Southampton or a Coventry, we are a different business.

For a start, commercially, we are a huge football club in England, and despite some doubters, we are still pretty big globally.
With our fanbase, we should still sell=out a 50,000 seater stadium, even if it is out of thr city.

There will be weeks when we only get 35,000-40,000 turning up, either after not playing well or playing a relatively low key match, but we will sell out the major games, and if the success on the pitch continues to grow, there will be more of these big games to enjoy, which in turn could spiral as we are seen more globally.

Anyway, I digress, and probably well off the subject

With all the debate that has been going on about Kirby and reviewing the presentation about the re-develpoment of Goodison I decided in June of this year to take a look around Goodison Park and surrounding area to try and get a feel for the redevelopment of Goodison Park and try and put myself in the shoes of a prospective buyer of the club and quite honestly I could not see a prospective buyer putting his investment together for the project.
Ihave been watching the Blues since the 1950’s and like a lot of people loved going to Goodison but I have to be honest and say we have to move even if it means finding an alternative site at this late stage of the process.

Steve

we are NOT all in agreement that we cannot stay at GP.

Many of us believe with some justification that Kirkby will not generate any extra funds for the club due to its problems with location and transport let alone the cheapness of the design and build.

They are valuing GP at 15 million and DK if and when built at 150 million.

I know which I would choose even at the same valuation.

I’m relatively new to this site although obviously I’m not new to the arguments, but what exactly is wrong with a move to Kirkby? If you look at the development of any city over the last 200 years you will find that what was once a town or village on the outskirts of a city has become a suburb as a result of redevelopment and/or the expansion of the city. Kirkby and its sister estate Speke are just examples of city expansion, and up until 1974(I think) it was part of Liverpool and then some faceless desk clerks redrew the boundaries, and put Kirkby in Knowsley, Bootle in Sefton-you all know the rest, but an interesting point, if the boundary commission had put Croxteth into Knowsley, would that mean that Wayne Rooney wouldn’t have been a Liverpool born footballer?
But surely the boundary changes this hasn’t stopped Kirkby being a part of Liverpool and up until DK, John Conteh was always called a Liverpool Boxer and Margi Clark a scouse actress, throw in Phil Thompson Alan Stubbs the list is endless, and I’ve never heard anyone saying they’re not from Liverpool. To my mind it comes down to what makes a city and the answer is the people and the culture, and Kirkby is emotionally and spiritually Liverpool and it’s also chock full of scousers.
I’m originally from Toxteth, and I’ve lived in Kirkby but now I live on the Wirral, now Wirral is a totally separate place to Liverpool, and the majority of the people living there don’t like being called scousers, and of course before the boundary changes it was part of Cheshire.
I had an argument (or should that be debate) with a KEIOC supporter who said that he had no objection to the ground being located in Speke! Although it is the same distance from the city centre as Kirkby and even further away from Goodison than Kirkby. It’s this weird logic that I just can’t get my head around.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the KEIOC brigade are sensitive souls that don’t like having Tesco bags waved at them by the RS and if they are being honest that is the only objection. Have a word with yourselves and examine the options open to the club you allegedly love.

David
One memebr of KEIOC does not represent the views of at least 12000 matchgoing supporters and probably double that if recent polls are anything to go by.

Kirkby does not tick ANY boxes.

It is over 8 miles out of the City (Statistics show that new stadia over 3 miles out of a City have lees chance of success).

Only has an infrastructure to support 40000 residents

Has the worst transport and access plan imaginable

Is a cheap and nasty design

Will not belong to us even though we are paying around 3 million to decontaminate the land

Has to be given over to KMBC for over 1/3 of its available use for functions

Is not allowed to hold Concerts or large events

May be capped at a 40000 capacity

Is unlikely to get much corporate business

The list is endless.

Now I have no problem with considering Kirkbyites as scousers but to build the future of Everton there stinks of corruption to high heaven.

Having read through the KEIOC site in some detail, it would appear to me that Tesco will not be appearing on the Goodison pitch with a cheque for £50m or so. The revenue will be "generated" once a government official signs a bit of paper to say Yes, you can build a stadium and a Tesco superstore on the former landfill site. Any KEIOC officials please feel free to confirm this.

So, for Plan B if the government says No, I for one would ensure the Tesco exclusivity deal is binned once and for all, and look for somewhere else with none of their hidden agendas holding us back.

If they get the go ahead and I were the Frenchman who has just won the £90m, I would buy Goodison just to have a kick about with my mates on a Sunday and when it goes tits up, renovate Goodison and rent it back to Everton.

Please can we only blame BK for things he is definitely responsible for. When he was a board member he might have argued against all the bad stuff but was overruled. We don’t know. Once he became chairman then officially the final decision was his so he deserves everything he gets. Trying to blame him for other stuff just weakens some otherwise good arguments.

Secondly other Steve, Goodison can keep going for years yet without too much being done to it. Also if you look around there are plans to redevelop GP and the way things are going they may actually turn out cheaper than Kirby, and that is one hell of a plan B.

Thanks for that Jay but two questions; what is your opinion of a stadium built in Speke that is also 8 miles from the city centre, and there is a proposal to redraw the boundaries again and that’s to incorporate Knowsley, bits of Sefton and call it Greater Liverpool, would the stadium be in ’our city’ then?

David Hallwood have you ever landed or taken off from Kirkby Airport? Has Kirkby ever had significant proven transport access? As far as the nitpicking over postcodes and boundaries is concerned why not raise Ormskirk as the new site, that has an L postcode and is full of scousers too.

It’s not just location, it’s the whole package, Kirkby is an overspill new town that has even had very little attention or funding from it’s own KMBC up until Tesco’s land grab and promises of a huge supermarket and some minimum wage jobs.

So its close proximity to an airport that now clinches where we should site the stadium? My point is that people are becoming confused about what does and what doesn’t consitute Liverpool.

There is no doubt in my mind that Kirkby like Speke is an overspill of Liverpool and therefore should be classed as a suburb of the city. Ormskirk, or Widnes or the Wirral are not in the equation becuase they are not culturally or historically linked to the city whereas Kirkby is, and used to be part of Liverpool until the boundary changes.

It's got nothing to do with postcodes; For instance I would object to a new stadium being sited in Wirral for example, even though they could probably find a site that’s even closer to the city centr than GP, there’s lots of Evertonians living there, and I’d save £2.80 on tunnel fares!

