warleywoods

Chris You can check out Celtic's recent second half of the season form in the previous post. http://www.thebeachend.net/2015/01/10/can-aberdeen-win-the-title/

Update after yesterday's win on whether we can win the league. http://www.thebeachend.net/2015/01/11/beach-end-title-update/

Can Aberdeen win the title? http://www.thebeachend.net/2015/01/10/can-aberdeen-win-the-title/

Good to see you as well Tom! Can you argue with anything that's said though. I mean to get to the situation he was in last night, arguing with Councillors in the street this far down the line is simply unbelievable and completely wrecks his credibility. He is blaming everyone but himself. It is on his watch that Pittodrie has been crumbling for 15 years. His strategy has failed. Aberdeen FC cannot afford for him to have another bite at the cherry. He has to go.

The strategy to move Aberdeen FC away from Pittodrie has been one that Stewart Milne has been following since he became Chairman in 1998. He failed with the Bellfield site and his site at Loirston is now unravelling because he has failed to build consensus on the matter. The decision last night was a cross party decision and indicates that whatever Milne was trying to push through lacked the support of a group of Councillors who would ordinarily be making political capital out of a situation such as this. To make what on the face of it is a deeply unpopular decision to the Aberdeen public along cross party lines demonstrates to me that Milne either hadn't lined up all of his ducks or whatever he was proposing wasn't thought through or that his advisors got it wrong. I am sorry, but to be in the position they were in last night, this far down the line with the amount of money the Club has spent on the move is totally and utterly untenable and unbelievable. Milne is a failure. He has overseen the most unsuccessful period in our post war history, he has run down our stadium to the point supposedly that it can't host a junior football fixture (although I see the rugby is coming to town again as are Scotland in the New Year) and attendances (despite the best efforts of the fans for Sell Out Saturday) are the worst in 40 years. None of those things can be blamed on the Council. The best thing for Aberdeen FC is for Milne to go. Simply put, he has failed. He needs to put the club up for sale or at least enable a fan led buyout of the club. At least the fans then are in control of our destiny.

I am sure many of you have been following Alex Thomson's blog on Channel 4. Some of you may think he is an imposter (I happen to think he is raising some interesting points about the media in Scotland generally and Rangers in particular) but I thought his blog on whether there are any wider lessons to be learned from the lack of scrutiny that we impose on those who run our football clubs is something Aberdeen fans need to take note of. http://blogs.channel4.com/alex-thomsons-view/rangers-heart-live/1258 Some of you may be aware that I am very concerned by the proposed move to Loirston Loch. I know many others are and I know many others have accepted that its going to happen and let's make the best of it. I'm not one of them. I don't accept that Pittodrie is an unviable option. If you look at the masterplan for the proposed redevelopment of Pittodrie it obviously includes the land opposite the Main Stand and that to the southeast of the South Stand. Could that land not have been redeveloped to help fund a redevelopment of Pittodrie. Of course it wouldn't have raised the same funds, only a fraction of the total land value with Pittodrie included, but there are no fundamental planning or transport reasons why alternative uses couldn't have been found for these plots that would have brought income to the Club. We have never seen the report that states that redeveloping Pittodrie is unviable. If the evidence of that report is so compelling then why don't the Board share it with the fans. All they have released is a piece of fluff from CBRE that says Pittodrie is unviable. Given the events of the last few months at Rangers, Scottish football and its future revenue streams are very uncertain at the moment. Whether Rangers FC are in the SPL or Division 3 next year the next 10 years in Scottish football are going to be very different to the last 10 years. That may be of great benefit to AFC but whether Scottish football can sustain a £38m new stadium in the current Scottish football climate and the wider economic climate is another matter. The Board therefore need a Plan B and the support should be putting pressure on them to do so. And the Scottish media should be asking more questions of Stewart Milne. He is singularly the most unsuccessful Chairman we have had post-war. Our average league placing during his reign and lack of trophies is testament to that. If you want you can join me to look at this in more depth at: http://www.facebook.com/#!/StopLoirston I'll be posting over time some of the proposals and evidence that the Club has or hasn't produced. Twitter as well: https://twitter.com/#!/stoploirston I don't expect everyone to agree, in fact more may disagree than agree but questions need to be asked of the man who has taken Aberdeen backwards and stands to make a lot of money from the redevelopment of Pittodrie. That is a conflict of interest even Craig Whyte would struggle with.

