Cod Almighty | Diary

My first is in water and also in tea

26 March 2015

As regular readers of your original/regular Diary might recall, my position on Town's proposed new stadium might be characterised as "sceptical, but persuadable". I look at the way my football club has been run over the past few years, and I contemplate any sort of Fentydome, and I have two thoughts. The first: they'll never get it built. The second: if they do get it built, it'll be a disaster.

I'm ready to be persuaded otherwise. It just hasn't happened yet.

I read all the club statements about the stadium with an open mind. Or a mind that's open as far as it'll go after three relegations, a long sequence of farcical communications disasters, managerial sackings within days of a pledge of continuity, a run-in with a teenage fanzine editor, a failed complaint to Ofcom about being called a plonker on Radio Humberside, the departures of Colin Graves, Alec King and Mike Parker, and a minute's silence for a deceased former chairman which had to be postponed because seemingly nobody remembered to tell the referee.

Who knows? It might all work and it might be wonderful. But I've got three questions which need answering before I'll buy in. Bollocks to that survey: it was ridiculously simplistic. Bollocks to the petition: it's irrelevant. All this stuff about the council is a smokescreen. It's achieved its aim of blinding many supporters to the real issues. But it hasn't blinded me.

The real issues are in these three questions.

Question 1: Where is the research?

The case for a new stadium is built overwhelmingly around the argument that it will raise "non-matchday income" which is apparently vital to the sustainability of the club. How do we know? We don't. It is not enough simply to provide the much-vaunted "conferencing facilities" which, we are told, will underpin Town's expenditure for the decades to come. Even a non-business mind like mine knows that there is such a thing as market research.

Demonstrate that there will be a substantial demand for these facilities to actually be used, and thus realise that income, and I'll start to take this project a bit more seriously. Don't bother, and people will assume you're making it up as you go along, plucking figures out of the air, and just hoping for the best.

Question 2: When's it going to happen?

The club's utterances with regard to a timescale amount to the square root of bugger all. Today's Telewag reminds us that the council's Local Plan – which GTFC want the Fentydome to be included in – "is expected to come into fruition in 2017". Can no work begin on any stadium before this? We don't know. How long would it take afterwards? We don't know.

If you put me in charge of PR on the Fentydome, the first thing I'd do would be publish a timeline. Even if it's only provisional. Give people dates and they can start to visualise the whole thing actually happening, rather than remaining in the realms of fantasy. Leave it without a timeline and people will continue to assume the 12th of never.

Question 3: Where's the money?

This week the club has belatedly put a cost on the project: twenty-two million pounds. They have acknowledged a "funding gap" and launched a bid to fill it by sourcing new investment. Interestingly, this bid now extends beyond the search for an "enabling development" to open up the possibility of new direct investment from boardroom level. In other words, if a takeover of the club is necessary for the Fentydome to go ahead, so be it.

Well, that's progress, of a sort. But for one thing, Fenty has said several times he'd be happy to stand aside if a credible takeover is proposed (which presumably includes giving him his four million quid back, or however much it is). For another, the club doesn't seem to be saying how much of that £22m is already accounted for and how much falls into the "gap".

Thirdly, I'm not convinced that saying "invest with your heart, not your head – oh, but you'll definitely get a return, honest" is altogether the most convincing keynote on which to launch a major bid for serious private investment. But once again, I'm not exactly Dragons' Den material myself. So what the hell do I know? Let's see how the club's working group has got along when its members (unknown, but headed up by club director Stephen Marley) report back in three months' time.

(One month in to the club's bid to attract sponsorship funding for a section of rail seating at Blundell Park, by the by, there is no announcement of any takers. I know it's not quite the same thing, but if we can't bring the money in to do up a small bit of the Pontoon, how will we bring the money in to build a new ground? Still – again – I'll try and keep an open mind.)

Finally, if the club – as it seems to suggest this week – is open to any form of investment model, how can we be certain that any "non-matchday income" that might be generated by those highly sought after conferencing facilities will actually go to the club, and won't just become the return on investment that those soft-hearted/hard-headed (delete as applicable) funders will presumably be looking for at some point?

So, three questions. This week we see the beginning of activities that may start to answer one of them. The other two remain unanswered in their entirety. Answer them satisfactorily and I'll look at getting on board. Without answers I will not – cannot – uncritically and enthusiastically wave flags for the Fentydome.

We are in a context, after all, where enthusiastically waved flags are very easily deconstructed.