My mother used to stand on the Gwaldys Street in the 60s and 70s and my Dad has a season ticket in the Upper Bullens, so I am not someone who doesn't have a feel for the club. I also have a few koppite mates, and I love the banter around Derby day and it can even get a little bitter at times. It doesn't stop us being mates though. Ground share for me ? and end up with a better stadium than the Mancs! :-)

My main concern is, with the current ineptitude of our board, we will find ourselves crying poverty every year; they, being more business/devious minded, would offer for us to rent off them, our board would take it, 5 years later they would turf us out. This is my main fear, we would get shunted out of it, once all the building costs are cared for.

For them it is nothing new, they have been using our ground for over 100 years. Plus I would rather not share anything with their fans, it is bad enough sharing the same city.

A shared stadium is not one of the options it is the ONLY option, if both clubs wish to keep up with the super clubs (and remember it wasn?t so long ago that we were part of the big 5 ? nothing stays the same). KEIOC had a great plan to have a football village but the cost was seen as prohibitive, but it just needs someone with a bit of vision and balls to try to push it through. What we don?t need is the ?I?m not sitting on a RS seat? mentality dragging it back.

Should a buyer, or buyers come in for us, they would look at the option of developing the ground, surely.

There is almost nothing I would like more than for us to play at a truly state of the art stadium, but I'm not sure I?d want it at any cost, and ultimately with the inevitable loss of big proportion of our identity. The 2 clubs are completely separate entities, and make no mistake, they have thrived on their separate and strong identities too, it?s not something in the small print nor a mere minor detail of the relationship we have with our club.

However imponderable, it?s as real as the blue shirt on the player?s backs..... this IMO cannot by definition be rationalised into one stadium, although it?s open to debate. I?m also sure people on here have been going the match over a wide range of periods, and therefore their feelings for GP may also vary from quite indifferent, to complete reverence.

But please remember "Sharing" has NEVER worked anywhere in this country. For it even to be theoretically viable on a basic business level alone, it requires complete parity. Neither club should be seen as the other?s superior, otherwise the other will eventually be seen as the poor lodger who never fills the place (as we surely would be in a superstadia designed to meet LFC?s greater capacity needs), but how can long term parity be guaranteed? How do you maintain that, and why would anyone want to?

By the nature of competition, we aspire to be better than the other, meaning the equilibrium that supports the whole relationship is false and cannot and should not be sustained! Can anyone really argue that we?d enter this alliance on anything like an equal basis? In practical and strategic terms, even if funding brings down our contribution to a manageable level (which is highly debateable alone), who will have benefitted most....?

LFC getting a stadium they couldn?t afford otherwise, that allows them to average 30-40k more than us and leave us forever in their wake, or Everton who get a stadium they can rarely fill, but who may be left with equal running costs, when in actual fact they probably only needed a few thousand more seats and boxes in the first place?

I started going the match regularly in the mid-70?s, LFC were winning everything in sight, the only thing that reaffirmed my dad?s assertions that we were a great club was the single biggest and permanent representation of our identity, and that was our home. For me it has always been a major part of the whole match-going experience. During those years of low achievement, set against their unprecedented and overwhelming success, god knows how many of the "floating vote" of my generation defected to the other side. How many more might have found it so much easier to attend on the alternate weekend when the red shirted successful ones ran out on our "common ground" if we had shared then.

The separate grounds helped define the clubs.... Would we still be getting 30 odd thousand every week now? Diluting our identity in this way could be irreversible, and the ensuing loss of identity (that real and valuable asset) can only ever be detrimental. There have been times in our history when that has been all we could hang on to, so we should n?t be so dismissive, nor keen to surrender it.

Alternately, you could argue that this could be the only way to one day grow into a superstadium, but my feelings are that LFC would probably be out of sight by then, aided by our compliance.

People often refer to Milan as the bench-mark. Personally I find it hard to discern between the Milan clubs, they blend together in my eyes. The backdrop, magnificent as it is, fading not strengthening their distinct identities. They have also had 50 years to get used to the arrangement, and yet still both clubs and fans yearn for their own stadia (with plans drawn for an new Inter stadium), and you don?t have to look too far to see abject failure, and even complete collapse with similar Italian co-existence.

Juventus/Torino have jumped at the opportunity to separate, regardless of cost. Even to the extent that Juve are now building a new smaller stadium inside the demolished and comparatively young stadio del alpi, regarded as one of the best stadiums in the world at Italia 90. While Torino have gratefully occupied the aging communale. Similarly with the Rome pair, who both have plans to leave the Olympico in the future.

Probably the most comparable shared-stadium might be the Munich situation where 1860's move to the Alianz arena has been pretty much disastrous, with Bayern having to eventually buy 1860 out of the shared ownership, only reinforcing their difference in status not aleviating it. Maybe our city can redefine the shared stadium strategy, but I think that's akin to chasing perpetual motion?

Therefore, IMO you can ready yourselves for choruses of "bring back my Goodison to me" a la Charlton as soon as the novelty has worn off, or even worse the fate that befell Wimbledon who saw the obvious economic benefits of renting as too attractive to resist. Similarly for us, there may be no going back!!!

Emotional? Subjective? Maybe!

But please consider your stance on this carefully, and if you?re ever lucky enough to have an anfield derby ticket, take a good look around their place next time pre KO, and tell me your stomach isn?t churning at the dark and slightly unfamiliar surroundings, try explaining to yourself that it?s only valueless emotions causing your unease, then for a moment close your eyes and try to imagine you?re in GP. I am sure then you?ll instantly live that old adage....... there?s no place like home (warts and all). Emotions might not come with pound signs on them, but sometimes their value is almost priceless!