The best bit of building we could do is to build a massive brick wall across all entrances to Sainsbury's!

I wish we never had that god awful supermarket there in the first place, as they will hold firm now and create many issues for any future plans to expand.

I have never and will never go in that place as a matter of principle.

I am lucky enough to remember our ground before they were let in, and I can now only dream of those days returning.

Some people are like Slinkies … not really good for anything, but you can’t help smiling when you see one tumble down the stairs.

I’d love to Jimenez, but too busy

In fairness, if the club hadn't sold the land to Sainsbury's then it may well have gone out of business at the time. The whole place could have been a housing estate by now, with an even bigger supermarket!

I've said it before, but the bit of land we need from Sainsbury's is so small that either they are being unbelievably difficult about selling it, or CPFC are being unbelievably tight about paying for it. If the former is true then we have, and always have had, recourse through a CPO, which Croydon Council will seemingly support. There is no obvious reason for this and/or the requirements of the Section 106 legal agreement to be long-term stumbling blocks.

It remains my opinion that CPFC has prioritised other areas of the business ahead of the stand (the academy, the team, the training ground) and/or that the pandemic and economic downturn caused the board (principally the original American investors, who were brought in to speed up these projects) to get cold feet.

Personally, I have no problem at all with the club being cautious about the investment in the new stand. We want to become a bigger club of course, but we are far from debt-free as it is, and we don't want to over-reach and implode financially. A big stadium is not a guarantee against financial and sporting meltdown; ask Sunderland or Leeds.

Over the years, the consequences of not running the business sustainably have included not even owning the ground, barely having a penny to spend on improving it, and of course, selling land to Sainsbury's to begin with. I'm not in any rush to criticise the club for taking care over this project therefore, especially when they have delivered so impressively on everything else.

Ultimately, there is scope for a new development at the Whitehorse Lane end which provides a bigger (or at least better) Sainsburys underneath a two-tier stand similar to the Holmesdale Road end. That, like the main stand project, will involve significant investment and risk, but it could be done.

The deal to sell the land to Sainsbury's need not haunt us forever.

Edited by TheBigToePunt (22 Jun 2022 11.41am)

............or Darlington. Built a new ground in 2003 and went into administration in 2003, 2006 and 2009!