Loftus Road. 10:21 - Jan 22 with 43493 views | Esox_Lucius | IF, and it's a big if. the club were forced away from H&F to build a stadium which could provide income 360+ days a years to generate the revenue to make us competitive as a team again would you be for or against it. Yes or No will suffice, there's no need for comments like "knowing QPR they'd fück it up" etc. Just Yes or No. | |
| The grass is always greener. |
| | |
Loftus Road. on 13:47 - Jan 23 with 2687 views | slmrstid | Out of pure curiosity Hucker, and I totally get why Loftus Road holds such attachment for you because it does me, but lets say in an almost certainly impossible hypothetical scenario we built a new stadium in Queens Park itself - would you feel the same then? Given we are Queens Park Rangers etc... | | | |
Loftus Road. on 14:16 - Jan 23 with 2593 views | colinallcars | I think point is, the ground is almost the only permanent entity. Players and managers are transitory. Even fans are to some extent transitory. The one fixture is the ground and its environs. | | | |
Loftus Road. on 14:29 - Jan 23 with 2559 views | HuckerMOTM |
Loftus Road. on 13:47 - Jan 23 by slmrstid | Out of pure curiosity Hucker, and I totally get why Loftus Road holds such attachment for you because it does me, but lets say in an almost certainly impossible hypothetical scenario we built a new stadium in Queens Park itself - would you feel the same then? Given we are Queens Park Rangers etc... |
There's not a person alive who saw us play in Queens Park. | | | |
Loftus Road. on 14:31 - Jan 23 with 2552 views | HuckerMOTM |
Loftus Road. on 12:42 - Jan 23 by BAWHoops | The current set up simply isn't going to attract enough of the next generation of fans though. It's deeply unimpressive |
Possibly, but we're not going to capture a new generation simply by moving and to acquire the success some fans want will mean further losing the soul if you think the club has any left anyway. | | | |
Loftus Road. on 15:06 - Jan 23 with 2419 views | Hayesender | Just finishing off the last few bits on my new gaff in Littlehampton, before moving in a few weeks. I'll be keeping my season ticket, and one of the reasons is QPR will give me the excuse to come back "home" every couple of weeks, drink in my old locals, and meet up with mates. If we were to end up somewhere on the A40 corridor, or out near Heathrow, I just wouldn't bother anymore. I think what I'm trying to say is, I'd rather have a club in leagues 1 or 2 in the heart of West London, than a club in the bottom half of the prem, in a soulless bowl drinking shite lager in some frankie and bennys in the middle of nowhere | |
| |
Loftus Road. on 15:15 - Jan 23 with 2390 views | Juzzie |
Loftus Road. on 13:26 - Jan 23 by Nov77 | Why do you think staying means stagnating and diminishing while moving means flourishing? What evidence is there? Didn’t we get promoted twice to the premier league recently in this very stadium? |
I did not say moving means flourishing. I said it gives us a better chance to. I don't think we can flourish in our present situation. It gets harder every decade that goes by. We did get promoted but came back down again, twice. We don't have the income from 18k to self-sustain in the PL and the facilities at LR are not very good. Not just for players but match officials, the media and so on. People may point to Bournemouth and more recently Brentford but the former lasted 5 seasons, most of them in the lower bottom half. Brentford have shown it can indeed be done but it's still early days and it will be interesting to see how it pans out long term. As has also been talked about many times, a stadium isn't just about the day of the match. It's how it can be utilised the other few hundred days of the year when there are no football games and ours is woeful. There just isn't any scope to improve non-match functions as well as improving match days. | | | |
Loftus Road. on 15:23 - Jan 23 with 2362 views | slmrstid |
Loftus Road. on 14:29 - Jan 23 by HuckerMOTM | There's not a person alive who saw us play in Queens Park. |
Yes, you are right. I suppose what I'm trying to get at is it LR or nothing to you, or would you be less bothered by somewhere else? Personally somewhere like Park Royal wouldn't bother me as much, because we have heritage there (like Queens Park). But moving out near Heathrow would bother me more. Just interested, 'tis all. | | | |
Loftus Road. on 15:32 - Jan 23 with 2340 views | colinallcars | I've never been to one of the new out-of-town stadia but everyone says they are wretched. I sometimes drive past Colchester's new ground beside the A12. Nothing around apart from a petrol station on the other side of the road. Fans have to get a shuttle bus from colchester which is a fair way away. I couldn't put up with that. | | | | Login to get fewer ads
Loftus Road. on 15:44 - Jan 23 with 2310 views | headhoops | No idea if this would be possible. Latymer Upper School's (private school I believe) playing fields are miles away from the actual school itself in Fulham. - But only hundreds of yards from LR, site must be double the footprint of LR. Make them an offer? Naturally would have to insist the Pavillion has more than 3 barstaff on a match day! | |
| |
Loftus Road. on 15:45 - Jan 23 with 2301 views | QPR_Jim |
