After our review of the most productive movements towards a new fully square terrain, here are 10 that do not paint exactly as expected.
By Niall McVeigh for The Set Pieces
In the first part, we tested 10 successful stadium movements in the era of new construction. Now it’s time to dig into 10 re-locations that didn’t go so well. All those moves weren’t all kinds of disasters, but all the teams. They found difficulties along the way. Some have lost their identity, others have suffered financially. For others, the challenge is not the new stadium, but what happened on the field.
Opening: 1997 Capacity: 49,000
Close your eyes and believe in this Football Saturday update: Chris Kamara is at the back of a partially empty stadium. The house team has a 3-0 record with part of an hour of play, and enthusiasts are heading for the exit. What land is Kammy in? Many of you may have believed in the Stadium of Light, where Sunderland lost 47 league games during a slow five-year slide to the third level, but that was not the case.
Sunderland’s first league match at his new home was a time when the department beat Manchester City. The following season, they roared in promotion and pursued European football under Peter Reid. The ancient Rokermen replaced their nickname with Black Cats, but kept their identity in a plot built on the former Monkwearmouth coal mine, and the name of a miner’s lamp.
In 2000, with the team established as the first part of the Premier League, the capacity of the court was more than 49,000, hosting matches in England and pop concerts. However, the team was unable to maintain speed and, like the red seats faded in the sun, it has become inextricably connected to the team’s downfall.
Opening: 1997 Capacity: 33,597
Also opened in 1997, the specially built Derthrough box was founded in the style of Middlesbrough’s Riverside Stadium. It was the first new football stadium to open through the Queen, the structure is still under construction on the big day, which led Prince Philip to ask developers if they had been paid. The festival’s first attack on the ground, unlike Wimbledon, was deserted after an electrical failure.
In fact, things took a step forward from there, with Derby completing in the first part of the Premier League in his first two seasons off the baseball field. England played in Mexico against a crowd sold out there in 2001, but when Derby relegated to the following year, Pride Park became a valuable asset. Amid a debt spiral, Derby sold the land to a Panama-based conglomerate, renting it for 1 million pounds a year.
Derby regained his home in 2006, in time for the club to return to the Premier League; however, their high-level crusade was an absolute disaster, and the Rams have been bogged down ever since despite really extensive investments. history took another turn when the EFL accused the club of violating monetary regulations after the sale of the stadium to the club’s owner, Mel Morris.
Opening: 2001 Capacity: 12,500
Oxford United’s ruinous Manor Ground has been in conflict with the city’s dream arrows, but it was the setting for the club’s golden age in the mid-1980s, culminating in the good fortune of the Milk Cup in 1986. He began the search for a new four-seater painting to maintain his second place, which sent the club on a turn that took two decades to overcome.
Plans for a new plot were first announced in 1995, but remained intact for five years before a new owner, Firoz Kassam, resumed work on the structure. With only 3 sides completed, the painting opened in 2001 with Oxford in the Fourth Division. After wasting thirteen of his first 17 games, they asked the Bishop of Oxford to carry out an exorcism.
Divine intervention did not come and 20 years after winning a primary, Oxford left the league. Since their return in 2010, they have been slowly rebuilt, losing promotion to the Championship with a loss in the last of the play-offs last season. Kassam Stadium is still missing its fourth grandstand; an infinite car park is one of the goals.
Opening: 2003 Capacity: 25,000
Darlington FC has spent most of their lives in the fourth Tier 20 football league, betting on the 8,000-seat field at Feethams. The club renovated their modest home when local businessman George Reynolds rushed to make Darlo his non-public vanity Reynolds has invested cash in a new four-seater stadium he has named in his honor, in reference to the team’s ticket price to the Premier League.
The notorious owner tried to bring Paul Gascoigne to the club and nearly signed Faustino Asprilla in 2002. Darlo’s first match at the stadium, opposite Kidderminster, attracted 11,600 fans, but the crowd temporarily shrank to about 10% of his capacity. here at an abrupt end in 2004 when he sent criminals for tax evasion, leaving the club connected to a massive stadium that may not be allowed.
Ultimately overwhelmed by Reynolds’ charge of madness, Darlington was expelled from the Conference in 2012 and had to start over in the ninth tier. They now play at the 3,000-seat Blackwell Meadows, while the arena houses Darlington Mowden Park, a roaring team. The stadium has a record attendance of 17,000 spectators, for an Elton John concert in 2008.
Opening: 2005 Capacity: 32,609
The relative disappointments of Derby and Sunderland are negligible compared to one of the wonderful stadium nightmares of our time: in its golden age, Coventry City was a leading stalwart, won the FA Cup and turned Highfield Road into England’s main seating stadium. approached a new century, they wanted a new stadium to simply broaden their horizons.
Coventry’s plans were ambitious: a 45,000-seat multipurpose site billed as a possible new national stadium. At the time of its opening in 2005, Coventry in the department at the time and plans had been radically redesigned. A naming rights agreement with Jaguar failed. and financial hardship forced the club to rent its new home as part of a tangled ownership agreement.
