YorksHammer wrote:It was an absolute disaster of a plan from day one
Here's a riddle: when is an absolute disaster of a plan from day one an absolute triumph of a plan from day one?
The answer is when an absolute disaster of a plan from day one is the only way to ensure that Spurs don't move to Stratford, either as sole tenants or groundsharing with us in a stadium built for the Olympics with football in mind.
You have to take one step back and see the big picture. For the long-term future of West Ham, the idiots Tessa Jowell and Seb Coe were the best thing that ever happened to us. If more sensible people had been in charge, Spurs wouldn't be building a 61,559 seat stadium in north London right now. They'd be ensconced one tube stop away from West Ham station, in Stratford, either with us or without us.
That's the real tragedy. And its materialisation has been avoided. We should celebrate that.
However perverse it may seem, the stadium foul-up saved West Ham's future.
The board needs to do two things to turn this imperfect migration into a total dream one.
Sustain the team in the league during the next nine years until the lapse of the sell-on clause and second, use the supreme lure of the location and a gap-filled 70,000 capacity to strike a deal with the world's top sovereign wealth fund, ie someone with more roubles then Warren Buffett.
Do that, and a little while later, the team will match any in Europe and the stadium will be transformed. Either incrementally, ie two stands rebuilt closer in to make a proper football stadium, freeing up land on the east side for the additional corporate hospitality that will be needed for the more stellar team on the pitch, or start again from scratch.
When Walter Messi - ohr Stephen Cleese - is scoring the tie's winning goal for us in the Champions League semi-final, in our steaming, passionate cauldron of a touchline-hugging intimate and intense 80,000 seat freeheld home stadium, the memory of these painful early years will fade into pure nothingness, and it will seem absurd, quite asburd, to have considered for even one more moment persisting with the notion that we ought to have stayed at the Boleyn Ground.
Always keep your eyes open when you dream, and may they may come true.