Loftus Road. on 15:23 - Jan 23 by slmrstid | Yes, you are right. I suppose what I'm trying to get at is it LR or nothing to you, or would you be less bothered by somewhere else? Personally somewhere like Park Royal wouldn't bother me as much, because we have heritage there (like Queens Park). But moving out near Heathrow would bother me more. Just interested, 'tis all. |
I think I get were you are coming from, there are levels to everything. If we'd left LR for the dairy crest site for example, I doubt anyone would mind, barely change you match day experience at all. Linford Christie a bit further out, might be acceptable still. Car Giant further still and outside W12. Heathrow nightmare scenario, most people against I'd assume. But what about somewhere in between like Twyford Avenue? Further away than Linford Christie and Car Giant but has better transport links and more pubs around it. So there must be some locations where it would be better than others, so referring back to the original post where's the line between a yes and no for most people? | | | |
Loftus Road. on 16:25 - Jan 23 with 2230 views | Sonofpugwash | There is a phenomenon known as "sick building syndrome" and where the negativity gets into the veritable concrete.I think LR may be victim to this.Either you jump ship and find a new site or raze the edifice to the ground and start again.If the whole area is cursed (as I believe it is)then get someone in to remove it.Other clubs(Birmingham?)have resorted to this. | |
| |
Loftus Road. on 16:28 - Jan 23 with 2222 views | DWQPR | There are a lot of people here that talk about the pre and post match activities, mainly having a few beers. But then, if a new stadium was designed in such a way to entice those people to utilise comparable facilities within the ground, i.e. event bars with a good range of beers, restaurants that could cater for a fair array of supporters in terms of cuisine? Means that the club get this additional income and such facilities can be used outside of match days. Spurs have that bar that is the length of the pitch and I suspect that this has encouraged supporters to drink pre and post match at the ground. | |
| |
Loftus Road. on 16:39 - Jan 23 with 2211 views | Hayesender |
Loftus Road. on 16:28 - Jan 23 by DWQPR | There are a lot of people here that talk about the pre and post match activities, mainly having a few beers. But then, if a new stadium was designed in such a way to entice those people to utilise comparable facilities within the ground, i.e. event bars with a good range of beers, restaurants that could cater for a fair array of supporters in terms of cuisine? Means that the club get this additional income and such facilities can be used outside of match days. Spurs have that bar that is the length of the pitch and I suspect that this has encouraged supporters to drink pre and post match at the ground. |
When I went to Bristol City a few months ago, I was seriously impressed with all the bars and food stalls situated outside the ground. Only disappointment was due to the traffic getting into Bristol, I didn't have time to sample the goods. Bit yes, something along the lines of what they provide, would certainly get me out of the pub earlier | |
| |
Loftus Road. on 16:42 - Jan 23 with 2211 views | TK1 | It’s not the stadium that “takes you to the next level”. It’s the board. The owners. The decision makers. It’s getting football decisions right consistently right over a number of years, it’s being in tune with your fans (it’s being of the fans, too - there was a brief moment of that at QPR between admin and Paladini, when Jim Frailing, Mark Devlin, Bill Power etc were running the show, but we blew that). It’s having forward momentum over a long period throughout the club, on and off the field. Then, when you have that over a number of packed-out seasons, you can talk about a new stadium taking you to the next level in consultation with your fans. Brentford have that. Their stadium is the manifestation of their long-term good governance, not the kick-start. Bolton, Coventry, Derby, Reading have stadiums that are manifestations of the reverse, of bad boards, absentee decision makers, shysters. Brighton, on the other hand, have that ownership and an all-round holistic approach that means they shine in their newish ground. QPR’s board bought a newly promoted, debt-free Premier League club. A decade later they have a mid-table Championship team labouring under a world record FFP fine. That didn’t happen to them. They did it. To even discuss allowing them to sell the club’s only asset, QPR need to have several seasons of forward, feel-good momentum. A new stadium doesn’t provide that any more than Harry Redknapp and Joey Barton do. Good management does. The one thing QPR has is its location and the fact it owns very valuable land (and a famous old ground). It's the only thing that holds the club together. It doesn't prevent success - it's been the venue of two squandered recent promotions from this league after all - rather, it prevents the whole thing falling apart. Don't let someone passing through take that away on a maybe. Ask Charlton or Wimbledon. | | | |
Loftus Road. on 16:51 - Jan 23 with 2188 views | Paddyhoops |