Much worse to follow after the team entered Ligue 1 in 2012. Sisu, the club’s loathed hedge fund owners, led the club to management amid a small dispute with stadium operators that left Coventry locked up. , returned in 2014 but slipped into the fourth division, an unhappy shell of the club they once were.
Under Mark Robins, Coventry returned to the championship but lately is a tenant in the city of Birmingham, with Ricoh now owned by wasps on the side of the union roaring. The Sky Blues are now focusing on building a new field; is that they will play again at ricoh Arena.
Opening: 2006 Capacity: 60260
First of all, Emirates Stadium, a glass and metal crucible emerging from a rail crossing, is a great place, but moving to such a subtle new setting has taken arsenal a lot on and off the court. As former coach Arséne Wenger said: “We built a new stadium but left our souls in Highbury.
After the local council rejected plans to rebuild its beloved former land, the club travelled to north London in search of suitable land to build. This turned out to be the simplest part. While Wenger’s Invincibles were busy conquering everything in 2003-04, the resettlement charge slowly increases. The sponsors’ money injections helped keep the assignment on track, but the team inevitably felt the rush.
By the time the stadium opened in 2006, Arsenal had fallen into a monetary purgatory, with reduced wages and limited moving budgets. The Emirates was destined to take Arsenal to the next level; Instead, this led them to an era of under-performance. Frustration, without fervor, resused in the stands, culminating in the horrific Granit Xhaka incident a year ago. It remains to be noted whether Mikel Arteta can nevertheless make the Emirates a satisfied home. .
Opening: 2007 Capacity: 30,500
Earlier this month, AFC Wimbledon played its first match at its new Plow Lane stadium, ending a cycle that began with Taylor’s report and the original move from Wimbledon FC to Selhurst Park. shameful episodes in English football, uprooted 80 miles and renamed Milton Keynes Dons.
In 2000, Pete Winkelman’s Intra MK organization began looking for a Football League team for an unprecedented move to the American in the new town of Buckinghamshire. After a panel of three FA members controversially approved the move, the surprised Wimbledon enthusiasts shaped a phoenix club. . Winkelman has signed agreements with Asda and Ikea to fund a new stadium with the logo of a team that is simply not part of it.
MK Stadium opened in 2007, but the average audience was around 10,000 people, just a third of its capacity. The highest attendance recorded at the 2015 Rugby World Cup, when Fiji faced Uruguay. pyramid, joining MK Dons in Ligue 1. They are universally identified as the original Wimbledon team, and the delight of the Winkelman franchise has proven to be a failure.
Opening: 2009 Capacity: 33280
At first glance, there’s a lot to appreciate in Cardiff City’s new house. Built in front of the ruinous Ninian Park, helped catapult the club to the elite after a 50-year absence. The most sensitive part of the renovated Ninian Stand alludes to a darker period.
Red seat benches are one of the most recent visual reminders of Tan’s notorious attempt to replace Cardiff’s colors. It lasted only two full seasons, adding a tumultuous Premier League crusade that saw Tan boo his own team from his executive box. sense in 2015, however, the number of spectators decreased when the club returned to the championship and the most sensible of Ninian’s stands absolutely closed.
Neil Warnock returned the Bluebirds to maximum sense and brought enthusiasts through the gates, but there were other obstacles along the way. The home rugby team, Cardiff Blues, renounced its land-sharing agreement in 2012, while the stadium’s name rights remain. The field now houses a team with a red jersey, with Wales betting the most games at home on the spot.
Open: 2016 Capacity: 60,000
In February 2011, Olympic Park Legacy Company adopted a resolution with seismic ramifications. Eighteen months before the start of the 2012 Games, the resolution was taken that West Ham, rather than Tottenham, would gain advantages from a rental at the Olympic Stadium, guaranteed through a discounted deal. Nearly a decade later, it’s transparent who won that day.
West Ham’s deceptions at the renowned London Stadium have raised the bar for complicated locations. The club’s resolve to avoid the race track, rather than rebuilding the stadium as planned by the Spurs, did not pay off. The lines of sight were concentrated on the track, or at least on the giant burgundy carpet covering it, with managers traveling several meters from one canoe to another.
The retractable seating sections, connected to the main stands via clumsy walkways, do nothing to create an atmosphere that changes between unhappiness and feverish The stadium saw fights between enthusiastic rivals and invasions of protest camps, which were made imaginable due to the lack of security on the day of training. The concept of relegation and football game league in this huge white elephant is unthinkable.
The stadium had so many moments of joy in 2012 and then hosted elite athletes, whether rugby codes and major leagues; However, West Ham enthusiasts barely had to applaud: leaving their beloved Upton Park was a painful experience.
Expected capacity: 36000
From an Everton-Liverpool shared field to Chelsea’s transfer to battersea power station, some relocation concepts are doomed to failure. In 2007, amid an era of good fortune fueled by reckless overspending, Portsmouth announced its goal of leaving Fratton Park for a floating gold stadium next to the city’s naval base.
Herzog
This turned out to be educational when the club suffered a money drop in 2009. At one point Pompey was forced to share with Havant
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