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rjaggar

Listed below are comments made by rjaggar between Monday, 23rd November 2009 and Thursday, 26th November 2009.

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The Miseryside derby 4:24pm on 26 Nov 2009 A lot of cities may have this conundrum coming up sooner than they think.

Bristol? Sheffield? Leeds/Bradford? Newcastle/Sunderland? Could even say Chelsea/Fulham/QPR?

Not for me to comment on what's right for a particular place.

But one expression post-credit-crunch Britain had better get used to is this: asset utilisation.

It's a business term which measures what % of the time your 'fixed assets' (in this case a stadium) is being used productively.

So for a new ground share, that's:
i. Matches - presumably doubled with ground share?
ii. Non-matchday functions in Executive areas - pooling fanbases likely to help?
iii. Other non-soccer uses of the stadium? Well, school examinations now take place at Emirates Stadium - could happen anywhere with a proper design....

As far as 'it's our stadium, not theirs', well, I suspect modern technology can make a stadium coloured blue one week and red the next. Technical textiles for seats, holograms on concrete, you name it you could do it.

Stadium retail outlets? Well if the O2 can host U2 one day and Andy Murray the next, I'm sure you could whip in different stock each week pretty easily. Could have separate shops, but it wouldn't be imperative. Could even have 2 separate with a divider in the middle for Mon-Fri, with stock rejigging allowing total coverage for one club on matchday, couldn't you? Where there's a will......

Stadium naming rights? Well, you either need to do a joint one or you need to think through how you do it for two separate sponsors, particularly on derby day.

It's not an easy one, but cost-effectiveness is going to be the order of the next 50 years, so the sooner that football fans realise that, the better......

It might not happen on Merseyside. It might not happen anywhere.

But it sure as heck should be on every public sector official's radar if football comes cap in hand for capital construction grants.....
Time to play England's 2018 trump card 3:52pm on 26 Nov 2009 90. At 1:51pm on 26 Nov 2009, Kofte wrote:
Good point - rjagger....but still wouldnt want to trek to the ass end of nowhere to watch a game.

I think if you live in London you will get to any city in contention in 3.5 hours by train or plane.

i. Manchester 2hrs, Liverpool 2.5 hrs in the NW.
ii. Leeds 2.5 hrs, Sheffield 3hrs, Hull 3hrs in Yorkshire.
iii. Newcastle 3.5hrs ditto Sunderland in NE.
iv. Nottingham, Derby Leicester 2hrs or less.
v. Milton Keynes, Birmingham 1hr ish.
vi. Bristol 1.5 hrs Plymouth 3.5hrs SW.

Contrary to many London-centric views, England is not all about London. Many, many people would love to watch England but midweek is out due to the impossibility of getting home at night. Even Saturday kick-offs don't co-ordinate with trains home for many. The 7 year hiatus without Wembley was a breath of fresh air for all those parts of the country who hosted the national side and had a chance to enjoy a day out without getting home at 3am. Contrary to the selfish thoughts of London-based England fans who campaigned so strongly to spend an extra £700m to prevent a new national stadium being built in Birmingham......

Having been brought up in London and lived as an adult in Glasgow, Manchester, Leeds, Oxford, Cambridge and having done work in Hull, Wales, Sheffield, Nottingham, Birmingham and been to Exeter prospecting, I can say with a degree of fairness that I've stress-tested public transport and the motorway system quite well and it really isn't particularly difficult or unpleasant to get around. If you use your brains and don't generally behave like a spoilt brat expecting the Royal Train and limousines to transport you in luxury door-to-door.

And if you are really so well-oiled that you and a few thousand others would happily hop on a luxury cruiser somewhere east of Tower Bridge to be dropped in Plymouth, Hull, Newcastle or Sunderland next morning with a return trip the next night, I'm sure the bid committee would be interested in market-testing the feasibility of doing so.......
Setting out our ambitions for 2012 2:48pm on 26 Nov 2009 Well, it could be quite a good summer couldn't it?

1. Euro 2012 - will England be 'in transition' or will the fiery pace and enthusiasm of the current youngsters be moulded into a razor-sharp team of winners?
2. Will Andy Murray decide that he simply has to 'do the double' in 2012? Or even the treble at the O2???
3. There must be a chance of a British winner of the F1 grand prix - assuming there's one to cover.
4. And maybe Sea the Stars' and Zenyatta's offspring will storm the 2yr old trials like never before?
5. Any chance of starting Le Tour with a race around Olympic Park and London?? Have a fun day for amateurs in the morning - Boris can show his kids how fast he can pedalo his way around the capital's streets, eh?? Marvellous test run for the Park prior to the big show, eh??

Those goals look pretty reasonable - almost sounds like Boris 'n' Dave are saying you won't be going to Rio unless you do a bloody good job! Quite right too.....

Selling public service broadcasting. It's right you should have to, it's not right for foreign private monopolies to tell the British people that they can't make their own minds up about it. If someone's going to tell you lot to sod off, then it's the UK electorate, not the satellites above.....