And as for infrastructure, I take it you’ve never been on the M58?

David
I wouldnt be overwhelmed with Speke either but as Gavin said at least it has the Transport and infrastructure.

I think any sensible businessman would not want to relocate out of the City right now.

It’s a trend that is being reversed the world over andparticularly for sports stadia.

All over America sports stadia are reputedly being relocated back to City centres which IMO makes a lot of sense for 2 reasons.

!. Moving shedloads of people once or twice a fortnight cannot and will not justify setting up transport just for that.

2. Most of your support is going to come from the more densely populated areas and the infrastructure is already in place in those places to handle large groups of people.

To sum up my view Liverpool is geared up to handle over 1 million people while Kirkby has an infrastructure that is not sufficient for its 40000 residents.

Now I understand Tesco wanting a presence where it is not currently represented but who the hell else would it make commercial sense to build something for 40000 people once a fortnight and why would anyone want to enjoy corporate facilities in a cowshed in the middle of nowhere.

Once you understand these questions you will see this project is not for EFC’s benefit it is for KMBC and Kenwrights buddies.

David, I was brought up in Skelmersdale and now live in Upholland so, yes, I guess I do know the M58; one of the least used motorways in the whole of the UK and the one I drive down coming to GP for the best part of the last 40 years.

Kirkby, before the overspill new town post-war housing, was no more than a village which grew in population from poor souls getting blitzed in the city — second only to London during the Second World War to suffer such heavy bombing.

Kirkby was only ever part of Liverpool on a map and will never have the infrastructure to cope with more than 40,000; it never has since the war so what’s to say it now will Tesco Terry and KMBC and BK? The same KMBC that are threatening capping capacity of DK to 40k as even they know the place can’t cope even with crush loaded trains and buses and exclusion zones for car parking.

The airport was used to show Speke is a recognised suburb with infrastructure and transport links able to support an airport; Kirkby lost it’s Northern League football team years ago, it couldn’t even support that.

Dean you seem to have fallen in to the trap set by Bill and Co.
Nobody (or very few) disputes the fact that Goodison is past its best.
What is very rarely mentioned is the fact that its Kirkby that is the problem, not moving.

If you listen to the quotes from the club, they all focussed on Goodison being tired and old and those in opposition to Kirkby were just against moving from Goodison. Ask around. This ain't the case.

Have to agree with TM on this, Plan B seems the better option. Why no investment? — Kirkby; everyone knows it and no-one at the club will admit it. If we go there we will have surrendered our status in the city completely to the RS — they know it and we know it. I agree with Brian Waring about a joint stadium — it’s the only financially viable answer if we can’t find the funds to re-develop GP. Andy is right, the focus from the Kirkby-spinners in the club is a negative one on GP, complaining that people are against moving, when in fact most of us accept that it is probably necessary.

Last word on the subject folks: Firstly I’m not exactly tap dancing at the thought of moving to Kirkby or anywhere else for that matter, if it was down to me, I’d CPO all the streets down to County Road and rebuild the ground on the footprint a la Old Trafford, but that aint gonna happen.

How about groundshare? That ticks a lot of boxes but unticks all lot too. But if our council could get its collective arse into gear we could have a world class stadium/complex, but you talk about infrastructure problems, Motorway 5 miles away, rail station 2 miles away.

Then we have Kirkby, you all have put up decent arguments about why we shouldn’t move to Kirkby; however, too many posters have given the reason of not wanting to relocate to Kirkby because we will give the RS a free run in the city, we’ll become woolybacks, etc etc — which, as far as I’m concerned, when the club is about to make the most important decision in the club’s history, is a playground argument.

Karl Masters, Tony Marsh, Jay Harris and Gavin all hit the nail for me on this - and the club have admitted that the redevelopment of GP would be the most likely Plan B... even after initially stating that there was no other alternative (and bullshitting about the rest of the Kirkby Project).

Steve Smith, I’d suggest reading through some of the reams of information on the debate before trying to formulate opinions on this — offensive as that may sound, simply getting people to reiterate the same arguments over and over is not productive in any debate.

Hmmm....... I wonder how those Spurs fans, Messrs Earl and Green, would feel if the present board of THFC had decided to build that club’s new stadium in, say, Potters Bar or Enfield?

David Hallwood,
Have you ever got the train to the match from the Wirral? Now its not that bad, all trains go to Sandhills, one train goes to Kirkby and don't forget both sets of fans will be boarding the same train. So Sunday and night games will be every half-hour — that's if you can get on, then it's on to the Wirral line, every half-hour. Then there's the Boxing Day match, no trains that day... any idea how we get to the match?

Marvellous haven’t read a good Kirkby "debate" for ages.

I love the assumption that these mongs who run us are sitting there thinking "I know let’s move to Kirkby as it will mean us going out of business with no one watching us anymore."

Shit, that Kenwright is playing a very long game having been on the board for 15 years and mortgaging his own house to buy Everton, waiting for the day he can fuck us all over.

All those who say I won’t go once we move to mKirkby. Bollocks! I support Everton FC not Goodison Park. We used to play at Anfield but when we moved we survived didn’t we?

Keith Richmond:

Funny you should mention that! Spurs spent a lot of time considering a move to Enfield around 3 years ago, before realising that it made far more sense to buy up property arond White Hart Lane and expand it.

That is now their plan. Most of the property is already in their hands, a stadium is designed with a gateway mini village as you arrive. This is similar to the approach to Universal Studios in LA where you can utilise shops, cinemas and other entertainment without ever entering the Studios Theme Park.

Any forward thinking Everton Chairman would have been thinking this way years ago, buying up the cheap ( no offence intended I must add ) property around Goodison with the intention of expanding the site. Instead, BK took the lazy option and let Tesco Terry do all the work with the inevitable consequence that we now have something that suits Tesco first and Everton second.

For a man in the entertainment industry BK appears to have very little idea about how the public wish to be entertained in the future. It will be very similar to the American models that incorporate easy access public transport. Sadly, although theeis a lot of space in Kirkby, it will be very hard to get there, even by car as although thee is a motorway close by, the roads off it are not designed to accomodate 20,000 cars in one go.

