Thanks Oldham

True, although I seem to remember another Premiership club asking us for a huge favour only last week.

Yes,and they should get fined for not having their ground ready. If a club who had got promoted to the league would of had the same problem, they’d have been fined, and possibly had points deducted.

Blackpool have had since MAY to get things sorted. The last picture I saw, dated July 9th, showed that they didn’t even have any foundations in place for a new stand, temporary, or permanent. All they had done is clear the temporary stand that they had there, and it was just a strip of soil. I mean, come on, if you’re in the Premiership, you have to shape yourself. And it’s not like builders are inundated with work, is it? By July 9th, they should of been close to completion, never mind not even started.

However, I’m glad it’s been moved, as it could of been a banana skin. Tight ground, cup match atmosphere, and very outnumbered away support, as they have sold 11,000 season tickets out of the 12,000 capacity. Now we play them at home, I hope we can give them a warm welcome to the Premiership……in the manner of a 3-0 defeat.[/quote]

Fair points their VAT, particulalry about points etc…..the way Blackpool are dealing with their new stand is a complete joke. Colleague of mine see’s it (or lack of it) on a regular basis. It would appear as if they have brought with them a certain ‘thriftiness’ only experienced here in our home town (if you catch my drift). Mr Oysten could give lessons (even here).

Have a little look at their site AVFTT and see what is happening – I’ve been spreading a little ‘happiness’ amongst them and now they are all at it – doom and gloom – no money…no players….no future….so if we don’t give them a ‘seeing to’ on the first day then we need to have a long hard look at ourselves.

Go on…..get over there, log in and give them the benefit of your ‘special’ points of view. Bit of light entertainment.

“Blackpool have had since MAY to get things sorted. The last picture I saw, dated July 9th, showed that they didn’t even have any foundations in place for a new stand, temporary, or permanent. All they had done is clear the temporary stand that they had there, and it was just a strip of soil. I mean, come on, if you’re in the Premiership, you have to shape yourself. And it’s not like builders are inundated with work, is it? By July 9th, they should of been close to completion, never mind not even started.”

You can’t just “build a stand” – There’s all sorts of processes you have to go through. Getting it priced up, putting it out to tender, giving the tenderers a time period to put their prices forward, planning permission, the successful tenderer sourcing the labour. They couldn’t have just woken up the day after the play off final & said “reet lets start that stand tomorrow”
For once I know what I’m talking about as its what I’ve been involved with in schools for the last 8 years – even if, as is likely, they already had planning permission as part of the original ground redevelopment proposals & their tender process isn’t as rigorous as those in local authorities, even they could have awarded the tender the day after the play off final, the turnaround for ordering the steel alone needed for that stand is a minimum of about 6 weeks which brings you to about the 5th July (if ordered on the Monday after the play off final) for it to arrive on site & start being erected. So given they’ve probably had 2 & a half weeks to start putting the stand up they aint doing too bad
There aint much more they could have done or be doing – the only alternative would have been to keep the temporary stand
A club of Blackpool’s financial means couldn’t have risked ordering all the things needed for that stand prior to them winning the play off’s as the financial risk would have been too great

Have a look at the youtube clip of the work that is posted further up in the thread.
That’s a substantial amount of steelwork that has had to be ordered & erected. Its also a significantly different structure from the stand that was there previously (in terms of how its built & how many it holds) & so they will have needed different/new planning permission & will need new fire & safety certificates issuing before anyone can use it.
Apparently they’ve also had to put a load of new media facilities & stuff in so its a hefty amount of work with all manner of lead in times. By all accounts now that everythign is in place they have used a firm who have promised to have it finished off in 4 weeks
So as I said previously there isn’t much more they could have done

That said, if the premier league has conditions to membership such as media facilities & stand accomodation (which it does) & Blackpool didn’t have those facilities (which they didn’t) a condition of their membership should have been that they would be in place for the start of the season & if they couldn’t guarantee that then they couldn’t be promoted
As it is from reading an article in one of the papers before their play off final if they have missed any deadlines set by the premier league then they will have TV rights money withheld