KenH wrote:Yes, mistakes were made with the Sainsbury money. It should have been a golden legacy but with ground planning mistakes (i.e. late changes to incorporate boxes), poor decisions, i.e. the gym, artificial pitches, bar, etc which never brought in the promised/expected revenue, poor marketing generally across the club, and the overspends on the stadium, due partly to steel price rises, etc., we ended up back in debt virtually straight away.
Then with losses of £250/£500k/£750k per year, that money had to be financed from somewhere, which is why the peripheral land plots were sold off and why we had to take on more debts/loans. The community block and artificial pitches were siphoned off into a different company so that loans could be obtained secured against them, which the club didn't pay the repayments, hence why we lost them.
It all comes back to bad decisions/bad management when the ground was built unfortunately which led to the club having to sell off whatever assets it could, just to pay wages/loan repayments, etc.
We're lucky we still have a club really.
Can't argue with that....
However as in life hindsight is a wonderful thing and I doubt many at the time even considered we'd be in the position we now find ourselves in.
So many wrong decisions about the stadium but for me the positioning of the community block and gym was ridiculous with very little thought given i would wager at the time about future development along that side (now the Berlin Wall) that would hinder viewing by spectators in a stand that could have been built sometime in the future.
At the time the majority looked at the Mazuma and felt good about watching football in a purpose built stadium BUT years on we now see it's limitations in view of future development and the lack of design by it's architects at the time.
A real mixed bag of designs with little if any thought gone into its overall appearance in terms of consistency in its visual approach. It's as if each stand was designed by seperate individuals and brought together in a hotch pot of thinking.
However many clubs would take what we have and be grateful.....