One tip: probably not a good idea to ask SAF to host a garden party for all the BBC bods relocating to Salford. Not unless you bring the food, clear up the mess afterwards and mow his grass for him as well. He's supposed to be spending quality time with his domestic boss you see, not disturbing the neighbours by having his garden relaxation disturbed by a bunch of cheeky southern interlopers, you know......
Time to play England's 2018 trump card 1:41pm on 26 Nov 2009 One thing I think people need to consider carefully is the NET economic benefit to a region of hosting matches.

That's not the same as the narrow income by visitors coming to the World Cup.

Why? Because, say, in London, you'll have millions of tourists anyway doing anything and everything. Be that going to Buck House, dancing the night away etc etc etc.

The biggest NET benefit to UK plc will come to those regions where foreign visitors will go for the World Cup but wouldn't be coming to the UK otherwise.

On that basis, the NE, East Midlands, Yorkshire and the SW are very important components of the mix. Less so Birmingham, LIverpool and Manchester. And probably very little to London.

None of that is anti-London. They'll be a very major part of the bid anyway.

I'm just flagging up that when we all talk about economic benefits you need to consider the null hypothesis as the starting point. Which in the summer in London is probably having most of the hotels full to capacity...
What's wrong with football? Blame women! 11:56am on 26 Nov 2009 Well I can attest to being a witness over the past 3.5 years to a very well-heeled and refined father bringing his two daughters to watch their beloved Arsenal. One of them in particular has no problem in contributing to the more taunting of some the chants traditionally bellowed by supporters and would not object to a date with Senor Fabregas if what is written on the back of her replica strip is to be believed.......
Time to play England's 2018 trump card 11:49am on 26 Nov 2009 rjaggar (2) - Nice try, certainly as good as any I have come up with. Is that 16 or 17 venues you're using? Might happen. Could be a couple less. I'm also not sure they'll hold stadia back for the knock-out stages. There are only 63 games to go around and given the hoops Fifa make each bidding city jump through I would have thought you'd want a minimum of four games, with the larger grounds getting five or six.

Very fair points.

Presumably all those UEFA 5* grounds like OT, CMS, Wembley, Emirates and presumably the new WHL/Anfield will have jumped all the hoops already? It's the smaller ones where upgrades would be necessary that might find an economic need for more games?

If you went the crowd maximisation route, I'd guess you'd do:

Final - Wembley
SFs - Wembley +OT
QFs - Wembley, OT, new Anfield, Olympic Stadium
R16 - Wembley, OT, new Anfield, Emirates, WHL, Olympic Stadium, SJP, Villa Park
Groups:
3 games at: Wembley, Emirates, WHL, Olympic Stadium, OT, new Anfield, Villa Park, SJP
6 games at 4 other grounds - which solely on crowd sizes would probably be Nottingham, Sunderland, CMS and somewhere else.

That would mean no participation of the SW or Yorkshire.

Someone else's decision, not mine!
Time to play England's 2018 trump card 09:38am on 26 Nov 2009 Well, you could go something like this I guess:

Group A: North East - Newcastle plus Sunderland
Group B: North West - Liverpool + CMS
Group C: Yorkshire - Leeds + Hull
Group D: South Yorkshire + East Midlands (one from Derby, Leicester)
Group E: West Midlands - Villa Park plus one more
Group F: South West - Bristol plus Plymouth
Group G: London plus East Midlands (Nottingham)
Group H: London

Then you bring in the Olympic Stadium plus Old Trafford for the knock-out phases - OT getting 3 games, Olympic Stadium 2.

Working backwards:
Final - Wembley.
SF - Wembley plus OT
QF - Olympic Stadium, SJP, OT and Emirates
R16 - Wembley, Olympic Stadium, OT, Liverpool, East Midlands, Villa Park, Bristol, new WHL

No solution is perfect, but that might be inclusive and stop bickering. England's QF could be at Old Trafford, just to mix things up a bit.

Is that possible, given the interminable bickering that has apparently already gone on??!!
Is Cumbria a victim of climate change? 5:57pm on 23 Nov 2009 The reason this happened was not due to warming but due to the stalling of the front with the heaviest rainfall over Cumbria.

If the front had blown through as normal, there might have been 2 -4 inches of rain, which would have been much less traumatic.

It happened in November, when the sea is much warmer than the land, so evaporation and hence precipitation is much more likely.

A 133 year cycle has also been postulated by others, citing 4 years in 5 being very wet in the latish 19th century.

There's also been phenomenal snowfall in Washington State and British Columbia, but very little snow of note in much of the Rockies or in Europe this November.

So what we appear to be seeing is a set of major deviations from the mean in different places, which isn't actually that unusual.
Will South Africa 2010 produce a new Pele? 5:00pm on 23 Nov 2009 Strange to me that most search obsessively for an individual in a team sport. Sure, Maradona in particular carried his team almost singlehandedly (they were pretty good, but without Maradona, not exceptional). But the Italians in 1982 and 2006 were a triumph of the collectivist ethic. No real superstars, but a team that was more than the sum of its parts. That's just as admirable, if less easy to glorify....I'm sure Bearzot and Lippi didn't feel any less proud for not having a World Titan in their XI when their captain lifted the trophy.....
Eagle and Drake soar off to Canada 3:39pm on 23 Nov 2009 Well the one thing that's unlikely to go wrong at the Olympics now is lack of snow.

They've just broken all records for November snow, with further falls this week expected, so short of a prolonged early spring, conditions will be excellent.

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