Priority - Training Ground

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Flatulent_Bob said:
Which is why I genuinely think for any significant infrastructural upgrades you’re looking at needing external investment.
Training ground I think could be down over multiple seasons because is less but a move to a new training complex, and stadium upgrade is for the birds. Cat A is a complete waste of money given the kids we’re currently getting through without it, and how long it would take to give a return. Although we’d all love our u23s to play Wednesday it just isn’t worth the investment.
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You keep mentioning Cat A. Im not sure why cos no one on this thread but yourself is talking about Cat A? (I may be mistaken). I'm talking about upgrading the training facilities and that's it. One can be achieved without the other. What about United football financing the training ground improvements that they planned to do 3 years ago? That will do me for now. Improvements for Cat A and the ongoing costs that that would involve year in year out as well as the need for a new training ground footprint can wait for another time.
 

Weasel said:
So we shouldn't be putting our house in order financially and instead we should be blowing money all our available money on players (because the other clubs will get their money anyway). Righto. 🙄

I disagree by the way.
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I didn’t say we shouldn’t be on a sound financial footing, I’m just saying that clubs will sell players to us if our offer is acceptable. Our financial situation at the point of transfer won’t come into it
 
Weasel said:
You keep mentioning Cat A. Im not sure why cos no one on this thread but yourself is talking about Cat A? (I may be mistaken). I'm talking about upgrading the training facilities and that's it. One can be achieved without the other. What about United football financing the training ground improvements that they planned to do 3 years ago? That will do me for now. Improvements for Cat A and the ongoing costs that that would involve year in year out as well as the need for a new training ground footprint can wait for another time.
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robbiez666 said:
The infrastructure is the priority for me. If we ignore it and spend all our money on players, we're mugs. We need to update everything and build a solid base for the next decade.

We could spend £100 million on players/wages and still come down and unless we get a rich benefactor, updating and upgrading our facilities is not going to happen if we're not in the top flight.

We need state of the art training, conditioning and medical facilities
A top rated academy
An update to the ground and other infrastructure

Lots of talk of signing the best young European talent but we need to compete on facilities as well as wages.
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🤷‍♂️ Robbie mentioned it, and we’ve been having a exchange or views around it in our replies.
 
Flatulent_Bob said:
🤷‍♂️
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Ok, so your response then was aimed towards another poster and not myself. Was confusing though as you quoted my post previously hence my Q as I had never mentioned Cat A. 😏

My post was simply calling for improvements to the current training facilities. Surely no one can disagree with that.
 
Flatulent_Bob said:
🤷‍♂️ Robbie mentioned it, and we’ve been having a exchange or views around it in our replies.
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I didn't necessarily mean Cat A there, but we need to have top notch facilities. We need to be able to attract and keep the best talent outside of the top sides. You can do that through successes and showing your facilities are almost on parr with the big boys. Invest in infrastructure but also personnel.

It's clear that the Academy and first team can't just keep using Shirecliffe though. We need a short, medium and long-term plan.
 
Flatulent_Bob said:
So given our financial state we do the first two and come down rather than invest in players?
It’s obvious that we’d like to do it all but this is a simple case of infinite wants with limited resources. There has to be a pragmatic approach no matter what you think is the priority and the infrastructure work takes so much of our funding it really would be that or nothing unless significant additional investment comes in.
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We should invest in infrastructure improvements by borrowing money and repaying it over many years (even decades if we’re talking stadium improvements).

Other clubs further down the leagues are able to build new stadiums without Premier League money. So I don’t see why we’d need to blow the Premier League money all on infrastructure.
 
robbiez666 said:
I didn't necessarily mean Cat A there, but we need to have top notch facilities. We need to be able to attract and keep the best talent outside of the top sides. You can do that through successes and showing your facilities are almost on parr with the big boys. Invest in infrastructure but also personnel.