Karl you wrote " it will be very hard to get there, even by car as although thee is a motorway close by, the roads off it are not designed to accomodate 20,000 cars in one go"

and Goodison Park can revamped or not

David Hallwood,
You certainly seem to have got KEIOC’s stance regarding location all wrong. IMO Speke would be only marginally better than Kirkby, but still certainly not desirable as a stadium site. Anyone who visits the retail park there on a saturday will know only too well the regular grid-lock at any such location with so few lanes in and out and tiny edge of city public transport capacity. This is exacerbated severalfold with stadia where the transport dynamic is completely different to that of a retail park. Walton being only 2 miles from the city centre and ALL majot national and local transport hubs enjoys far greater public transport capacity than Kirkby. This capacity drops off exponentially with distance from the city centre. Liverpool city-centre has a transport capacity that can be measured in hundreds of thousands per hr, as demonstrated every rush hr. Kirkby struggles to empty a few hundred cars from its industrial estate every rush hr. Kirkby station (as wopuld be expected for any end-of-line station)only gets 4 trains per hr, Sandhills gets a train every 2 mins and serves ALL Northern line stations directly. Walton has multiple major arterial routes and the inner ring road converging on it from all directions, with bus routes from most Liverpool districts that can be used in both directions. Kirkby, being peripheral can never have this. The motorway argument is a red herring unless your an away supporter or one of our out of towners, there are no bus stops on the M57 which skirts around the population in anycase. The transport plan was shot to pieces and is in its umpteenth revision. Elstone only last week confessed that they hadn’t addressed the multiple transport issues yet..... (despite the fact that they sold this as the most accessible stadium in the country at the vote). The last transport strategy prompting Knowsley council to cover its arse with a capacity-capping clause.... after all, they wont be bothered once they’ve got their shops. As far as your last point, it may have escaped your attention but Goodison and Anfield have accomodated large crowds for over a century, and are tried and tested. Not perfect by any means, but by all measurements GP has one of the fastest dispersal rates of ALL major footy stadia. The Loop site would have been better again in this respect. Kirkby does not, and cannot even come remotely close otherwise rest assured the club/tesco would have force-fed us the content of their transport strategy long ago. Of course, that’s all before you even get into the issues of loss of identity, loss of heritage, or marginalisation of the club as an out of town, out of sight and out of mind entity. Heritage and identity are valuable assets however imponderable that value might be.... it is as important as the colour of our shirts and shouldn’t be dismissed as a minor detail we can sweep under a retail park carpet....

Can anyone tell me were the reduced capacity story of DK came from.Secondly does,nt that kill it off straight away , or are we led to believe that this move even with a capacity of 40.000 is progress and will get us back to our former status as a giant of english football, dont make me laugh.

In the news of the world today there is a piece on EFC and the Council regarding a fall out over Bellfield that resulted in Moyes snubbing the Council’s world cup bid as instructed by the club.

Looks like we really are cutting ourselves off from this city once and for all.

Robert, that ’story’ came from the documents produced at a public inquiry.
Chris, that ’story’ doesn’t match it’s value on paper. No one from KMBC was present and Knowsley wasn’t even mentioned in the bid. Moyes is quoted in the red Echo promoting the city’s bid, the city of Liverpool by the way.

Thanks andy.
By the way BK is using the embargo on building in certain areas to blame the council for us going to kirkby, its got nothing to do with that. Just another spin by the bullshitters.

It really beggars belief that there are still people out there who think DK is a good idea. The main reason for moving, we were told, was to raise additional funds for Moyes tansfer kitty. However, with the ever-increasing costs & the capacity restrictions due to be imposed by the council, together with the inevitable drop off in attendance as people realise how awful the transport arrangements are & start to cherry-pick their matches, the prospect of evennthe paltry few million forecast (up to £6 million p.a.!) is unlikely to be realised. This is why DK is such a ridiculous idea : it just doesn’t make good business sense.
Those who feel Kenwright only has Everton’s best interests at heart, although neither he nor the rest of the board have put a penny into the club, should bear in mind that were it not for Kenwright Everton would now be playing in a shiny new stadium on the "banks of the royal blue Mersey"! But maybe they’re right, after all if that were the case, it’s Everton’s new stadium that would be proposed as the venue for the World Cup (RS unlikely to be ready in time) & it may have been Everton that were bought out by these foreign bilionaires instead of Manchester City - so Kenwright’s saved us from all that, hurrah!

Chad, didn’t think it was offensive at all, because you are correct that I don’t know enough about Kirkby to really be justified with my thoughts.

The main reason I originally posted on this thread (although off the subject) was because the constant slagging off of our chairman on this site with simalarly weak arguments to my Kirkby knowledge, does wind me up.

People make mistakes running businesses, and I am not suggesting BK is perfect, but to call him every name under the sun and suggest there is some hidden agenda behind him is really a bit silly.





Since the premier league was formed our year on year net spend has been higher than Arsenals, and yet I believe most people on here would suggest Arsenal was a well run club (who also play Champions League each year).

Anyway, back to Kirkby, you say that reiterating the same arguments is counter productive, (I agree) but Chad could you please then tell me apart from ’moving away from the city into a cowshed in Kirkby’ what other real arguments do the anti=kirkby brigade have? This isn’t being offensive, I am just really keen to know, so I can make a balanced opinion.

Gavin

Yours were the first realistic objections to Kirkby I have seen for some time and are based on your personal experience to boot. I am no fan of Kirby... for me there are only two real choices that we should explore, one being the slow laborious process of giving the "Old Lady" the facelift she urgently wants. The second being exploring the Euro-money that could be available for a potential groundshare.

Lots of fans seem to be against this stating that only the bigger club stands out in shared stadia, however, why can’t that be us? We are on the up in the new order of things and the reds are virtually broke. Some belief would make a difference to our plight.

Andy Hegan, What trap have I fallen into? I do not support Kirkby, but I do support the idea of exploring the opportunities that may be on offer and finding the best possible course of action for EFC, not just for today but for the longer term. NSNO

Tom Hughes,
You’re missing my point, but firstly let’s clear up a couple of yours, 4 trains per hour going to Kirkby; I don’t know enough about Merseyrail timetables to agree or disagree, but take it from me if DK is ever built, they will put trains on every 10 mins on match days-even Merseyrail isn’t that incompetent. And as for the Speke vs. Kirkby, I was trying to point out that I feel the objections against DK are emotional as opposed to rational arguments and I was using Speke because it’s a mirror image of Kirky and has an identical historical development, but in the minds of the anti-DK, Speke is ‘Our City’ whereas Kirkby is foreign soil. They throw in ‘infrastructure’ as justification, instead of stating the with the real reason that are along the lines of “I don’t want to vacate our city and leave it to the RS” or “They’ll laugh at me at work call me a wooleyback and leave Tesco bags at my desk” Those statements may be true but is it justification to relocate or not to relocate to DK

And as for the infrastructure; yes it’s a concern but I cannot think of any stadium or major venue that copes adequately with 20k-40k people leaving at the same time, anyone that disagrees has obviously never been to Wembley (old or new) or a big concert or music festival. One poster mentioned the Kings Dock, obviously he‘s never been on Sefton Street at 5-6pm if he thinks the infrastructure could have handled the match traffic.