Loftus Road. on 15:32 - Jan 23 by colinallcars | I've never been to one of the new out-of-town stadia but everyone says they are wretched. I sometimes drive past Colchester's new ground beside the A12. Nothing around apart from a petrol station on the other side of the road. Fans have to get a shuttle bus from colchester which is a fair way away. I couldn't put up with that. |
It’s a route I take as well . BP on the Left heading north. Depressing. Not for me . Its location so close to central London makes it unique but it’s unsustainable now. Much as I love LF road and the wholeday match experience, it’s going to leave us in form of pergroty. Sadly!! | | | |
Loftus Road. on 16:58 - Jan 23 with 2139 views | BrianMcCarthy |
Loftus Road. on 16:42 - Jan 23 by TK1 | It’s not the stadium that “takes you to the next level”. It’s the board. The owners. The decision makers. It’s getting football decisions right consistently right over a number of years, it’s being in tune with your fans (it’s being of the fans, too - there was a brief moment of that at QPR between admin and Paladini, when Jim Frailing, Mark Devlin, Bill Power etc were running the show, but we blew that). It’s having forward momentum over a long period throughout the club, on and off the field. Then, when you have that over a number of packed-out seasons, you can talk about a new stadium taking you to the next level in consultation with your fans. Brentford have that. Their stadium is the manifestation of their long-term good governance, not the kick-start. Bolton, Coventry, Derby, Reading have stadiums that are manifestations of the reverse, of bad boards, absentee decision makers, shysters. Brighton, on the other hand, have that ownership and an all-round holistic approach that means they shine in their newish ground. QPR’s board bought a newly promoted, debt-free Premier League club. A decade later they have a mid-table Championship team labouring under a world record FFP fine. That didn’t happen to them. They did it. To even discuss allowing them to sell the club’s only asset, QPR need to have several seasons of forward, feel-good momentum. A new stadium doesn’t provide that any more than Harry Redknapp and Joey Barton do. Good management does. The one thing QPR has is its location and the fact it owns very valuable land (and a famous old ground). It's the only thing that holds the club together. It doesn't prevent success - it's been the venue of two squandered recent promotions from this league after all - rather, it prevents the whole thing falling apart. Don't let someone passing through take that away on a maybe. Ask Charlton or Wimbledon. |
Excellent post, TK1. Deep down, I just don't trust these owners to get any ground move right. I have no idea if I am right to think that way, so posts like yours give me much to think about. | |
| |
Loftus Road. on 17:08 - Jan 23 with 2082 views | Juzzie |
Loftus Road. on 16:58 - Jan 23 by BrianMcCarthy | Excellent post, TK1. Deep down, I just don't trust these owners to get any ground move right. I have no idea if I am right to think that way, so posts like yours give me much to think about. |
They got the training ground up and running after a 7 year delay (at which they could have just decided to jump ship but they persevered) caused mainly by SWF, who inadvertently meant we ended up with a better deal, so at least that's something. Part of the problem is that we are located in a part of the country where it's just so difficult to find a nice lovely 10-15 acre site that close to LR's roots, has good private & public transport infrastructure and won't pi$$ off the locals. It's not an easy task and gets harder each year. | | | |
Loftus Road. on 17:18 - Jan 23 with 2023 views | HuckerMOTM |
Loftus Road. on 16:28 - Jan 23 by DWQPR | There are a lot of people here that talk about the pre and post match activities, mainly having a few beers. But then, if a new stadium was designed in such a way to entice those people to utilise comparable facilities within the ground, i.e. event bars with a good range of beers, restaurants that could cater for a fair array of supporters in terms of cuisine? Means that the club get this additional income and such facilities can be used outside of match days. Spurs have that bar that is the length of the pitch and I suspect that this has encouraged supporters to drink pre and post match at the ground. |
Spurs' new ground is located 50 yards up the road from the old WHL so fans haven't had to change their pre/post match rituals. It's not just having a beer or a dodgy kebab/bag of chips though. It's about drinking in pubs that I have a connection to and which I go to feeling nostalgic for a different era. A new ground like Bolton, Reading and Derby may have amazing watering holes and eateries but they're soulless and not the way I want to watch football. These are designed for people who want a very different matchday experience to me and with whom I have little in common. Another thing is that I don't want to add an extra 30+ minutes travelling to or from matches. Loftus Road has ridiculously good transport connections which we would probably lose if we move and even if we moved to somewhere like Ealing Broadway (for example but knowing it would never happen) even though it has great links it still adds time to the journey which I don't want. | | | |
Loftus Road. on 17:49 - Jan 23 with 1933 views | ManinBlack |
