Is 60k even enough in the scale of our long term ambition to be the biggest club in the world?

 

Not gonna lie I think we'd struggle to sell out 60k. For Premier League games I think we might just about fill out the ground but for CL group games and other cup games there'd be so many empty seats. 

 

I think 50-55k would be ideal for us. 

Not gonna lie I think we'd struggle to sell out 60k. For Premier League games I think we might just about fill out the ground but for CL group games and other cup games there'd be so many empty seats.

I think 50-55k would be ideal for us.

Your bang on.

Your bang on.

 

I wouldn't want a situation like Man City where the entire Upper Tier is empty for Cup games. That would just be embarrassing.

I wouldn't want a situation like Man City where the entire Upper Tier is empty for Cup games. That would just be embarrassing.

Yeah I agree its nice when we sell out for cup games. Out our prices we will never sell out a league game week in week out with a 60.000 seater

loads of clubs have had their stadiums re built and capacity expanded whilst still playing there! Bristol city are completely re building 3 of 4 stands and re designing the entrances for larger crowds etc and all the houses etc arent affected and also haven't moved also wolves did it to name but two, ok smaller scale but I'm certain SB could be made 50k-60k+refurbed and not need to play elsewhere!

Edited November 16, 201411 yr by Bigthrobberus

loads of clubs have had their stadiums re built and capacity expanded whilst still playing there! Bristol city are completely re building 3 of 4 stands and re designing the entrances for larger crowds etc and all the houses etc arent affected and also haven't moved also wolves did it to name but two, ok smaller scale but I'm certain SB could be made 50k-60k+refurbed and not need to play elsewhere!

Not a hope

Just not enough space having the bulldozers in and trying to play games and protect the match goers. Look at the history of the bridge development from say 95 to 2001 we always had a reduced capacity. It would just be a health and safety nightmare

To be honest, as long as real madrid and Barcelona are around, we will not be the biggest club in the world. I guess you could even add man utd to that list, but I think utd will become a less desirable club for many big players in the future as other clubs, including us, get bigger.

It would be amazing to increase the capacity to at least another 10,000-15,000, but it's looking a lot more unlikely. It is a shame as Stamford Bridge is Chelsea; it's our identity and the thought of moving to a brand new stadium is a slightly scary thought.

Edited November 17, 201411 yr by enigma

If we are going to spend a complete fortune staying at Stamford Bridge adding 20,000 should be the goal if at all possible.. 10 or 15 may not really be worth it ?

I just don't think we have the space in and around the stadium to make it a 60k odd stadium.

I'm not even sure 50 odd is achievable, there has been so much made of how hard it is going to be due to the tight space we have already and more exits for the fans leaving and entering the ground safely.

I still think we will need to move but hope we can sort something so we can stay where we are.

I think it is possible to make the bridge a bit bigger but from the clubs point of view they didnt see the point because of the money it would cost to only get in a few more seats (I know its more than a few).

I honestly think that if we stay at the bridge and they put more seats in, the price of tickets will jump up so the club can try and recover the cost.

Of course you can argue if we move that ticket prices would rise but I think they will go up more if we stay and put more seats in than if we started again in a different location.

we are not going to move, we are going to redevelop the bridge, c.p.o own the naming rights to chelsea football club and the only places they were in favour of moving to, were battersea and earls court and them birdies have flown,, so we will have to see how many they can squeeze into the bridge there is loads of space, if they knock down the hotels and buy some of the property at the back of the old shed wall,  i don't think we would have trouble selling 60,000 seats, west ham sold out today in less than 3 hours minus season tickets.

we are not going to move, we are going to redevelop the bridge, c.p.o own the naming rights to chelsea football club and the only places they were in favour of moving to, were battersea and earls court and them birdies have flown,, so we will have to see how many they can squeeze into the bridge there is loads of space, if they knock down the hotels and buy some of the property at the back of the old shed wall,  i don't think we would have trouble selling 60,000 seats, west ham sold out today in less than 3 hours minus season tickets.

 

It's not just about seats though surely. In this day and age the stadium has to provide a better matchday experience. I don't know if that's actually possible on the current plot and if there is enough egress points actually possible.