To conclude, I don’t want to go to DK, but I haven’t heard any other viable alternatives. To redevelop Goodison, would entail CPO 100’s of houses around the ground and possibly redirecting Walton Lane and I’ll remind you of the little old ladies of Kemlyn Road that hung out against the RS for years. Ground share would be more attractive and could be part of a giant entertainment and leisure complex, but there are more emotional objections against this than DK.

The proposal to build a stadium St Anne St/Scotland Rd aka The Loop — are you fucking serious! They would be inundated with objections and the enquiries would take years, plus talk about infrastructure — it only needs a lorry to break down in the new tunnel at peak hour and the traffic is bollixed for hours. The same is true for Walton Hall Park, in that there is that it is residential and there is a huge private housing estate adjacent, and they could keep the redevelopment project tied up in red tape for years if not decades.

Plan B

Lobby local, national & European bodies on the blindingly obvious merits (commerce, prestige, acceptability, affordability) of a Merseyside suoer stadium.

Bang EFC & LFC heads together urgently. Someone, somewhere, present an initial overview of the impact of one super stadium instead of two so-so stadia.

As I see it:

- Far better & easier deliverability
- Far superior naming rights
- Far superior development grants from all quarters
- Far more prestige for clubs and city
- far bigger crowds on average
- Far more secondary income from show-piece games, concerts, other events
- Less development cost to each club
- Less operational & management costs to each club
- Far better corporate and marketing appeal & income

As against:

- Myopic fans (would never share with Kopites zzzz)
- Myopic or scared board/CEO’s
- Lost opportunity for clubs and city

This should be plan A, the only sensible game in town.

Everton have no money or borrowing capacity to fund new Goodison. IMHO it would be a waste of money.

Kirkby has been shot down in flames by many. Some of us can actually see how & why Kenwright came to back it. But even we (or most of us) don’t want it.

I wonder how one might create a surge of support for a Merseyside super stadium. That’s what we need. End of.

Guys, Mike’s thread started off with something different and interesting for once on the ’beaten to death’ Kirkby debate: what is ’Plan B’? Perhaps inevitably the thread has once more become: why we all hate Plan A so much (and why it shows that Kenwright is a rogue who is only in it to line his own pockets etc. etc.).

So what is Plan B? The roots of the problem can of course be stated in one simple and very short word: money. (That of course is the major difference between Spurs and us. They would no doubt be contemplating Enfield too if that is all they could afford.)

I don’t think any informed person on Toffeeweb would dispute that we currently are in a very tight financial condition. One thing is transparently clear: there is no way in our current financial condition that we could afford to build a ground of our own in any location within the city boundaries. At the very most we can afford to borrow another £80-100M. This is not going to do it. That amount covers Kirkby because of a combination of almost certainly unrepeatable circumstances: Tesco; KMB; and an easy and relatively cheap build.

So there is no Plan B (under current ownership) which includes a new ground of our own in the city. We can stop wasting our breath on that, at least for the forseeable future. Kirkby has been selected mainly because it is what we can afford.

So what’s left? I see three possibilities.

1) Ground share. Obviously the sensible option, and could be affordable if (a) we were willing to take less than 50% (beggars can’t be choosers), and (b) we could secure lots of grants and enablers (not at all unfeasible for such an iconic stadium). However, it almost certainly won’t happen because LFC, understandably, prefer to build their own ground.

2) Revamp Goodison. Clearly, as Kenwright himself said, the only real other option. The arguments here have been done to death too. On the negative side it will cost little less if not more than Kirkby; won’t enable the same purpose built commercial facilities; won’t free up GP to at least get us some money back; won’t attract the same naming revenues; and is less likely to attract a richer new owner (or it would have already).

3) Sit and wait hopefully for the new richer owner anyway. This is probably the most intelligent Plan B. Not a lot of point starting on a major revamp of GP when a new owner may have enough money to move us elsewhere anyway. One way or another, the most important need is to get a new owner. Of course this option is very risky. If the new owner does not come along, we are in a slow but inevitable decline.

So to actually make this Kirkby thread about something a bit different for once: those who can’t stomach Plan A, which Plan B are you actually most in favour of?

Alan K: completely agree with your support for a groundshare. I just wish I could have any optimism about it.

The noises emanating from Anfield are once more that they are gearing up to try to put the money together. Shame the Government did not let RBS go bust.... that might have brought them to the table.

Even if Kirkby is knocked back and we go begging, I still think they will try to go it alone.

The big problem as I see it with a joint stadium would be the capacity of the stadium. Liverpool would not settle for a capacity of less than 80,000 and they would have no problem filling it. We on the other hand would only half fill it so who would fancy sitting in a stadium that is only half full? I don’t think many of us would. This point never seems to be brought up when the question of a joint stadium is aired and that is why I for one would be against it.

Steve Edwards

Afraid I have to disagree with both your suggestions. Why would Liverpool not settle for less than 80,000? they were considering a capacity of 60,000 for their own stadium. Where did you get the extra 20,000 from?

I would suggest a capacity of about 65 - 70,000. As for only half-filling it, what do you base that on?

We currently average around 35 - 36,000, and that’s with about 10,000 utterly shitty restricted view seats in a fairly dilapidated stadium. There is almost certainly SOME latent fan-base ou there that would come along to a brilliant new stadium with great views from everywhere.

I would confidently expect Everton to achieve gates of 45,000 for any game under these circumstances, and nearer 60,000 for big games. Such a new stadium would also attract new attendees from the corporate and neutral sectors. But this is based on a fabulous new stadium close to the city centre and with great access.

A Merseyside stadium is the best, and possibly the only way Everton will remain near the centre of Liverpool. We should be chasing this 24/7.

Neil P - your observations about the usual drone of Kirkby are spot on. It’s like people just can’t stop themselves from polluting any and every thread with their prejudice and intolerance. Total lack of respect for the article and for the interest of others, but hey, what’s new?

