Is it a bridge too far?

[Mike]

I don't know if this has ever been discussed here before, if it has I'm sorry.

If we are to become a bigger club do we need a bigger ground? If Chelsea ever left their ground, would it make sense for us to move in? It would look much better in Black and White!

I know as a great romantic that Craven Cottage has given me so much joy, pain, frustration and pleasure unmeasured; but what's the best for the future generations? Are we happy to stay a smaller club punching above our weight? or do we aspire to be the Manchester Utd of the south?

Could we afford both? For training and youth matches etc.

Thought this might make an interesting topic.

[White Noise]

Happy being the former. Man Utd have almost ceased to be a football club in any meaningful sense.

Craven Cottage is so much of what Fulham is about for so many people that I think the club have just got to think creatively about what can be done to expand where we are.

Fundamentally though I think there is a place for small and medium sized clubs in any sport. I think what clubs in The Prem have to their advantage is massively more money than many of the European league clubs. Fulham and other Prem clubs of their sort of scale are therefore able to attract some very good players (Hangeland, Demebele etc) who don't want massive wages and command big transfer fees but don't appear quite good enough for bigger clubs to take a gamble on them. The big clubs can't sign them all and astute signings and good management will always enable us to compete reasonably well. Other clubs will rise and fall because of the excessive expectations of their owners and fans but if we stay realistic and grateful for what we have then we should be able to continue steering a decent course forward.

[finnster01]

The reality is that todays game bums in seats doesn't count for much unless you do a Old Trafford and fill up 75000 every time. I saw they have drawn up plans to expand to 90000 which makes them bigger than Wembley.

The money (even for Man Utd) comes from the media deals and as long as that continues a bigger stadium will not make a a big difference to the balance sheet. We wouldn't be able to fill Scumford Bridge anyways.

But lets pretend and say that the little landlady who won the right to show the games causes the media deals to retract and be less going forward and bums in seats becomes more important, two very simple facts remains:
1) The Cottage is Fulham. The day the Cottage goes, I go too. It will never be the same.
2) And on top, the Bridge is a place I would never sit down to watch Fulham play at "home". To me that is blasphemy. I did Loftus Road because I had too, but I knew the Cottage was coming back.

[sipwell]

Finnster has it, on eloquence and content ;-)

[FatFreddysCat]

The players must take great heart seeing our ground look full even if we only have 23,000, you look at Sunderland with 27,000 and it looks depressingly empty, as is the same with many a bigger ground. Add into the fact some maybe quite a few fans wouldn't go to Scumford bridge so our 16,500 for Blackburn or Wigan at home would be very sad to see. But the main point is our beautifully unigue ground, just read the visiting teams forums and they all love visiting Fulham , we are lucky to visit it every other week (ok i dont no more but you get my drift).

[watfordwhite]

The Bridge was built for us, and we did not want it back then. I still do not want it now!  :red: It's a soulless place, with no true fans, no history and no atmosphere. They have to hand out plastic flags at European nights to create some form of belonging.
I too attended Loftus Road, it was not ours and thank god we returned to our home on the Thames.  :wine:
We will never be a top 4 club, but I am very happy where we are. Look at some of the BIGGER CLUBS?
Leeds
Middlesborough
Sheffield
West Ham
Liverpool
Newcastle
Norwich
Leicester
They all think they are still a big club, and should be top 4 with huge crowds. History is littered with BIG clubs gone bad. Hopefully Fulham will not go down the road.
:Sparkyticus:

[FatFreddysCat]

The Bridge was built for us, and we did not want it back then. I still do not want it now!  :red: It's a soulless place, with no true fans, no history and no atmosphere. They have to hand out plastic flags at European nights to create some form of belonging.
I too attended Loftus Road, it was not ours and thank god we returned to our home on the Thames.  :wine:
We will never be a top 4 club, but I am very happy where we are. Look at some of the BIGGER CLUBS?
Leeds
Middlesborough
Sheffield
West Ham
Liverpool
Newcastle
Norwich
Leicester
They all think they are still a big club, and should be top 4 with huge crowds. History is littered with BIG clubs gone bad. Hopefully Fulham will not go down the road.
:Sparkyticus:

And of course we haven't handed out them clapper things 

[LBNo11]

...simple solution, if the darkside leave Walham Green dog track, move lady dido and all the local nimby residents to stamford bridge and we'll expand Craven Cottage sympathetically...

[Rambling_Syd_Rumpo]

I thought we have planning permission to fill the corners in and take the Cottage to 30,000 anyway, and there is no way we would ever get bigger than that so there is no worries!

[LBNo11]

I thought we have planning permission to fill the corners in and take the Cottage to 30,000 anyway, and there is no way we would ever get bigger than that so there is no worries!