You might be interested to read the view of Stewart Milne in the 2002 Aberdeen FC Annual Accounts when talking about the possibility of Celtic and Rangers leaving the SPL as a result of the then proposed restructure. If that does happen, Aberdeen, along with the other clubs outwith the Old Firm, will be looking to form a new league with a new voting structure which Rangers and Celtic will be invited to join. If they choose to decline this invitation there is little doubt that, in the short term, there will be a reduction in revenues from broadcasting and sponsorship due to their absence. However, it is my firm belief that within a short period, a Scottish league, in which a number of clubs will be capable of winning the championship, will become extremely attractive to television companies and business organisations alike. You can check it out at the following location, page 4: http://www.afc.co.uk/staticFiles/53/e5/0,,10284~58707,00.pdf Time to act on your belief then Stewart!

You might be interested to read the view of Stewart Milne in the 2002 Aberdeen FC accounts when talking about the possibility of Celtic and Rangers leaving the SPL as a result of the then proposed restructure. If that does happen, Aberdeen, along with the other clubs outwith the Old Firm, will be looking to form a new league with a new voting structure which Rangers and Celtic will be invited to join. If they choose to decline this invitation there is little doubt that, in the short term, there will be a reduction in revenues from broadcasting and sponsorship due to their absence. However, it is my firm belief that within a short period, a Scottish league, in which a number of clubs will be capable of winning the championship, will become extremely attractive to television companies and business organisations alike. You can check it out at the following location page 4: http://www.afc.co.uk/staticFiles/53/e5/0,,10284~58707,00.pdf Time to act on your words Stewart!

Where is the evidence that says the land is worth £30m? I am not an expert or even an amateur at land valuation but even back in 2007 the figures I was seeing were around the £20m mark. Time will tell I suppose how different the Aberdeen housing market is to that of the rest of the UK but the sort of deal that is going to be made is still likely to depend on some sort of leverage or loan and the banks aren't exactly throwing their money around at the moment. I am sure that many of the clubs in England that built a new stadium and went into administration did spend too much on transfer fees and players. However, many of them also had average attendances of 25-30k as well as TV cash that Aberdeen could only dream about. Too say the costs of building a new stadium were not a factor is facile. Anyhow, is one of the aims of the new stadium not to generate new cash for better and more highly paid players? What are the factors working against Aberdeen? Aberdeen's average attendance this season is less than 10k. From what I can see the business plan assumes around 14k. Whatever it ends up there is no evidence that suggests there is signifiant pent up demand that will come to Loirston and not to Pittodrie. The goings on at Rangers are creating a huge amount of uncertainty. Will there be an Old Firm in Scottish football in 5 years time? Possibly not and I certainly wouldn't bemoan it but I am not sure I would want to be moving into a spanking new stadium whilst that process is being played out. I am sorry, I just do not see that the proposed costs of the stadium relocation are realistically to be met given the current situation of Scottish football and Aberdeen FC.