Alan Kirwan: McLoughlin was putting forth a pro-Kirkby argument, so the 'usual drone' was justified. If anyone has behaved with a total lack of respect for the article and interests of others — it is you.

I think we all know the alternatives : redevelop ; groundshare ; relocate. To debate the merits of each is probably a little superfluous for two reasons : firstly, it’s unlikely that the current structure will remain at Board level if DK is knocked back for whatever reason ; secondly, until the Board (presumably a new reconstituted Board) seriously explore the alternatives & tell us what their proposals are, we don’t know whether any particular proposal is in the best interests of the club. Most if not all would be driven by sentimentality to wish to see Goodison redeveloped, most of us can see the sense & potential benefit to the whole City of a shared staidum of the right spec., & we’ve already seen with King’s Dock how an attractive relocation proposal (unlike DK!) can draw a high level of support & enthusiasm - it all really depends on the details & how it would work for Everton’s long-term benefit as far as I’m concerned.

Steve Smith, I’m glad you’ve taken it the right way - and how it was intended - the Kirkby debate has often ended up in personal slanging matches. Some would put to this fact as a negative as it has divided the fan base... but then wouldn’t any move cause this? Well, from what I’ve read probably not. Many of those against Kirkby (myself included) are not against moving from Goodison Park, but what they find frustrated is that alternatives were not explored (search out Tom Hughes’s posts) - or at least dismissed.

I’m not going to try and list a neat summary here, as many people have tried in the past and frankly a bullet pointed view will not provide you with a well balanced opinon on one of the most important decisions that this club has faced since is creation. That may sound over the top, but I know that I am not alone in believing this.

There is of course a great deal of misinformation surrounding this topic. However, posts from the aforementioned Tom Hughes, Christine Foster and maybe have a read of this http://www.toffeeweb.com/season/08-09/comment/editorial/article.asp?submissionID=11353 from Joe Jennings - are all worth more than a cursory skim read. Look at the facts (where available), what we have been promised and told and what is now on offer.

As I said, I am against the move to Kirkby. My reasons are because I believed the project sounded disastrous before it was cut down and ended up at the public inquiry.

Good luck.

David O’K - I didn’t see all the usual drone as disrespectful so much as disappointing and utterly unhelpful. Here’s a thread that starts with ’what are the Plan Bs?’ and mostly then we get ’Let me tell you again why I think Plan A is so horrible...’.

Including ridiculous posts like ’why don’t we do what Spurs are doing?’ when the answer is screamingly obvious: because they have a lot more money than us.

I find it amazing after so long that so many posters seem to believe that we are going to Kirkby because - although we could obviously afford much better - we are doing it because Kenwright... well... because... (the argument kind of peters out at that point). Or moves to: we are moving to Kirkby to line Kenwright’s pockets. As if he would make more money from Kirkby than by building The Emirates on Stanley Park and then selling the club! (Or - if Kirkby is going to be such a catastrophe - selling up now.)

The reality is this. Kirkby is a major possibility for our club because it is all we can afford. If we could afford more, we would really do something different. It is really is more than past time now to get your heads around this.

Naughty, Neil Pearse, very naughty.

I did not say we should be doing what Spurs are doing.

I was merely pointing out what a focused Board with some sort of a plan could do once they realised moving out of their home city was not such a good idea.

I might add that to buy up 50 houses around Goodison at £100k each comes to £5m, which is considerably less than the Club have lavished on A VDM’s wages in 4 years ( actually about half of what he cost us with his transfer fee and all we got was ’that cross for Gosling’ and bad mouthing Moyes as he left ) With the School due for closure and the Scrap yard owned by the council, you can see that expanding the footprint would not have cost very much at all IF a plan had been in place..

So please don’t label my comments as ’ridiculous’. Expanding Goodison is still a Plan B, even though we are 15 years late. You can’t label everybody else’s comments as slanging and then wade in with that sort of nonsense can you?

My own personal view is that a shared stadium would be a win-win-win for both Clubs and the City. Speaking as an outsider I know that the city of Liverpool still needs as much positive publicity as it can get to offset the bad of the past. An iconic stadium would give that. It’s already very refreshing to see the Echo Arena being used for Davis Cup Tennis, BBC Sports Personailty etc. World Cup Semi Final would be a great thing to add.

Steve Edwards makes a very valid point about it being half empty for some games. I think that design is crucial here. First make all the seats by the pitch cheapest so they are always full and empty seats are as near the back as possible. Secondly if there was an upper tier ( like the one at Man Utd that is quite small in terms of row numbers and is less visible from pitchside up in the Gods under the roof ) we would keep it completely empty for the smaller games, but open it up for the sell out matches. That would give a flexibility between say a 50k or 60k capacity.

That should be Plan A now, with Goodison development as Plan B and Kirkby consigned to the history books as the ramblings of a madman! IMO :)

Steve,
Neil Pearse comes from the other end offering reasons as to why Kirkby should go ahead. He argues his points well if not blinkered - but this seems to be to counter the other "biased views". From memory though he did used to basically say that anybody opposed to DK was simply doing so because of location alone, and would then disappear or choose not to respond to more structured reasons against. I’m sure I’ll be corrected though if I got this wrong! In the mean time, here are a couple more interestesting recent threads:


http://toffeeweb.com/season/08-09/comment/editorial/article.asp?submissionID=7931


http://www.toffeeweb.com/season/09-10/comment/fan/article.asp?submissionID=12846

http://www.toffeeweb.com/club/kirkby/articles/
unfortunately http://www.toffeeweb.com/club/kirkby/articles/ has a database error.

And if we adopt Neil’s pragmatic approach of we have no money, then the answer is simple: We need an owner who has some money. Or failing that, somebody with some vision.

Villa have gradually updated Villa Park on 3 sides in the last 15 years with the fourth side being 32 years old and soon to be added to. It can be done with a proper business plan and patience. Like I said before, we have spunked enough money away on the likes of VDM to be able to save something for the stadium as well as the team.

I hope that Platini gets his way and that sensible limits on transfer fees and wages come in. That would free up the money needed for thngs like new stands even more quickly.

Neil P, eloquently argued again but I have to pick one major point out of your argument: Point 2 — gaining some money back from the sale of GP.