It's clear that the Academy and first team can't just keep using Shirecliffe though. We need a short, medium and long-term plan.
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Top notch does mean CatA.
The category you need to stop other top sides taking them is CatA otherwise they can be poached with the lower compensation.
But CatA is a significant overhead so I think you need to accept top youngsters may leave but have decent facilities for a club of our ambition and standing.
 
YES Blade said:
We should invest in infrastructure improvements by borrowing money and repaying it over many years (even decades if we’re talking stadium improvements).

Other clubs further down the leagues are able to build new stadiums without Premier League money. So I don’t see why we’d need to blow the Premier League money all on infrastructure.
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Taking out loans while interest rates are higher than they’ve been for decades?
Out of interest which clubs outside of the PL have rebuilt or expanded old stands holding 12,000 plus fans?
 
Flatulent_Bob said:
Top notch does mean CatA.
The category you need to stop other top sides taking them is CatA otherwise they can be poached with the lower compensation.
But CatA is a significant overhead so I think you need to accept top youngsters may leave but have decent facilities for a club of our ambition and standing.
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You can have a 'top notch' Academy without it being Cat A. Cat A has a set of criteria club shave to meet, including numbers of pitches etc. Some of these are ticking a box as opposed to entirely necessary. We're not going to ever be able to compete with the big boys in terms of facilities but it's a balance of good and having that pathway to the first team.
 
sonofbruce said:
Forget signing players, first and foremost we must fix that training ground over the summer to avoid the ridiculous number of long term injuries that it's caused this season and last season. The board simply must find the funds for this. Wilder raised his concerns four years ago and nothing has changed. Arguably this has cost us promotion.

Having lost O'Connell for two seasons, Berge for the whole of last season, Sharp, Basham, Brewster, Bogle, Baldock, Stevens, Didsy and McBurnie (no loss there really) on top of that for lengthy periods, there are no acceptable excuses for not addressing this as a priority.
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Yes I agreed, even if we did break the bank for 2/3 decent players. You simply don’t run thoroughbred race horses across a fucking cabbage patch.
 
YES Blade said:
If we wait until we’re established in the Premier League then it’s unlikely we’ll ever invest in the infrastructure.

The new owner should make improvements to the stadium, training ground and academy a big priority. The plans should be in place and should go ahead regardless of which division we are in.
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What is the point if we are in the championship? The academy seems to be doing ok without being cat 1 and I’m not convinced throwing money at it will make it any more productive. Let’s be right, even if we had a cat 1 academy it wouldn’t stop any elite youth been poached by the big teams for little reward. If the training facilities are ran down, then maybe they could do with improving and the legendary leaky roof could be fixed. If we are not in the premier league they are adequate for the championship with just a makeover. We build on the back of having a team that can stay in the premier league or it’s just throwing money away. There is no point us having premier facilities in the championship when money is limited. At least 85% of the money we have should be spent on the team in our first season in my opinion.
 
YES Blade said:
We should invest in infrastructure improvements by borrowing money and repaying it over many years (even decades if we’re talking stadium improvements).

Other clubs further down the leagues are able to build new stadiums without Premier League money. So I don’t see why we’d need to blow the Premier League money all on infrastructure.
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I'm not sure who would do the first part outside of the EPL given teams lose millions every year. Our current owner want to sell and I can't see a new owner having an appetite to commit money that far forward.

Those clubs have a rich owner, I'm guessing?

I do suspect though that the only way we'll have a top notch stadium is if we move to a new one.
 
Flatulent_Bob said:
Taking out loans while interest rates are higher than they’ve been for decades?
Out of interest which clubs outside of the PL have rebuilt or expanded old stands holding 12,000 plus fans?
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Interest rates? There will always be some reason to not make improvements! At some point you’ve just got to do it.

Off the top of my head Cardiff, Swansea, Rotherham, Shrewsbury, Colchester, Brentford and Chesterfield have all built new stadiums whilst outside the Premier League.

Many clubs have rebuilt their stadiums, Bristol City is the one that is the most recent I can think of.
 
