Just watched the Walker interview on the Aston Villa website. Gets asked the question 'what do you think of the training facilities here?". Walkers response is "Well I can tell you they are a lot different to QPR's!". Anyway this got me thinking on how there is still so much to be done/improved at our club if we are going to become a sustainable Premiership club.
Now with our owners I really think it is time to start improving the club as a whole to help us grow and attract better players. One of the first steps to do this definately to get a new state of the art training ground with a youth Academy to help us attract some of the better youngsters around. At the moment am I right in saying we play on rented land next to Heathrow airport with limited facilities? If we get to the Prem surely this is something we have to look at sorting out. When the snow hit the other week, most premiership teams have indoor centres or heated training pitches, our boys were forced to train on the snow! Not exactly ideal.
The next big thing I think we need to do to help build the club is a new stadium. People keep on saying 'we don't even sellout Loftus Road', well if you look at most games this year...the home end has almost been sold out every week with just the away fans keeping the attendance down. Ideally we would need a 28-30k seater stadium which I think in big games next year/when we get to the premiership we would have no problem filling. As much as I love Loftus Road it is beginning to hold us back...for example we aren't getting much money in from hospitality that newer grounds benefit from. Also there is of course the extra revenue that would be generated from more people going through the turnstiles. I just think this is something we should be looking at now, not any further down the line. We could be playing Premiership football in 6 months time and as a club we are no way ready for it.
I suppose it all comes down the ambitions of the owners and their long term plans.
Now with our owners I really think it is time to start improving the club as a whole to help us grow and attract better players. One of the first steps to do this definately to get a new state of the art training ground with a youth Academy to help us attract some of the better youngsters around. At the moment am I right in saying we play on rented land next to Heathrow airport with limited facilities? If we get to the Prem surely this is something we have to look at sorting out. When the snow hit the other week, most premiership teams have indoor centres or heated training pitches, our boys were forced to train on the snow! Not exactly ideal.
The next big thing I think we need to do to help build the club is a new stadium. People keep on saying 'we don't even sellout Loftus Road', well if you look at most games this year...the home end has almost been sold out every week with just the away fans keeping the attendance down. Ideally we would need a 28-30k seater stadium which I think in big games next year/when we get to the premiership we would have no problem filling. As much as I love Loftus Road it is beginning to hold us back...for example we aren't getting much money in from hospitality that newer grounds benefit from. Also there is of course the extra revenue that would be generated from more people going through the turnstiles. I just think this is something we should be looking at now, not any further down the line. We could be playing Premiership football in 6 months time and as a club we are no way ready for it.
I suppose it all comes down the ambitions of the owners and their long term plans.
Its true though. Even though you'd expect theirs to better-just highlights how bad ours is!
NPower Champions 2010/2011
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