Unfortunately, this is highly unlikely to ever see the figures gained that have been quoted by the club for two reasons — the club valuation os far above the current valuation and the place is mortgaged so technically has significant debt, transferring that mortgage as was a counter claim to this many months ago seems another disingenuous belief if the club will already be seeking significant borrowing to achieve the £80m or so required for the DK build. The bottom has literally fallen out of the property market and, at the time of the failed original green light, the club admitted any delays would see the stadia build costs rise.

Karl, seems like we are in agreement on the shared stadium anyway. I would much prefer it to Kirkby. My support for Kirkby has always been that it is better than sitting where we are, and is more likely to get us the right kind of new owner.

Apologies for the ’ridiculous’ point re Spurs - I do get frustrated with arguments that seem to assume that we could afford more but that the owners / management are just being either stupid or corrupt (or both). I think lack of money is the major explanation of most of what happens regarding our stadium options and choices.

Plan Bs: redevelop or share.

In both cases, the obvious factor is financing either and I think we have to put our hands in our own pockets to help in this. Aye right, how can we do this?

I will refer to the Club Everton article I posted the day after the final, see
http://www.toffeeweb.com/season/08-09/comment/fan/article.asp?submissionID=12012. Well we now already have the beginnings of this in the Park End car park costing fans £1,500 a season each. In either of the Plan Bs above, this could be expanded upon with the facility on a much grander scale.

If we redevelop, it will have to be done on a staged basis, and I will refer to another Toffeewebers comments on my article by John Hughes that could have some legs:

Tony,

Glad to see the old grey matter is still working. Great Idea though!

But, like my idea from last year I think you are targeting too big of an audience. One thing I have learnt over the last 12 months from my own experiences is about the market we should be targeting for these ideas and what realistically we can achieve from the market we are targeting.

So, taking your very good Idea on board, I will use the following example to explain my idea and how this idea could become attractive to the club.

Firstly, I love the Club Everton Idea. I had to buy a Club Wembley seat for the final last week. (My fault — not enough credits... but hey!) I will use a variant of the Club Wembley model for this idea.

Basically we want to help the club. We want to help the club become richer and more attractive to investment. We want better facilities and we want better players. But we won’t get 150,000 supporters putting £2k in each to help us achieve it.

My idea is based around redevelopment rather than owning or building a new stadium. It will cost the club nothing but will generate circa £5m per year in revenue for the club with one stand redevelopment. This means pure profit to EFC.

The example is to create a Club Everton Membership. This membership will be modelled on the Club Wembley facility. Membership will be limited to 2000.

Using Trevor Skempton’s main stand redevelopment idea but moving away from corporate boxes, I propose that a “Plaza” type facility be installed underneath the Top Balcony overhang. The “Plaza” would have a restaurant, café and bars with seating arrangements. And would have a glass façade and would open out onto a pitch view, with the “Club Everton Member” seats just below.
The rest of the main stand would be constant all the way to pitch level so this would mean the removal of the existing corporate boxes and the family enclosure joining the main stand seating. The roof would of course be reconstructed and all stanchions removed.

Having looked at the original cost estimates and taking into consideration the current financial climate, I would put the price for redevelopment of the Main Stand at around £15M (I think this is way too much for what I am suggesting but it’s better to use worst case).

So we have 2000 available memberships. They would vary in price. But what do you get from being a member? Most of the fans who replied to my original post said they would part with their money for it but wanted something in return. This would require buy-in from the Club.

I think memberships should include: all league home games; all home cup matches, both domestic and European; and priority allocation for Cup Final tickets! This way, you are getting something tangible in return.

So Prices and how do you guarantee £5M per season for the club from one stand redevelopment?

Firstly I should say that this won’t be £5M from year one. It has to be planned and over the course of three seasons to profit to the club could be in Year 1 £1M, Year 2: £2.5M, Year 3: £5M extra in the transfer kitty.

Tickets could be Club Everton Executive with a 300 membership limit. Prices would be £10,000 per season with all benefits as above plus pre-match meal and access to a VIP bar at end of match to meet and greet players etc.

Club Everton Members (1,700) would have the benefit of use of the Club Everton Plaza before and after the match and all the (ticket) benefits as mentioned above. Prices would be £2,500 per season and leather seats with arm rests and cup holders. Plenty of leg room and best views in the house!

What does this mean price-wise and value-for-money-wise?

Club Everton Executive seats will cost £10,000 per season; based on an average season you could expect 25 home games based on the new Europa League format and domestic cup games. This equates to £400 per seat per game. Including ticket benefits and pre-match meals!

Club Everton membership will cost £2,500 per season. This equates to £100 per seat per game, including ticket benefits.

The revenue generated from such a scheme would be £7.25M per season in seat sales alone. This does not include catering and merchandise sales on the Club Everton Plaza. Based on this figure and having a realistic repayment plan in place, the scheme would pay for itself in three seasons. (@£5M per year).

This whole scheme could be applied to all sides of the stadium and they will fund themselves in the same way. Obviously, the Park End and Street End would yield less membership opportunities but would still be a feasible option, especially if they were redeveloped in line with the Bullens Road to create a Club Everton Tier. Obvious considerations to doing this would be the benefits on offer and how attractive they are. With one stand, it’s not so bad and manageable. With four there would be allocation problems and the benefits diluted.

Why could this option work?

Because of whom it would be marketed at. Wealthier Evertonians and businesses that could afford the prices and want the bit of “exclusivity”. It is a reachable, viable, sustainable target to achieve. It would probably cost less to achieve than my estimate, meaning greater return on investment and sooner.

It would generate more (extra) income per season than Destination Kirkby without the level of debt, meaning more money to invest in the team!

It would maintain the history and tradition of Goodison Park as an innovative and spectacular place to watch football!

My question would be: Are there 300 people/businesses out there willing to pay £10k per season to watch Everton? (considering the prices for the existing exec boxes are £45k per season and they don’t get ticket privileges(?)) And are there 1699 people/businesses out there willing to pay £2,500 per season?

I think this is a much easier market to get money from. As the basis of an idea, I think it combines what I originally wanted to do with the idea Tony has had — but on a smaller more sustainable, deliverable and achievable scale.

What you have to do here is look at the value-for-money element to the supporter or business. Not the £10,000 cost of a seat for a season but that the seat cost £400 per game and you are guaranteed tickets to all home games and a pre-match meal at all home games and then entrance to the VIP bar at the end of the game. If you had a chance of doing that and considering the marquee is £100-odd, would you do club Everton instead?

Neil, I wasn’t have a pop at you, so don’t be so sensitive.