YES Blade said:
Interest rates? There will always be some reason to not make improvements! At some point you’ve just got to do it.

Off the top of my head Cardiff, Swansea, Rotherham, Shrewsbury, Colchester, Brentford and Chesterfield have all built new stadiums whilst outside the Premier League.

Many clubs have rebuilt their stadiums, Bristol City is the one that is the most recent I can think of.
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Ah, so you’re advocating moving away from Bramall Lane not upgrading? Serious hard no from me and I would suggest the vast majority of fans.
That aside all those were done at a time of low interest rates which we don’t have currently so would increase the costs significantly and the Bristol and Brentford stadia were paid for by rich owners which we don’t have.
A new stadium is a pipe dream for a very small proportion of our fanbase. Our home is in the heart of the city and the ground can grow to the size it needs to, we just need to be in the PL consistently to do it and it’ll be expensive.
 
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SuperBobbyHatton said:
What is the point if we are in the championship? The academy seems to be doing ok without being cat 1 and I’m not convinced throwing money at it will make it any more productive. Let’s be right, even if we had a cat 1 academy it wouldn’t stop any elite youth been poached by the big teams for little reward. If the training facilities are ran down, then maybe they could do with improving and the legendary leaky roof could be fixed. If we are not in the premier league they are adequate for the championship with just a makeover. We build on the back of having a team that can stay in the premier league or it’s just throwing money away. There is no point us having premier facilities in the championship when money is limited. At least 85% of the money we have should be spent on the team in our first season in my opinion.
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The problem is we’ll never be fully established in the Premier League, we’ll always be one bad season away from a relegation. Just look at what Leicester have achieved in recent years and are now in real danger of going down.

That’s why I think we need to get plans in place and just get on with it, there will never be a perfect time. If we keep waiting for the perfect time it will never happen and we’ll end up with shite facilities at a similar level to them across the city.
 

Improved training facilities and Academy facilities should be two separate discussions.
First team training facilities should be as good as the club can possibly make them. Surely we must have learnt our lesson in that respect, plus it helps to sell the club to potential new signings when they see quality facilities.
The Academy, whilst having good facilities would be an advantage, it is more about the quality of the coaching, routeway and success rate of producing first team players. Our recent history of producing world class players through our u18 and u23 teams is as good as many Cat A academies. Only by remaining a premier league team will we be able to keep players like Harry Maguire, Kyle Walker, DCL, David Brooks etc. Deliberately left Ramsdale out of that list because he's a twat.
We have a well earned reputation for excellent development of young talent, the best club in Europe wouldn't have sent to us two of their best young players if this wasn't true.
We will never be able to compete in the transfer market for world class players, but what we can do is find and develop young talent and not have to sell them to survive.
 
Weasel said:
If we do t use this golden opportunity to pay off our bills and get out finances in order, and upgrade the training ground then the board really is fuckin stupid.

Clubs don't like doing business with clubs who have defaulted on owed debts so we should clean up the finances. Potential signings also want to see what the training ground and player facilities are like and these also sell the club to the potential signing. So imperative that these the training facilities are upgraded. If that means we can't sign a player then so be it.
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PA says there's no money for anything if he can't sell us. As all the Prem money is needed to pay off his massive debts. Hecky knows he's not got a transfer kitty unless there's a new owner.
 
If we ever looked at a separate academy site the old rufc training ground is still not being used ,its just across the road from the university sports grounds
 
Flatulent_Bob said:
Ah, so you’re advocating moving away from Bramall Lane not upgrading? Serious hard no from me and I would suggest the vast majority of fans.
That aside all those were done at a time of low interest rates which we don’t have currently so would increase the costs significantly and the Bristol and Brentford stadia were paid for by rich owners which we don’t have.
A new stadium is a pipe dream for a very small proportion of our fanbase. Our home is in the heart of the city and the ground can grow to the size it needs to, we just need to be in the PL consistently to do it.
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What I’m saying is that other clubs manage to build new stadiums without Premier League money. They didn’t wait until getting into the Prem before paying the construction company in cash.