Loftus Road. on 16:42 - Jan 23 by TK1 | It’s not the stadium that “takes you to the next level”. It’s the board. The owners. The decision makers. It’s getting football decisions right consistently right over a number of years, it’s being in tune with your fans (it’s being of the fans, too - there was a brief moment of that at QPR between admin and Paladini, when Jim Frailing, Mark Devlin, Bill Power etc were running the show, but we blew that). It’s having forward momentum over a long period throughout the club, on and off the field. Then, when you have that over a number of packed-out seasons, you can talk about a new stadium taking you to the next level in consultation with your fans. Brentford have that. Their stadium is the manifestation of their long-term good governance, not the kick-start. Bolton, Coventry, Derby, Reading have stadiums that are manifestations of the reverse, of bad boards, absentee decision makers, shysters. Brighton, on the other hand, have that ownership and an all-round holistic approach that means they shine in their newish ground. QPR’s board bought a newly promoted, debt-free Premier League club. A decade later they have a mid-table Championship team labouring under a world record FFP fine. That didn’t happen to them. They did it. To even discuss allowing them to sell the club’s only asset, QPR need to have several seasons of forward, feel-good momentum. A new stadium doesn’t provide that any more than Harry Redknapp and Joey Barton do. Good management does. The one thing QPR has is its location and the fact it owns very valuable land (and a famous old ground). It's the only thing that holds the club together. It doesn't prevent success - it's been the venue of two squandered recent promotions from this league after all - rather, it prevents the whole thing falling apart. Don't let someone passing through take that away on a maybe. Ask Charlton or Wimbledon. |
Great summary, just how I see it. | | | |
Loftus Road. on 19:10 - Jan 23 with 1808 views | derbyhoop |
Loftus Road. on 13:26 - Jan 23 by Nov77 | Why do you think staying means stagnating and diminishing while moving means flourishing? What evidence is there? Didn’t we get promoted twice to the premier league recently in this very stadium? |
Our attendances are 17/24, we don't have parachute payments, and we've watched Fulham and Brentford go past us. In terms of current status and stadium. We also need the owners pimping in 1.5m per month to keep our heads above water. We're already stagnating. Every side that has invested in a new ground has seen attendances rise. Short term for the Fake Hoops. The match day experience, within the ground, is much better. Sure we got to the PL twice Stayed up on last day, relegated both times. If we could go up we're likely to experience the same. | |
| "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the Earth all one's lifetime." (Mark Twain)
Find me on twitter @derbyhoop and now on Bluesky |
| |
Loftus Road. on 19:16 - Jan 23 with 1807 views | PunteR |
Loftus Road. on 16:42 - Jan 23 by TK1 | It’s not the stadium that “takes you to the next level”. It’s the board. The owners. The decision makers. It’s getting football decisions right consistently right over a number of years, it’s being in tune with your fans (it’s being of the fans, too - there was a brief moment of that at QPR between admin and Paladini, when Jim Frailing, Mark Devlin, Bill Power etc were running the show, but we blew that). It’s having forward momentum over a long period throughout the club, on and off the field. Then, when you have that over a number of packed-out seasons, you can talk about a new stadium taking you to the next level in consultation with your fans. Brentford have that. Their stadium is the manifestation of their long-term good governance, not the kick-start. Bolton, Coventry, Derby, Reading have stadiums that are manifestations of the reverse, of bad boards, absentee decision makers, shysters. Brighton, on the other hand, have that ownership and an all-round holistic approach that means they shine in their newish ground. QPR’s board bought a newly promoted, debt-free Premier League club. A decade later they have a mid-table Championship team labouring under a world record FFP fine. That didn’t happen to them. They did it. To even discuss allowing them to sell the club’s only asset, QPR need to have several seasons of forward, feel-good momentum. A new stadium doesn’t provide that any more than Harry Redknapp and Joey Barton do. Good management does. The one thing QPR has is its location and the fact it owns very valuable land (and a famous old ground). It's the only thing that holds the club together. It doesn't prevent success - it's been the venue of two squandered recent promotions from this league after all - rather, it prevents the whole thing falling apart. Don't let someone passing through take that away on a maybe. Ask Charlton or Wimbledon. |
Good post. Echoes my thoughts too. Do i think we should move? Not with these current owners. | |
| Occasional providers of half decent House music. |
| |
Loftus Road. on 19:29 - Jan 23 with 1787 views | hubble |
Loftus Road. on 15:44 - Jan 23 by headhoops | No idea if this would be possible. Latymer Upper School's (private school I believe) playing fields are miles away from the actual school itself in Fulham. - But only hundreds of yards from LR, site must be double the footprint of LR. Make them an offer? Naturally would have to insist the Pavillion has more than 3 barstaff on a match day! |