For the record the reasons why so many are against DK on business reasons alone has been made again and again. So I won’t drone on and upset Kirwan, but I will call you on your belief that DK will help the club get new owners.

DK has insurmountable transport problems, will only add an extra £6 million pound a year to turnover if full, and has limited revenue streams (no concerts allowed). Not exactly going to get that billionaire, is it?

However, Neil, I have no wish to drone on as going through the same points again and again to an intelligent, stubborn and arrogant sod such as yourself; it is pointless. You have no consideration for any other viewpoint except your own and that has remained the same despite the failings of DK becoming apparent during the past two years.

When the facts change, your opinion has to change. Your opinion that DK = new owner is based on nothing but your own intuition. Forgive me for saying this Neil, but I don’t have much faith in your intuition considering that you still support DK in spite of the facts that have come out in the past two years.

David Hallwood......With respect, I don’t think you could be further from the reality in comparing transport/Infrastructure at DK, Walton and the Loop, because quite frankly there isn’t a comparison.
"let’s clear up a couple of yours, 4 trains per hour going to Kirkby; I don’t know enough about Merseyrail timetables to agree or disagree, but take it from me if DK is ever built, they will put trains on every 10 mins on match days-even Merseyrail isn’t that incompetent."

I don’t have to take anything from you..... as you have stated you seem to be very unfamiliar with Liverpool’s transport network, and logistics of stadia in general. The transport plan that was exposed at the public inquiry stated clearly that there can be no provision for additional trains due to the ensuing congestion caused in the rest of the system..... but even if what you suggested was possible this would still be far less (max, 6 trains per hr) than the capacity already available at Sandhills (24 trains per hr) and/or Kirkdale (16 per hr), with direct routes to all Northern line stations available too. The best case calcs for DK include crush-loading of trains and holding pens for fans outside the station and waiting times of 90mins to clear the minimum numbers required to meet public transport requirements. None of this occurs at GP.

"......as for the Speke vs. Kirkby, I was trying to point out that I feel the objections against DK are emotional as opposed to rational arguments and I was using Speke because it’s a mirror image of Kirky and has an identical historical development, but in the minds of the anti-DK, Speke is ‘Our City’ whereas Kirkby is foreign soil. They throw in ‘infrastructure’ as justification, instead of stating the with the real reason that are along the lines of “I don’t want to vacate our city and leave it to the RS” or “They’ll laugh at me at work call me a wooleyback and leave Tesco bags at my desk” Those statements may be true but is it justification to relocate or not to relocate to DK"

No, actually that is your perception of KEIOC or the anti-DK brigade, and again it is totally unsubstantiated as the objections are far from based on emotion only. Generally most would agree that Speke is equally undesirable for obviuos reasons, despite the fact that it has both Northern Line and mainline stations/track nearby, with main arterial routes also closeby. However, suffice to say that the issue of leaving the centre-ground to your main competitor is generally considered business suicide, and could greatly alter the perception of the club forever...... this isn’t the trivial issue you try to depict, but perhaps the far more serious one of branding that adds value to any product not least the tribal-image concious football club.

"And as for the infrastructure; yes it’s a concern but I cannot think of any stadium or major venue that copes adequately with 20k-40k people leaving at the same time, anyone that disagrees has obviously never been to Wembley (old or new) or a big concert or music festival. One poster mentioned the Kings Dock, obviously he‘s never been on Sefton Street at 5-6pm if he thinks the infrastructure could have handled the match traffic."

I think you can take it as read that we have all been to many stadia, but if you can’t think of any that can cope, I’m wondering how many you have visited. Transport is more than a little concern........ this is the starting point of any major development, and out-of-town goes against all modern stadium planning philosophy. You can’t just trivialise it and say it will do. City centre stadia generally disperse their crowds very fast (Ever been to Newcastle for instance), as they can utilise massive public transport, that is why most new stadia worldwide are being located downtown or very close to it to access mass transit in all directions (This can never happen at DK as the vast majority will be travelling in the same direction as opposed to all directions at the more central sites). Your Sefton street analogy seems to miss the glaring fact that well over 100,000 people enter/leave the city centre every rush hr with realtive ease, with capacity for more than double the existing useage. Not to mention the numerous mass events that take place down there avery year.... therefore a stadium of 50-55k would hardly even dent that. On the otherhand Kirkby’s absolute maximum public transport capacity is less than 5% of the city centre, yet you conclude that this is of no consequence. If you followed the public inquiry you will have noticed that the club could not even contend the issues raised by KEIOC...... No-one waits 90 mins for a train or bus to get away from GP, and they certainly wouldn’t have to from the Loop site.

"To conclude, I don’t want to go to DK, but I haven’t heard any other viable alternatives. To redevelop Goodison, would entail CPO 100’s of houses around the ground and possibly redirecting Walton Lane and I’ll remind you of the little old ladies of Kemlyn Road that hung out against the RS for years. "

Again this peddling of the same old misinformation..... No-one has said there would be a need for 100’s of CPO’s except Wyness, and we all know where his serial falsehoods got him. There are at least 2 different schemes that show just 10-15 houses being required to greatly increase footprint to generate equivalent capacity. The Kemlyn road comparison also ignores the fact that the same club have since been granted permission to knock several whole streets down and build on a listed Victorian Park. In otherwords planning guidelines have changed massively since the 70’s. Also, the city planning office has already stated categorically that they would be receptive to plans for expansion on several occasions, and as the houses around Goodison are the cheapest surrounding any stadium in the UK, this should not be prohibitive.

"The proposal to build a stadium St Anne St/Scotland Rd aka The Loop — are you fucking serious! They would be inundated with objections and the enquiries would take years, plus talk about infrastructure — it only needs a lorry to break down in the new tunnel at peak hour and the traffic is bollixed for hours."

