The old Molineux was a well designed stadium, but hard to significantly expand, without knocking down existing stands, whereas at The Valley (leaving aside planning, finance and property developers) it would be easy to expand the East stand, and the JS wouldn't be a great loss if it was demolished and rebuilt, as it's realistically only covered banking.
The New Den is similar to Molineux, as there is no easy way to expand any of the existing structures (not that they need to expand of course).
I know this sounds negative, but with the escalating price of football, combined with the predictability of results (season on season) are any of these clubs going to be able to sell out these stadia in the long term?
Even Liverpool have had empty seats in recent seasons. I say 'Even' as they are historically a massive club but no real challenge at the top and they can't even sell out 45,000.
If football is going to continue to be priced as a past time of wealthy middle classes in the end I can't see teams finishing 8th or below getting the kind of crowds that they have been getting in recent years.
Completely agree with this, if we stayed in league 1 a further season we would have had a lot more empty seats, even the big 4 don't always sell out.
Don't know why MK Dons are expanding. It's empty as it is.
"The Club have announced that they are to increase the capacity of stadium:mk to 32,000, for the start of the 2012/13 season. This will be achieved by installing seats in the upper tier, which has been largely left empty since the stadium was originally built in 2007. This should have a big positive impact on the overall look of the ground. The stadium has also been built in such a way that an additional third tier of seating could be added to the stadium, further increasing capacity to over 40,000."
Comments
The New Den is similar to Molineux, as there is no easy way to expand any of the existing structures (not that they need to expand of course).
"The Club have announced that they are to increase the capacity of stadium:mk to 32,000, for the start of the 2012/13 season. This will be achieved by installing seats in the upper tier, which has been largely left empty since the stadium was originally built in 2007. This should have a big positive impact on the overall look of the ground. The stadium has also been built in such a way that an additional third tier of seating could be added to the stadium, further increasing capacity to over 40,000."
Hilariously Plymouth were another club to be part of the bid!
No away fans in the new stand.