 

It would be great to stay at the current site but I think the option to move has to be on the table, possibly even beyond the 3 mile limit that was previously suggested.

we  can move it just won't be in west london, and definitely not within 3 miles, maybe south west. you would be looking at croydon or ruislip!

we are not going to move, we are going to redevelop the bridge, c.p.o own the naming rights to chelsea football club and the only places they were in favour of moving to, were battersea and earls court and them birdies have flown,, so we will have to see how many they can squeeze into the bridge there is loads of space, if they knock down the hotels and buy some of the property at the back of the old shed wall, i don't think we would have trouble selling 60,000 seats, west ham sold out today in less than 3 hours minus season tickets.

Its more to do with the exits all going out onto the one road

i don't see why the council won't let us build a walk way out into the cemetery loads of people walk thru it anyway.

Edited November 17, 201411 yr by croydonblue

i don't see why the council won't let us build a walk way out into the cemetery loads of people walk thru it anyway.

Because the council are c**ts. Bates tried it from the mh stand to Lillie road and they didn't budge

http://cfctruth.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/planning-bridge-of-size.html

http://cfctruth.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/planning-bridge-of-size.html

Could be exciting times on and off the pitch

Couldn't care less if we do or don't tbh

i don't see why the council won't let us build a walk way out into the cemetery loads of people walk thru it anyway.

 

First of all they would have to build a massive structure to cross the Overground railway lines. Also the entire perimeter of the west side of the cemetery is made up of catacombs which house hundreds of bodies dating back hundreds of years. Then you're straight into the burial ground.

 

With the best will in the world the sudden influx of thousands of fans into a cemetery is a non starter, especially for night games. Not to be too coarse but you would have to relocate graves which is never going to happen.

 

The best solution is one mentioned already, a walk way from the rear of the North Stand to West Brompton Station. 

 

Knock down the gym and I'd reckon you could redevelop the North Stand to accommodate a few more thousand fans.

i also think that parts of the graveyard are grade 2 listed.

 

First of all they would have to build a massive structure to cross the Overground railway lines. Also the entire perimeter of the west side of the cemetery is made up of catacombs which house hundreds of bodies dating back hundreds of years. Then you're straight into the burial ground.

 

With the best will in the world the sudden influx of thousands of fans into a cemetery is a non starter, especially for night games. Not to be too coarse but you would have to relocate graves which is never going to happen.

 

The best solution is one mentioned already, a walk way from the rear of the North Stand to West Brompton Station. 

 

Knock down the gym and I'd reckon you could redevelop the North Stand to accommodate a few more thousand fans.

I also think parts of the graveyard are grade 2 listed.

we  can move it just won't be in west london, and definitely not within 3 miles, maybe south west. you would be looking at croydon or ruislip!

Ruislip would suit me fine on a selfish level.....it's just 3 miles away. It is in no way south west London though. The other major drawback is there are no available sites in that area.

Be interesting if we had to go through a graveyard to get to games, esespecially after the time we had to go through An allotment and dug up celery to throw. Could be fun.....

old man's corpse, old man's corpse, if she don't cum I'll tickle her bum with a load of old men's corpse....

Intriguing Stamford Bridge Development article (longish) from the Independent:

There is nothing much remarkable about Estadio Jose Alvalade in Lisbon where Chelsea will play their Champions League game on Tuesday night. Opened a year before Euro 2004, it was built next to the site of Sporting Lisbons former stadium, named after their early 20th century founder. In the inaugural game, a friendly against Manchester United in 2003, a teenage Cristiano Ronaldo so flummoxed John OShea that Sir Alex Ferguson joked in his book years later that the Irishman developed a migraine. Another detail that Chelseas officials will find impossible to ignore is that it is bigger than Stamford Bridge.

Bigger by no small margin either. The home of Sporting Lisbon, with a capacity of 50,095 just gets into the top 50 of European football stadiums. It should be said that there are only three English clubs teams usually included in the different versions of that list Old Trafford, the Emirates and St James Park but the Bridge, with a 41,837 capacity, further reduced for Champions League nights, is not even close.

Everyone at the club knows that the stadium question goes right to the heart of Chelseas future. In order that they can comply with Uefa Financial Fair Play, and remain competitive, Chelsea need a stadium that holds between 55,000 and 60,000. In June, the club signalled that it was going back to Plan A, solving the intractable problem of squeezing a bigger stadium out of the 13 acres of the Stamford Bridge site. It is the clubs one and only home in its 109-year-old history and understandably a sacred place for supporters.