Maverick Sheep has hit the nail on the head as afr as I am concerned. I am relatively new to this forum but have been an Aberdeen fan for 35 years and cannot believe the lack of scrutiny of the disastrous reign of Stewart Milne. The common thread to Aberdeen's worst spell in their history is Milne. Try as he might he cannot provide the vision or the ideas that will make Aberdeen a team that can at least compete with teams like Hearts and Dundee Utd let alone Celtic and Rangers. His long term strategy to leave Pittodrie has left us with a stadium that is not fit for purpose, a new stadium proposal that doesn't appear to have a credible business plan and increasingly looks like a white elephant even before a shovel has hit the ground (why does Milne thank Aberdeen can afford a £38m stadium when plenty of English sides with EPL TV money can't afford them without slipping into administration). To top that it looks like he is about to betray the Aberdeen support by letting Rangers off the hook. Aberdeen fans have nothing left to lose (like many other football fans in Scotland). They should be seeking a supporter led takeover to get Milne out and remain at Pittodrie. What have we got to lose? The alternative is a white elephant stadium that will bankrupt the club and Rangers continuing in their present form. Who will step in to save Aberdeen then? Or, the fans could take matters into our own hands and run the club ourselves. It will mean short term pain no doubt but we will be once again leading the way in Scotland as opposed to playing a game of catch up we can never win. The Trust should be leading on the criticism of Milne and the Board. However, the Club have cleverly given them a seat at the table to keep them quiet where they can discuss what colour the paint should be on the outside of the new stadium and what beers should be stocked in the bar. Does no-one see the strategy of the Board there? Events like Saturday should be the springboard to at least questioning the role of Milne in Aberdeen's recent sorry history. Are the fans up for it though? There are plenty of forums that seem to be dissatisfied, time to co-ordinate them and make their voice heard.

Fair point regarding St Johnstone and St Mirren. Whether you class the moves as a success I'm not sure. Too early to tell with St Mirren perhaps but St Johnstone have been at McDiarmid since 1989 and it hasn't fundamentally changed their fortunes. Perhaps they would have gone out of business if Muirton hadn't been bought out by ASDA. I don't know what average attendance level the business case at Loirston is based on, although the transport impact was based on 14,000, but I do know that our crowds are the worst in 40 years and that historically even when we were arguably one of the best teams in Europe our average league attendance was only around 17000. Is there a huge latent support that don't like coming to Pittodrie that will come to Loirston. The evidence of history would suggest otherwise. I also believe that the barriers to the move are increasing. The club has not assembled all the land at Loirston, the land value at Pittodrie may not meet the requirements of the business plan as well as the lending banks scrutinising the business plan a lot more closely than they used to. Tom - you obviously believe the move is the best thing for the club and I respect that view and if the move is successful please come back and remind me. I'll repeat my assertion though that if the report on the viability of Pittodrie is so compelling and damning then why not publish it or at least some extracts. My own view is that the club has not done it's research as well as it could and should have done and that the move is too risky, particularly at the present time when there is so much uncertainty around.

