Olympic Stadium row nears conclusion

I turn my back for five minutes and what happens? The whole bloody football world goes crazy, that’s what happens.

In the short break since the last CBM post, football has dominated headlines on both the front and back pages of the nation’s newspapers, and it’s clear that much has changed in our sometimes beautiful game. 

Firstly Andy Gray and Richard Keys have been found to be not just irritatingly smug, but also sexist and embarrassingly childish; the British transfer record has been broken not once, but twice - with Andy Carroll’s move to Liverpool proving that half a good season earns you a place in the top 10 costliest footballers in world football history; and Manchester United are no longer the invincibles in waiting, merely the not-that-great-but-slightly-better-than-the-others.

West Ham's new home?

Some things remain exactly the same though: West Ham are still bottom of the league, are still turning in wildly erratic performances and are seemingly still playing Birmingham City every single week. The row over who gets the Olympic Stadium, Spurs or West Ham, is also continuing to rage on.

The Olympic Stadium saga is a curious case: I am yet to meet a fan of either Tottenham or West Ham who cares passionately about their club moving to the site in Stratford. Most, if not all Tottenham fans seem to be dogged in their determination not to move from White Hart Lane, and Hammers fans are indifferent at best. As far as the fans are concerned, there is no groundswell of support for taking over the stadium from either faction and it appears the voices of the very people expected to take their seats in the stadium at Stratford are the very voices being ignored.

Whilst I don’t feel strongly about upping sticks from Upton Park and moving down the road to Stratford, I find it hard to believe that spending five years and half a billion pounds building a stadium only for it to then be completely knocked down to construct another shortly after - as Spurs are proposing - is a good use of either anyone’s time or money. 

Spurs’ main criticism of the West Ham bid is that the club plans to retain the running track, and the distance that puts between the fans and the pitch will mean extremely poor views for all those in the stands. This is a red herring in my view. 

Firstly, there are hundreds of stadiums across the world that use running tracks, including the homes of Roma/Lazio and Hertha Berlin - big clubs in big, modern European cities. Secondly, what has it got to do with Spurs if West Ham fans can’t see the pitch very well? Seriously, it’s nice of them to care but I really don’t think it’s anything to do with them. And lastly, having watched West Ham struggle in dire circumstances over the last two years, a seat where I can’t quite see just how appalling the team is playing actually sounds pretty good to me.

There is also the issue of geography: should Tottenham be allowed to move into West Ham’s home borough of Newham? Well, the short answer is no, but the long answer is that Newham is not even West Ham’s heartland of support anymore. Fans now travel to the games mainly from Barking and Dagenham and beyond, right out to the Essex coast. The same is true of Tottenham, who draw their support from far further a field  than the surrounding areas of White Hart Lane.

But if anyone is to lay claim to the site as being on their patch, then surely it is West Ham. Tottenham would be moving seven miles away from their current location, and West Ham just three. Tottenham would be crossing borough boundaries, and West Ham would still be in Newham and actually have the local council as partners for their bid. I’m struggling to see any justifiable reason why Tottenham should be awarded the stadium site over West Ham. That is not to say that they won’t get it of course.

But which of the two teams need a new stadium more? There can be no argument that White Hart Lane’s 36,000 capacity is simply insufficient for their level of support - particularly with the club now in the Champions League. Whether the club move to Stratford or manage to finance their own stadium rebuild, they’ll need to find a way of increasing match day revenue if they are to become an established top four club.

With West Ham, the evidence is a little weaker. The club does not sell out every week, and therefore there is an argument that suggests there is no need to move to a 60,000 capacity stadium. But attendances at Upton Park suffer because of the extortionate ticket prices. Should the club be successful in its bid, and make good on its promises to offer more opportunities to local children and young people, ticket prices could be lowered to an acceptable level and therefore more attractive to fans - particularly families. This is something West Ham have vowed to do as part of the bidding process, but it’s likely to be an approach that needs some hard selling to convince the decision makers at Olympic Park Legacy Company.

With the delayed decision rumoured to be made this week, it’s likely to be a very tense few days for both clubs. My own personal view is that a Premier League football club cannot be allowed to move into the home borough of another, and dismantle a publicly funded stadium to build their own. Whether I want the stadium or even think it is a good move for the club is immaterial: if it is a shoot out between West Ham and Tottenham only, it is right that the stadium is awarded to West Ham. If I was a Spurs fan, or it was West Ham looking to relocate to Haringey, I hope I would feel exactly the same way too.