Latymer is on King Street, Hammersmith, not Fulham (I should know, I went there, as did at least one other person on this board), but the playing fields are indeed on the corner of Wood Lane and Ducane Road. It used to be a right old faff to get there. Hopefully they've updated the antediluvian changing rooms. But you're right about the fact that the footprint is about the same size as LR - in fact it's probably bigger. Do you want me to put in a word? | |
| |
Loftus Road. on 19:38 - Jan 23 with 1765 views | MedwayR |
Loftus Road. on 19:29 - Jan 23 by hubble | Latymer is on King Street, Hammersmith, not Fulham (I should know, I went there, as did at least one other person on this board), but the playing fields are indeed on the corner of Wood Lane and Ducane Road. It used to be a right old faff to get there. Hopefully they've updated the antediluvian changing rooms. But you're right about the fact that the footprint is about the same size as LR - in fact it's probably bigger. Do you want me to put in a word? |
I'd always noticed those fields on google maps and wondered, but presumed it belonged to the school next door (Burlington Danes or something like that?). It's roughly double to footprint of Loftus Road I reckon, and ideally located. If the school that uses it is miles away, surely it's feasible that we could make some arrangement to get hold of the land...??? | |
| |
Loftus Road. on 20:36 - Jan 23 with 1701 views | Whip_It |
Loftus Road. on 12:43 - Jan 23 by Northernr | One of the many issues you've got atm is the relations with the council over this have just completely broken down. There's no real ongoing dialogue, no real joint will to make this work. I get the impression there's now a mutual dislike on both sides and that's not going to change without a change in leadership at one, the other or both. The council aren't even entertaining the idea of us at LCS, and keep making mention of pie in the sky stuff like making it a concert venue or whatever. The friends of Woormwood Scrubs are clearly already entrenched in "anything but a football ground" to the point where they moan about "thousands of people traipsing across the Scrubs" to get to it while at the same time pitching for Secret Cinema events that will bring thousands and thousands of people, every night, onto the Scrubs itself. Both cutting off their nose to spite their face because the LCS is a rundown dump that they can't afford to do anything with. QPR meanwhile continue to just think being the local football club entitles them to bits of land, some of it public owned, for free. Pretty obvious they'd want to develop the Loftus Road site for property, and when Jamie Ruben and people like that get involved you look at the whole south side of SAR right the way up to the White City tube station and think that's a huge development possibility there - you can see why the council think it's a foreign property development stitch up through the back door, though I don't think it reflects well on them that they mention our owners being foreign in statements as often as they do, and I didn't see much concern about that (nor an insistence on public/fan ownership like they keep doing whenever a QPR questions comes up) when they were letting Westfield plant the fcking death star on top of Shepherd's Bush. There's no real resolve to do anything about it on either side. I think a new stadium at LCS, with new facilities for the park, a new athletics track next door, a good amount of social housing on Loftus Road, would be the best scenario for everybody, but they've all put each others' backs up so much it's not even a discussion. Personally I'm dreading them ever leaving LR. I know the limitations, and the business case, and I do get it, but I agree with HuckerMOTM above, it would never be the same again to the point of I'm not convinced I'd actually bother any more. That's another problem in itself because clubs like Brighton got their new builds through years and years of political pressure, fan campaigns, fans getting elected to local councils and stuff. We should be lobbying politicians, standing candidates ourselves, getting people onto the Friends of the Scrubs board and certainly attending their meetings. But there isn't that surge of support here, because I think a lot of people feel this way.
This post has been edited by an administrator |
It wouldn't take much for organised fan pressure to be brought to bear on the Council - a lot of the local seats have very small majorities. But this would need to go hand in hand with some sort of coherent approach from the club, and if they have already burned all the bridges, I don't hold out much hope. | | | |
Loftus Road. on 21:11 - Jan 23 with 1655 views | daveB |
Loftus Road. on 15:44 - Jan 23 by headhoops | No idea if this would be possible. Latymer Upper School's (private school I believe) playing fields are miles away from the actual school itself in Fulham. - But only hundreds of yards from LR, site must be double the footprint of LR. Make them an offer? Naturally would have to insist the Pavillion has more than 3 barstaff on a match day! |
never heard that site mentioned before, wonder if they've ever looked at it | | | |
| |