Yes, this was a very serious suggestion with full backing from the council and city planners and HOK, the world’s leading stadium designers. As far as objections, there is only a tiny population adjacent to this site nowadays (my old parish), and the nearest buildings on Juvenal street are all currently being knocked down or have been already. However, I think it is you who has missed the main point. The city centre site would require far fewer people to use their cars since all Merseysiders have access to direct services to it with National and regional train and coach services also close by. In comparison only a tiny percentage have direct services to Kirkby, with none at all from the Wirral (approx 1/3rd of all Evertonians), and whole other districts in South Liverpool and Sefton with none. In your broken down lorry scenario you also forget that there are numerous major routes around Scotland road that offer access to that site for the remaining car users. On the North side alone there is Netherfield Rd, Great Homer street, Great Howard Street, Vauxhall Rd, Everton Rd, Islington, Leeds Street etc.... try your same scenario at DK where only 2 dual carriageways access the site from the Liverpool side of the M57. The east Lancs is already at or near capacity at certain times of the day, and was shown to be totally incapable of accomodating the extra load. Unlike the Loop site and Walton, only a handfull of traffic lanes actually pierce the motorway onto the proposed site from the main conurbation and highest concentration of matchgoing blues..... what if a lorry breaks down on there or on the roundabout under the M57 itself. No-one would be able to enter the site. Put it this way, GP doesn’t require ANY park and ride scheme to get people in and out effectively. DK has been modelled and has been shown to require the biggest park and ride scheme in the country to work, and no-one has yet been able to demonstrate its viability. This isn’t indicative of the most accessible stadium in the country, but precisely the opposite.

I don’t often agree with Alan Kirwin but in the real world a shared stadium is the only way for Everton, the shite & Liverpool City to move forward.

Hear, hear Mr Kirwin...

Another meeting of minds... unforntunately, I think it’s pretty certain that Kirkby will get the green light.

Great stuff Tom Hughes.

Just a couple of points: Who pays the police bill for when the two sets of supporters are travelling on the same trains to Kirkby because we will need a lot of them?

At Wembley Way, there were hundreds of police, I saw a couple of incidents and if the police were not there I would not like to think what would have happend.

Where are all these people who want to buy a club? EXCLUSIVITY! No-one was allowed because of the exclusivity with Tesco. BK keeps mentioning investment but at no time has he mentioned a BUYER for the club.

Still wondering how I'm getting to Kirkby on a Boxing Day. Public transport is non-existent on that day.

Neil

One other thing: If DK will bring a change of ownership, that will not count for a lot if we are stuck in Kirkby with massive problems in just attending the match.

I wouldn’t care if Everton were owned by the Sultan of Brunei who had told the world that he had seen a vision stating he had to spend his entire wealth on buying players for Everton FC if I had to wait 90 minutes in the rain to be crushloaded into atrain after every game. Or faced a 40 minute walk in sub zero January temperatures just to get to my car before waiting another hour in traffic just to get on to the M57.

Or maybe you hope that we go to DK, we get a new owner and they say, "Fuck me! We have spent millions on new players, got into the CL, but our stadium in never full and the local council insist we leave 10,000 seats empty every game because this stadium is in totally the wrong location! I know, let’s build another one, closer to the City centre, nearer or fanbase and with 10 times better public transport links!!!" Not very likely is it?

Currently, we have a good location, not perfect but good. Stadium needs work. Go to Kirkby and we’ll have a poor location and from what I can see a stadium that will have the same capacity and of little character and no tradition. And being near LFC is an asset. Nobody will ever forget that way about the history and the traditional rivalry.

Location, location, location.

David Hallwood,

If I am getting this right you are asking why everyone is against moving and basically think it’s because we’re surrendering the city to the red shite and that Kirkby is out side of Liverpool?

Well I’m not sure if anyone else has said it this way but here’s my two bobs worth.

80% of the fans who voted on the Kings Dock stadium Voted to MOVE. 40(odd)% of the fans who bothered to vote Voted on Moving to Kirkby. Now lies damn lies and statistics removed that means we can reasonably assume 60% of the Everton Fans do not want to move to Kirkby.

Now I would hazard a guess that those 60% all voted to move to the kings dock. The difference between the Stadiums apart from Location. Kings Dock would have been a truly world class arena capable of expansion and holding concerts exhibitions etc. It would also have been on every post card and photograph produced of the world famous Liverpool sky line giving unrivalled exposure. Yes it would have been slap bang in the middle of the city too but that wasn’t the reason for moving.

Kirkby is wrong not just because of its location. Yes location is a major issue but the quality is also a major issue. The potential profit generated from the stadium is nowhere near significant enough to justify the level of investment required. The stadium is of standard design with minimal quality out fitting. The traffic infrastructure will never exist meaning that capacity will be less than Goodison as it is now.

These are just some of the reasons why Kirkby isn’t the best option. Just because it’s the only option doesn’t mean it is the best. If it has nothing to be compared too then how do you know it is the best?

If you tell me that the new Kirkby stadium will be worth £150m when it’s finished then I’ll say who the fuck is going to buy it? It’s too big for our egg chasing cousins. None of the other football teams would buy it, why would they? So if we move and build in Kirkby we would have spent close to or over £100m, we would negate any profit due (which incidentally is calculated on the assumption of 50k attendance every home game and with the current transport infrastructure we will only be allowed to have a 40k capacity meaning one stand would be empty every week), we would have increased interest payments and we would be over £170m in debt in debt (cos the debt we have now won’t just go away when we move) and we will have a worthless stadium.

In a nutshell David we will be fucked. Hope that gives you a good enough reason to not move to Kirkby?

Is there a date set for the decison to be announced yet? Anybody know?

I’ve just tried to read all of the above but it became a bit of a blur as to who said what, and I think that all I want to say is that the biggest legacy of this whole situation, (whichever way it goes) will be in the way it has split the fan base and had fellow Evertonians arguing with each other over the rights and wrongs of it - not just on this site, on most internet sites and in pubs galore.

I think those who have confessed to "not really knowing all the facts" need to do a bit of reading about all the arguments back and forth, but focussing particularly on the "facts" that were presented by the club at the time of the ballot - i.e. in the original brochure and via interviews, press articles and the club’s own website. Then compare this to the scheme that is actually now being proposed, as discussed at the hearing and see which things match - I think you will find that lots of things have changed substantially, and not for the better.

I have to say that although I applaud the efforts that have been (and are being) made by KEOIC, and I am in total agreement with them, I honestly think this thread indicates that their choice of name really didn’t do them any favours, as it implies that the location is actually the main factor, and opens them up to accusations of being Luddites, "it’s only x miles, used to part of Liverpool" etc. etc. when the location is in fact only one of the reasons that this is such a bad idea for the future of the club. My own opinion is that there are actually SO many aspects of this proposal that are wrong, that it has made it difficult to consistently reference all of them in one concise argument - and that has actually benefitted the supporters of the move.

It’s sad to see Evertonians bickering over it all - that will be the biggest legacy I fear.

Pablo- The bickering may end in November, but that depends upons the decision.