New Everton Stadium Discussion

Yeah, the stadium externally is nearly there.

The biggest thing I see when I look at it externally now is the paving / finishing of the ground still to be done on the wider site.

There's just so much of it to do, particularly out the West side (including digging out and finishing the water channel).

Not sure if you've seen but they've already dug a fair bit of that channel by the Western Terrace (South side), as it's only 2 meters deep it won't take long.
 
Don't think there's a big enough floating vote in Merseyside/North-west compared to London

Living in London for pushing 40 years now I agree with this. London and the South East has much higher population churn in/out from rest of UK and abroad making it easier to attract new fans.

The high density of clubs in the North West meant catchment areas were tightly defined and densely ‘mined’ for support. In contrast London/South East started with a smaller tribal base for football support as a percentage of population. Rugby/cricket were the big sports in the posher areas when I first came in the 80s. Hooliganism was a factor but football was seen as ‘common’.

Chelsea then had little reach into eg Surrey, Berkshire compared to now. Arsenal/Spurs had the new towns in Herts and West Ham had the new towns in Essex but had not really rippled out into the older and more rural areas much. Kent was a football wasteland and neither Southampton nor Brighton had much reach into Hampshire and Sussex at the time. Similarly the global market was wide open.

Now the big clubs have stronger footholds. If the day ever comes where we are once again successful it will be much harder to turn that into a substantial influx of new fans who can support commercial growth to sustain the success. Even City have not added fans at the rate United and Liverpool did in the 90s and 00s. Nothing is impossible but our shitness in the 90s as the PL was born still haunts us today and looking forward into the future.
 
Yeah, have seen the progress - but presumably they've got to line that with concrete, build up the walls etc.

It's not like digging a pond in the back garden I'm guessing!

I'm not 100% sure, but it appears they are revealing a wall structure as they dig down:

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Are they just piles put in one after another to create a wall? Would they need to add cast concrete panels to that afterwards? Could it just be compacted earth looking like something more solid? All questions to find out.

The back wall has already been done remember as that is the original dock wall that will form the edge.
 

There was already a channel with walls there. It was just filled in while the building works have been going on

Only this part:

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And the opposite edge on the Northern side (along with the back wall of course). So they would have had to built the channel wall across the dock, then filled it in with sand (which I didn't see if they did) or it is pile after pile put in one after another that is now being unearthed.
 
I can half remember hearing stories about this back then. It would be interesting to know where the 100 acre site was, maybe that location (and/or its size, or the notion of sharing) was the deal-killer for both clubs at that time.

Yes, their higher pulling power was probably already evident by then, but the disparity has only grown severfold since, as the millions of new fans gained during the sustained success of the 70's and 80's, started to come into effect. So the differences in their stadium-needs and ours are even more stark now.

Hypothetical now of course, but not sure that 30-50k blues rattling around an 80k stadium would've been a great look. Especially if they filled it every other week and we didn't. Perhaps, if it was a practical freeby, we could've done a West Ham, stacked'em high and sold'em (very) cheap.... to get nearer filling it and winning hearts and minds that way. Don't think there's a big enough floating vote in Merseyside/North-west compared to London and the South-east for that to happen though. Interesting snippet from history though.

In the early 90s we would have struggled to even 1/4 fill a stadium that size given some of our gates back then.
 

In the early 90s we would have struggled to even 1/4 fill a stadium that size given some of our gates back then.

Why was it so bad in the 90's? I know the 80's. In the 90's I was a regular and a season ticket holder yet the attendances would hover above and below 20,000. Even some of the derbies were low at about 36000. I'm thinking around the 4-4 draw period.

To be fair we were 💩
 

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