Tom, some good points. I accept that the examples of Clydebank and Airdrieonians might not be representative but the point I am trying to make is that no club in Scotland has relocated successfully. You use the example of Livingston as one of being success. Is a single League Cup win the right price to pay for a very shaky recent past and an uncertain future? The move Aberdeen are making should be about the next 50 years, not the next 5 or 10 years. I've used the examples in England and the USA to illustrate that mistakes have been made and that there is a mass of evidence out there on how to do it and how not to do it. I am not against the relocation of a stadium in principle as long as it does done for the right reasons, that the business case stacks up and that it results in a redeveloped stadium that the fans want, that they can get to as easily if not more easily than the present location and provides a long term sustainable base for the success of Aberdeen FC. I don't think Loirston ticks any of those boxes. The fact that Pittodrie is not fit for purpose is not a valid excuse for the wrong choice at Loirston. Whose fault is it that Pittodrie is crumbling? Milne has been in charge for the bext part of 15 years and on the Board for nearly 20 years. Should he/they have not been planning for incremental improvement to Pittodrie from then, just like all of the other major clubs in Scotland. They haven't because the agenda all along has been to move away. I simply do not accept that Pittodrie is too hemmed in to redevelop successfully. I have no doubt that the brief to the architects from Milne was to come to that conclusion. Has anyone ever seen the evidence for it? If that evidence is so compelling why does he not share it with us? One only has to look at Pittodrie in plan view to see that there is plenty of directions to expand to the north and east. Accepted it may involve some selective compulsory purchase and some co-operation from the City Council but there is certainly nothing insurmountable. Look at the constraints at places like Old Trafford, St Marys, The Hawthorns and Norwich and see how they compare to Pittodrie. I could commission a dozen architects tomorrow to come up with a 5 year masterplan that redeveloped Pittodrie at a price that would stack up better than the financial plan for Loirston. If I had the funds to do so I would. You might correctly ask why Milne doesn't do that. Because it doesn't appeal to his ego, his wish for a legacy, a monument to his reign. He is by nature a housebuilder, a redeveloper. He makes his money from building things. Do you not think he got where he did with a certain amount of ruthlessness. Look at the way he tried to cheat the City Council out of their rightful share of the land deal at Westhill. Why should we trust Stewart Milne anymore than David Murray. They both wanted success for their respective clubs, not for you and me and the fans but to satisfy their own egos. Why should Aberdeen be able to afford a £38m new stadium when numerous clubs with far higher revenue bases have found it difficult to fund such ventures. You mention that Liverpool is not a valid comparison. I think it is a valid comparison as there is no reason why their fans should feel any less or more passionate about their teams than Aberdeen fans do. They are getting involved to try and shape their respective club's future recognising that their strength lies in the community that has supported those clubs for 100+ years. I agree that the club needs better training and academy facilities. First of all, there is no reason why they need to be adjacent to the stadium. The majority of clubs throughout Britain don't have those facilities adjacent to their stadiums. Why have they therefore not been developed elsewhere in the last 15 years? Secondly, the funding for that is uncertain as I understand it is an additional cost to the £38m for the stadium so to use it as a justification for the move is a spurious one. You make a valid point that Aberdeen don't appear to have had any major financial issues in the last 10 years whilst there has been relative turmoil at many other clubs throughout Scotland, England and beyond. Unfortunately, if the club makes this move then there will be a significant financial fallout and Stewart Milne has stated that he does not want to be around for the long term. Who will deal with that financial fallout? I am not one for conspiracy theories and I don't think there is one here. I want a successful future for Aberdeen FC as much as you do. I also accept that something has to change. I just think that the direction Milne is taking us in is the wrong one and that the future of Scottish football is so uncertain at the moment that the Loirston move is too much of a risk, especially when one considers the evidence. The factors that affect Aberdeen are as much about the factors that affect Scottish football generally and until they are clarified than we should at least be putting this development on hold and developing a Plan B.