A new training ground, academy or stadium is an asset that we will benefit from for 30+ years. Why can’t it be paid for over a long period?

I want the best for United, if that means leaving the Lane then so be it. But obviously my preference is to do a smaller scale version of what spurs did.
 
YES Blade said:
Interest rates? There will always be some reason to not make improvements! At some point you’ve just got to do it.

Off the top of my head Cardiff, Swansea, Rotherham, Shrewsbury, Colchester, Brentford and Chesterfield have all built new stadiums whilst outside the Premier League.

Many clubs have rebuilt their stadiums, Bristol City is the one that is the most recent I can think of.
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Out of all those teams you mention not one of them is successful, where it matters, on the pitch.
Arsenal endured a period of being unable to fund new players, Tottenham the same. Everton are in danger of disappearing into the Mersey never to be seen again. Brentford have an incredible scouting system that enables them to avoid spending mega bucks on players so their new ground may not carry the same burden.
Man City were the cleverest club by far, when they moved from Maine Road a bit like West Ham. They both moved to ready built stadiums that their councils couldn't afford to run.
 
Norwood's 6 iron said:
Out of all those teams you mention not one of them is successful, where it matters, on the pitch.
Arsenal endured a period of being unable to fund new players, Tottenham the same. Everton are in danger of disappearing into the Mersey never to be seen again. Brentford have an incredible scouting system that enables them to avoid spending mega bucks on players so their new ground may not carry the same burden.
Man City were the cleverest club by far, when they moved from Maine Road a bit like West Ham. They both moved to ready built stadiums that their councils couldn't afford to run.
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That’s because the clubs I listed are traditionally lower league clubs, the point I was making is that you don’t need Prem money to invest in infrastructure.

Some of those clubs are doing pretty well to be fair e.g Rotherham being in the Championship is pretty successful for them.
 
YES Blade said:
That’s because the clubs I listed are traditionally lower league clubs, the point I was making is that you don’t need Prem money to invest in infrastructure.

Some of those clubs are doing pretty well to be fair e.g Rotherham being in the Championship is pretty successful for them.
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Rotherham's stadium holds 12k, to make it worthwhile we would need to look at building one to hold 40k at a minimum, possibly 50k.
I'm not sure that we would fill a 40k stadium, never mind 50k.
The only real advantage of having a stadium of that size is that it would help to attract international games, which are rare occasions. But the negatives far outweigh the positives.
I really think you mis- understand the appeal of the Lane. Close to the station, numerous places to eat and drink, central location, reasonable bus links etc.
It's our home.
Do you really want to move us to the outskirts of the city with absolutely no facilities?
 
lot of back and forth here with no real solution so maybe best to just do nothing and stick with everything we have as is see what happens
 
York City have a lovely new stadium ................ outside the city in the middle of nowhere tagged onto an entertainment park. Its sterile characterless and not a pub anywhere to be seen. Hope we never do anything like this!
 
Lennoxtown : East Dunbartonshire

That's the standard United should be aiming for.

Where in Sheffield is there adequate space for United to build such a complex?
 
Norwood's 6 iron said:
Rotherham's stadium holds 12k, to make it worthwhile we would need to look at building one to hold 40k at a minimum, possibly 50k.
I'm not sure that we would fill a 40k stadium, never mind 50k.
The only real advantage of having a stadium of that size is that it would help to attract international games, which are rare occasions. But the negatives far outweigh the positives.
I really think you mis- understand the appeal of the Lane. Close to the station, numerous places to eat and drink, central location, reasonable bus links etc.
It's our home.
Do you really want to move us to the outskirts of the city with absolutely no facilities?
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Build it on BL. Like Bilbao did to theirs. A 40k cheaper version of WHL would do me. We don't need the cheese rooms, or do we?
 

If we built a new ground at Norton the beer in the Bagshaw Arms would have to improve. We would also need to buy a chainsaw or two.

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