The half a million pound question

[rightwing]

Your question is loaded. "Spend it on players or spend it "wisely" on a 3g pitch?"Typical Lez.

Or even ensure that SJP gets properly redeveloped before the Cat and Fiddle (and I'm not talking about the bl**dy pitch!)

 

[Mackster]

Team please. Need to get people through the gates following successful seasons, we'll then have the money.

If we were planning on an indoor facility then I can see the logic of further development.

My kid trained on 3g, the pitches they played on a Sunday were never like the 3g, so mostly pointless training.

Well done Hants, you've given Tisdale his ready made excuse that playing on 3G and then playing on boggy pitches in winter is of no help at all

 

[iscalad]

There is potentially a very big problem with 3g pitches:-
http://www.skysports.com/football/news/11095/10154596/report-claims-link-between-3g-pitches-and-cancer

Well quite "The study - by the University of Washington - is not new and the results do not mean that 3G pitches in the UK hold a health risk."

Anything else to moan about?

 

[manc grecian]

Spend it on the pitch. Tisdale has made a right dogs arse of the current budget and I wouldn't trust him with an extra 500 quid never mind 500k. How many more slow, physically weak players could he buy for that?

Spending it on the team is not "doing a Yeovil" either. Not building a pitch does not equal scrapping the youth system.

 

[ExeterCitysRealDeal]

I'm happy about the investment in the 3G pitch as it will help to get to the next category with the academy which will generate extra revenue when lads move on which can help to pay for it. Having said that I am with Rightwing in that I would be looking to put some money into improving the stadium development to increase revenue generating facilities for example things like a cafe or convenience store to take advantage of all the captured market that the onsite student development is.

 

[Red Devon]

Must mean there's an extra 500k to go in to the playing budget seeing as we were told windfall money would be split three ways?

 

[Antony Moxey]

How is paying for a 3G pitch going to improve playing on a grass pitch that no-one at the club seems to like? Plus, if half the time the C&F pitches are unplayable because they're waterlogged then how will a 3G pitch not get flooded? If it's a drainage issue then sort that out and the grass pitches will be fine. It appears we have limited use of the university's facilities - what's wrong with booking it in advance for longer and more regular sessions? I'm sure the Uni would be pleased with a regular income, as would other facilities around the city with facilities sat there unused.

Or why not sort the pitch out at SJP properly once and for all? Then maybe the club could train on it once a week rather than plastic that'll be nothing like the SJP grass. If all we're looking for is to boost the academy and produce saleable players then why bother with first team football at all? Give the money to Brixington Blues, they produce better teams than the City youth anyway and it certainly doesn't cost them six figures each year to keep it going.

 

[rightwing]

I'm happy about the investment in the 3G pitch as it will help to get to the next category with the academy which will generate extra revenue when lads move on which can help to pay for it. Having said that I am with Rightwing in that I would be looking to put some money into improving the stadium development to increase revenue generating facilities for example things like a cafe or convenience store to take advantage of all the captured market that the onsite student development is.

ECRD, when I was on the BOS the Club stopped the Trust from funding several projects because they conflicted with the Club’s ‘priority’ list (which the BOS had not even previously known about). However, does anyone at the Club really know how to prioritize? Whilst we’d all like things like great training facilities, there is one glaring omission in the current redevelopment project that really needs urgent attention!! £500,000 would provide a substantial upgrade to the redevelopment project by allowing the footprint of the OG replacement to be moved forward so that it is capable of further expansion on both sides and down to the Well Street level.

It is very short sighted to spend another £500,000 on yet another pitch project whilst this is not being done or, more importantly, will not be capable of being done in the future once those foundations are put in place.

On the other hand, they have made so many mistakes on redevelopment, why not just add this one to the list?

 

[Red Bill]

I'm all up for improving training facilities and moving closer to an upgraded academy, but without a boost to the playing budget I'm not sure we'll get the chance to use them. Plus as we've had the pitch done but it still needed sorting out again last summer which didn't sort it out and it still isn't any good now. I also thought we had work done on the pitches out at the C&F which were going to mean we could use them all season, but that work doesn't seem to have made any difference either, I'm just not sure I have any confidence that anyone at the club has the ability to ensure we get a decent job done, because from where I'm sitting it seems like we generally employ a bunch of cowboys to do our pitch work and I don't want to give a bunch of cowboys £500k of our money.

Like Richard P, I remember it being reported a couple of years back that the playing budget was around the £1.2M mark. Did Tisdale explain why that is even less now despite the £3M+ windfalls we've had lately? It seems to me that everything is always just around the corner with Tisdale, but the trouble is when we get round the corner we suddenly discover we're much more skint than we thought we were and need to scale back expectations and wait until we get around the next corner.

 

[GrecianLez]

Having a rubber crumb page is one of the stepping stones to get in second-tier academy status which will include more central funding

We need to get to the next level