Appreciate that I am coming to this late but I am surprised that the opposition to moving from Pittodrie is not more organised and vocal, even at this stage of the proposed move. The proposed move would almost certainly see Aberdeen FC go into administration or at worst see the club liquidated. Look at the evidence. No club has ever successfully moved in Scotland. Of those that have, Airdrieonians, Clyde and Clydebank were liquidated and the other Livingston has been in administration more than once. No convincing case has been made to support the move whilst there is a huge amount of evidence that demonstrates that it is the wrong move, at the wrong time and in the wrong place. It needs to be stopped. The primary issue here is that football clubs like Aberdeen have built their support and the affinity of fans over a long period of time. That affinity is passed down through generation and generation. For many there is no other rationale for supporting Aberdeen other than the fact that it is Aberdeen FC and their home is Pittodrie. For many, moving to Loirston Loch will break that bond forever. Stewart Milne in his presentation to the planning committee claimed that the pull of Pittodrie was purely emotive and not based on facts. Of course it’s about emotion, that’s why we support Aberdeen FC. If it was about the facts we wouldn’t support the club. The business case does not stack up. There is plenty of evidence from England that demonstrates that moving to a new stadium is nothing other than ego driven financial recklessness. Doncaster, Southampton, Derby, Coventry, Oxford, Darlington, Leicester and Huddersfield Town have all been in administration since building a new stadium. That is despite many of those clubs earning tens of millions more than Aberdeen FC do from television. Those clubs couldn’t service the debt from a new stadium with far higher incomes and attendances, why is Aberdeen FC going to be any different when the stadium costs will be similar whilst our turnover is that of a League One side. Those clubs that have built new stadiums that haven’t been in administration have all had the backing of either very wealthy benefactors (Reading, Stoke City, Middlesbrough or Wigan) or have had substantial financial support from a local authority to build the stadium (Swansea, Manchester City). The report produced by CBRE in October 2010 outlining the rationale for the move acknowledges that no Business Case for a redevelopment of Pittodrie was ever undertaken due to the perceived disadvantages of the current site. The primary disadvantages seem to be that the site is constrained and would also not be able to accommodate ancillary facilities. There are plenty of examples of constrained sites being successfully redeveloped all over the UK and Europe as well as examples of successful stadiums that do not have ancillary facilities. I am convinced also that there are plenty of architects who could have produced a long term master plan for the redevelopment of Pittodrie that was both affordable and met UEFA requirements. The location is wrong. Research published in FC Business magazine last year demonstrates that the further a club moves from its original home, the less successful it is in terms of attendances and league position. Of those clubs that have relocated in England in the last 20 years only Manchester City and Middlesboro have won a trophy since moving. Arsenal has not won a trophy in the 6 years since they moved to the Emirates whilst Bolton Wanderers is £93bn in debt despite having enjoyed many years of huge TV revenues. The move by Aberdeen would in distance terms exceed the distance moved by many of those clubs substantially. Only a handful of clubs have moved further, Coventry City who are about to be relegated to League One after their move to their edge of town Ricoh Arena, Oxford United who were relegated to the Conference a year after administration after moving to their edge of town Kassam Stadium, Colchester United whose attendances have worsened after moving to their edge of town Weston Homes Community Stadium and (ahem) Manchester City who have spent more money than most clubs will spend in a lifetime for not very much in return. The recent experiences of many professional sports clubs in the United States should also be considered. During the last 10 years many multi-purpose venues in edge of town locations have been demolished and smaller more intimate venues for the sole use of typically Major League Baseball sides have been built. This has been the case in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Minneapolis and St Louis with the major criticism of the previous venues being that many of them were indistinguishable from each other and never established any character of their own. The proposed design for Loirston Loch is very similar to that for the stadiums built in recent years in Middlesbrough, Derby, Stoke, Leicester, Cardiff, Reading and Southampton and it is hard to see how it will develop the same sort of character that Pittodrie has or had. This may not seem important now but academic study has shown that the ability of a football stadium to generate memories and myths is a significant part of what attracts fans over a sustained period of time as opposed to relying on the novelty of a new stadium to attract new and existing fans in the short term. The move to Loirston Loch is therefore going against a trend which has demonstrated that out of town sites do not work and that sports stadiums need to be integrated within the communities they represent. The proposed location for the new stadium surrounded as it is by major roads and out of town retail parks will never engender the same sort of feelings or affinity in the Aberdeen support that Pittodrie does with its unique beachside location. It will also in practical terms be inaccessible to anyone who does not own a car and will be seen in time as no more important to the Aberdeen public as an out of town cinema or a supermarket is now. There is recognition now that football clubs are part of the fabric of urban life and need to play a part in the economic well being of an area. Stewart Milne on the one hand emphasises the economic importance of the club to the city but on the other hand is proposing a move which will impact financially on the businesses that benefit from Pittodrie and is designing a venue that means fans won't even have to leave the confines of the arena to eat and drink. The proposed football quarter in Liverpool provides an example of how this can be realised and demonstrates how fan’s representatives can drive that vision. It recognises the value of the current locations of Liverpool and Everton football clubs and how important they are to the local community. Stewart Milne has presided over the least successful period in our post war history. The primary reason for not considering a redevelopment of Pittodrie is to sell it for redevelopment and to provide an opportunity for Stewart Milne Homes to do land deals at both Pittodrie and Loirston Loch. Those deals will allegedly enable the development at Loirston Loch but there is a clear conflict of interest in the two roles that Stewart Milne holds. Who benefits more? SMG or AFC? It is not too late to stop the move. The recent events at Rangers FC and the long term consequences of them for Scottish football as well as the possibility of safe standing being introduced are material considerations which will affect the assumptions that underpin the (unseen) business case. To stop Loirston Loch involves stopping Stewart Milne. He has said himself that he wants Loirston to be his legacy to the club. It will be indeed be a legacy but one which could see the demise of Aberdeen FC. Does the Aberdeen support want to stop Stewart Milne though? It might involve some short term pain. However, do we want to be saddled at best with a white elephant in the wrong place that flies in the face of best practice in stadium redevelopment in the rest of the world or at worst long term financial ruin.