...afraid not RSR we cannot touch the corners on the riverside because the Ranelagh Sailing Club say that it affect the wind patterns, they have to stay as they are...

[finnster01]

I thought we have planning permission to fill the corners in and take the Cottage to 30,000 anyway, and there is no way we would ever get bigger than that so there is no worries!

...afraid not RSR we cannot touch the corners on the riverside because the Ranelagh Sailing Club say that it affect the wind patterns, they have to stay as they are...

Don't even get my started on those merchants, none of which has even pissed in salt water

[MJG]

I thought we have planning permission to fill the corners in and take the Cottage to 30,000 anyway, and there is no way we would ever get bigger than that so there is no worries!

We do not as a club have the demand for a 30K ground at the moment. I sit in P1 as ST holder and at only one game(Wigan) this season would I say Fulham had more fans than away fans near me. If we can fill half the putney end with Fulham ST holders who do not release their tickets so other fans can sit in them we may be in a position to look at expansion. But for me it would be wasted at the moment.

[bigalffc]

I wonder if we could ever get back to the days some of us can remember when 40,000 of us went to the games regularly. Is it because football is priced out of ordinary peoples reach? My grandad used to take me in the fifties but I can only afford to take my family and grandchildren once or twice a year. Admittedly it's also because I now live in Wisbech.

[VB]

                                                             TAKE ME HOME AL FAYED
                    TO THE PLACE WHERE I BELONG
                    CRAVEN COTTAGE BY THE RIVER
                        TAKE ME HOME AL FAYED


That's about as much as I have to say on this topic

[FatFreddysCat]

I thought we have planning permission to fill the corners in and take the Cottage to 30,000 anyway, and there is no way we would ever get bigger than that so there is no worries!

We do not as a club have the demand for a 30K ground at the moment. I sit in P1 as ST holder and at only one game(Wigan) this season would I say Fulham had more fans than away fans near me. If we can fill half the putney end with Fulham ST holders who do not release their tickets so other fans can sit in them we may be in a position to look at expansion. But for me it would be wasted at the moment.

Yeah but we would get 30,000 against the bigguns, in the mean time give a couple of thousand tickets out to local schools and start winning some more local kids into the White side, even on freebies they might buy a programme an over priced burger or flat warm coke, better than nothing.

[VB]

When I started going to the Cottage, we had crowds of 25.000. That dwindled to around 4.000 in the Dark years (heaven knows how many generations of Fulham fan's were lost). Its taken another 20 years to get it back to that. The only real option for me is to fill in the corner's and create
more seats (and a better atmosphere)

[MJG]

I thought we have planning permission to fill the corners in and take the Cottage to 30,000 anyway, and there is no way we would ever get bigger than that so there is no worries!

We do not as a club have the demand for a 30K ground at the moment. I sit in P1 as ST holder and at only one game(Wigan) this season would I say Fulham had more fans than away fans near me. If we can fill half the putney end with Fulham ST holders who do not release their tickets so other fans can sit in them we may be in a position to look at expansion. But for me it would be wasted at the moment.

Yeah but we would get 30,000 against the bigguns, in the mean time give a couple of thousand tickets out to local schools and start winning some more local kids into the White side, even on freebies they might buy a programme an over priced burger or flat warm coke, better than nothing.

I do not disagree with any of that and I'm always in favour of giving local kids tickets, but the cost to expand and the income generated does not add up at the moment.

[FatFreddysCat]

Just struck me as weird that i'm discussing how we can fit more fans into the ground when in the old days you could have brought a hammock put it up in the terraces and not have anyone within five foot of you.

[Fernhurst]

You could sit on the terrace , pluck a blade of grass that was growing up through them and contemplate how the hell Glen Thomas was captain?????

Very good thread to start Mike, but as you can see the faithful are very faithful to The Cottage. It is a dilemma the board do not have to face presently, but if the queue for season tickets builds a head of steam what then???? We are lucky being the current crop of Fulham supporters who are enjoying immensely our run in The Premiership and we still have our evocative historic home....... but the future - who knows?

[Steve_orino]

It's a interesting topic, Mike, and it comes up about 2 or 3 times a year...

I've asked the question before too (on the old FoF MB).  I'm here in Dallas and we have the super gi-normous Cowboys Stadium that was recently built as a "glorious monument" to Jerry Jones' ego (the owner).  I asked, as a Yank accustomed to the plastic stadiums here in the States if at some point the Club would have to move from the Cottage to keep up with the other Premier Teams...

The overwhelming responses were eloquently written and were best summed up as: Fulham is Craven Cottage, Craven Cottage is Fulham.  Take Finnster's response here in this thread and multiply that by 30 and you'll have an idea of the quantity of heart-felt responses I received.  Everyone made me a believer that Fulham is to stay at the Cottage.