At the end of a ridiculously protracted process, Tottenham fans will be buoyed to hear that planning permission has been granted for their new stadium.
The Guardian confirms:
At a meeting that began at 7pm on Wednesday and ran through to 12.29am on Thursday morning, Tottenham were given the green light to press ahead.
What Totter’s new stadium will look like Photograph: Tottenham Hotspur FC/PA
There had been much debate and red tape over the proposed move as the logistics were sorted out and certain local shop owners bludgeoned with money.
But now they have the go ahead it signals a new dawn for the club.
Tottenham plan to start the 2018/19 season in their new home which is being built right next to the current stadium, White Hart Lane, and will house 61,000 fans – which is rather conveniently one thousand more than Arsenal’s Emirates stadium can hold.
But, like Arsenal, Tottenham fans may find that the club needs to tighten its belt for a few years, in terms of player acquisitions, while the hugely expensive new stadium is built – it will cost around £400m.
But, when completed, Tottenham will be competing on an altogether different level – as their fierce rivals have discovered with their new stadium off Holloway Road.
Arsenal have bought two A-list stars – Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Ozil – over the last few years as revenues rise and the club has become a far more attractive prospect to football stars from around the world.
Tottenham may suffer in the short term. But if they want to compete with the best, this move is vital.
SP
Dec 18, 2015 at 3:49 am
The capacity may be ‘conveniently 1000 more than the Emirates’ – it is also tailored to comply with NFL requirements. I strongly suspect that the latter was more important in designing the stadium. What do you think?
Like Arsenal, Spurs fans ‘might’ have to tighten the financial belt when it comes to player purchases. There again, the many commentators and opposition fans, especially Arsenal fans, who seem to be clinging to this, may be surprised to find that this may not be the problem they are expecting it to be. For a start, Daniel Levy has examined the Emirates build, and other stadia, specifically to avoid the pitfalls that befell Arsenal. Far more of the financing is likely to be raised by sponsorship, etc (one of the big attractions of the NFL deal, for instance) and less on bank loans, as the Emirates was. He has said, time and again, that the financing of player trading will be kept wholly separate to the stadium build. And lets not forget, Spurs have been operating (and improving) without net spend for some time now. Even more importantly, what is being seen with the youth system at Spurs has been built from decisions taken by Daniel Levy in 2005, And unlike Arseanal, whose youth production peaked and began to decline again before the stadium was completed and paid for, exacerbating the need to make big purchases to keep ground with the leaders, what has been seen so far, with the likes of Harry Kane, is just the tip of the iceberg.
So, lack of money to spend on squad building may not be the problem for Spurs that so many think it will be, and the squad is likely to improve anyway, firstly because it is a young squad that will improve with experience, and secondly, because there is a good (very good, IMHO) possibility that the youth set-up will continue to improve to supply players for the 1st team squad (and maybe in greater volume and quality).
Not worried.