Untold Arsenal » Tiny Totts Tightfisted Transformation Tender Toppled

This story comes from two source (who shall remain nameless).  You can believe it or no, although unlike tales of Atlantis, alien invasions covered up by government and the Chinese discovery of America in the 15th century, at least this time you will be able to see if this is right or not.  Time will certainly tell.

This story concerns Levy – the chair of Tottenham.  Behind the story is the supposition that the owners are getting frustrated with years of promises of top four finishes and nothing to show save a lot of payouts to managers who go on to have success elsewhere.  Indeed Levy watchers particularly noticed that at the last sacking (Ramos) he said that he couldn’t let Ramos ruin the club after all that had been achieved.  He then cited their achievement: two years in the UEFA League and planning permission granted for the training ground.  If ever there was a speech that should have been better planned it was that.

So, to rescue his position Levy brought forward the new stadium idea.  60,000 people (then reduced to 58,000), and a sell out for every game.

But there is a problem – as we have covered many times (and I am most grateful to everyone who has supplied the devil in the detail) Tottenham count their “members” twice – once as members and once as the season ticket waiting list.  People are on that waiting list whether they want a season or not.

This means that we have a promise of a new ground to keep to boss in Barbados happy, but it comes with the knowledge that it is a promise that will unravel.  By which time who knows, maybe by a fluke the Totts will have won the Diddly Cup again.

To overcome this Levy-Owners problem, Tottenham have got a piece of land for a ground that will house 58,000 people but only if the crowd is as close to the game as we were at Highbury.  So that is the application that is going in.

But this application will be turned down – everyone knows that.  There must be the fire engine entrance inside new grounds and there must be room for emergency vehicles to circulate around the ground between pitch and crowd.   What’s more the number of entrance and exit points has been raised and the the EPL and FA insist that new grounds have  sufficient distance between crowd and playing area so that anything thrown does not reach the pitch.  (It also stops Carragher throwing things from the pitch at the crowd).

Inevitably the planning application will fail.   Tottenham are used to this game and will then blame “Arsenal supporters on the planning committee” for scuppering their plans.  They will build a smaller stadium (”not what we wanted, but with this level of corruption in local government there is nothing we can do”), and so avoid the problem with not being able to fill the theoretical larger stadium.

This sort of thing has happened before.  Everton were recently refused planning permission on their new training ground, both locally and on appeal.  They then went public and blamed corruption locally – ignoring the fact that it was locally elected people who were following the rules, while they (who no one elected) weren’t.

Tottenham played the same hand with the league cup game at the Ems in the first season there.  They wanted a full allocation across the south end lower, but only got a fraction of this, and blamed Arsenal.  In fact police and local authority regs required that the away support was increased slowly to ensure local services could cope and this was the first game where there was a demand for tickets beyond the normal corner.

So there it is: the Tottenham ground will be smaller, and will have the gap between players and crowd.  Everyone knows it, but there is a ritual to be gone through.  And that is the story of the Woolworths Stadium (ok that isn’t the actual name, but when I was told it, it gave me a laugh.

(c) Tony Attwood 2009