It was this change of direction that led the club to approach the RFU about using Twickenham for one season while their own stadium was rebuilt. The home of English rugby union is less than eight miles to the west of Stamford Bridge, it has a capacity larger than Old Trafford and almost double that of Chelseas ground. It is not ideal these things rarely are. But put it this way, it is not in the same league as moving to Milton Keynes.

Leaving aside the problems of expanding Stamford Bridge for a minute and goodness knows, you could fill pages with those obstacles the temporary Twickenham option feels like the first innovative resolution for a long time in the clubs stadium debate. It is not only a home in crowded west London, where land prices are among the highest on the planet. It also gives Chelsea a whole new set of possibilities.

Relocation to a temporary home is usually something to be stoically endured for the long-term good but watching elite-level football in a modern 80,000-capacity stadium as well-appointed as Twickenham, would not be an onerous task. It could prove quite a thrill for Chelsea, too. As house-swaps go, it would be the equivalent of getting the keys to a Beverley Hills mansion with pool and tennis courts.

Cue the jokes about whether Chelsea would have the fans to fill Twickenham in the event of a temporary relocation. In reality, it would be quite incredible if they did even just once. It would be a challenge for any English club, United included, to sell out an 80,000 all-seater for around 25 games a season, especially in light of recent police figures which revealed true attendances at Old Trafford and the Emirates to be well below capacity.

Nevertheless, a big stadium is not a reason to deter Chelsea. Instead it represents a challenge. Like all the top clubs, they are fond of those spurious surveys that project the millions of followers a club has around the globe. Could Chelsea make their numbers translate into bums on seats? Could they be more flexible about pricing?
There will naturally be the protests from the people who live around the stadium, and sympathy is due given that Twickenham does not have a Tube station on its doorstep. The local authority, Richmond council, said on Monday that it was "not happy" about the proposal. Ultimately, however, Richmond admits that the final decision will be down to the RFU. Unlike the relationship between Wembley and Brent council, Richmond does not have the power to limit Twickenham events, which currently number between 20 and 25 a season, between August and May.

The RFU has rejected partnerships with football in the past, including the offer of a part in the 2018 Fifa World Cup bid. The reaction to Chelseas approach has been open-minded and there is an RFU board meeting in which the matter will be discussed. The idea of Chelsea using Twickenham was first raised in 1997, when the Ken Bates regime redeveloped the Shed End and while the initial response was favourable, it went no further.
Any potential relocation to Twickenham would be contingent on a plan which made redeveloping Stamford Bridge viable, although it is a sign of the clubs belief that expansion is better than relocation that they have approached the RFU. That said, the problems of increasing the capacity of Stamford Bridge are huge.

In one analysis of increasing the size of the Matthew Harding Stand it was calculated that the new seats would be a distance of 150m from the action, or a pitch and a halfs length away. The cost of adding just a few thousand to the capacity could work out at around £20,000 a seat, according to a recent club study. The water table is too high. They would have to build out and over the train-lines to the north and east of the stadium. The list goes on.

In the June announcement, the club said it would embark upon a public consultation on the surrounding land and the "necessary" infrastructure required "to ensure a successful and feasible redevelopment" of the stadium. That was tacit acknowledgment that the forlorn hunt to acquire an alternative site, most notably the Lillie Bridge site north of the Earls Court exhibition centre and Battersea Power Station, was over.

If the club are to compete long-term with the European elite they will certainly need a bigger stadium than the likes of Sporting Lisbon and they will have to build it in a city which is regularly cited as the most expensive on earth. Roman Abramovich cannot conjure a new patch of land in west London, but he can build a stadium infrastructure cost is FFP-exempt although whether he would fund that himself remains to be seen.

The 2015 World Cup would make the 2016-2017 season the earliest that Chelsea could relocate to Twickenham. In the politically fraught, financially punishing world of stadium planning and building, a year away would be the least of their worries. In fact, Twickenham would be one of the more exciting parts. But either way, staying at Stamford Bridge, in its current size, is the one option Chelsea cannot consider.

Edited December 7, 201411 yr by Carshalton Blue