Quote: Vicenzo "As I am not allowed on your board I would like to ask you why there is such venom from your fans towards the Allams? They should remember they still employ your new chief! The most stupid suggestion (and I've also heard this from some City fans) is that they only bought City so they could get the ground! In other words they have laid out over £30 million on the off chance they could develop the stadium and the land around it, a pretty strange way of going about it don't you think. The expression "cart before the horse" springs to mind. You have to acknowledge that the stadium has been up now for over 9 years and the land around it stays the same. Surely you cannot block development (by anybody) by quoting Hull Fair and the weekly gathering of fake DVD's etc. Do you agree with me that they must start talking
again?'"
Here are some potential reasons:
1) He has said he's effectively gifting us use of his stadium. This is untrue on 2 counts. Firstly it's the council's stadium. Secondly we pay in excess of £600k a year to play at the KC. "Gifting" would be taking advantage of, say, a peppercorn rental arrangement. We're not afforded that benefit courtesy of the council, unfortunately for us.
2) To "compensate" for his (untrue) claim in 1), he's then given you £1m. Not really engaging with FC fans thus far tbh.
3) He's said his preference is for the 2 rugby clubs to merge.
4) When things get a bit sticky at Hull City, he conjures up a "Sporting Village" proposal as a "gift" to the city of Hull. The fact that he needs the freehold of the KC for nowt to use as security for a loan to do so should have rung some alarm bells about the Sporting Gift story in anyone with half a brain. Clearly that rules out the local media. Perhaps there's a commercial element to all this as you'd struggle to repay an £80m loan from the receipts of a squash court and a swimming pool. Just a thought.
5) The negotiating stance taken by him is unreasonable, and I'm being polite. He and the Councillors attending the recent meeting have confirmed that he won't discuss anything unless the council agree to give him the KC. Bearing in mind the council have seen no plans and had no detailed costings, do you think this is a good basis to start discussion, or do you consider this an unreasonable pre-requisite when a £40m asset is at stake?
6) The lovely shiny badge of this development as a Sporting Village gift to the city is starting to lose its lustre. Pearson and Hudgell have both said that there is a commercial element to it, and there has to be to pay back (a point I raised months ago). Allam has talked of restaurants, boutiques and, unbelievably, a supermarket on the site. The council say that Allam was unaware of existing sporting facilities in local proximity and offered to bin them, effectively leaving only a squash court. The council offered Costello for the site of the Sporting Village. This idea was rejected out of hand. Do you see a theme developing here?
7) The councillors flagged concerns that FC would be out on their ear in 15 months from signing a deal.
I think these are probably enough reasons for FC fans to be lukewarm about him. To exaggerate to make the point, The Sporting Village for all we know could have at its heart a squash court and a monolithic Tesco sprawling over West Park, with FC playing at Costello in 2013. When you add his attitude to "negotiations" and inappropriately emotive language about Asbos to the fact that a few months ago it was a sporting gift and is now a commercial development with a supermarket, you can see why people, including the council who've not seen any plans, and FC fans, are a bit mistrusting.
The final point is one on Planning policy. With vacancy rates in the city centre which are probably due to the council already consenting more retail units than is sustainable by the population, I wouldn't see Anlaby Road as a sequentially preferable site unless I wanted to suck even more lift out of the town.
The fact that he also now is pumping more cash into Rovers, apparently, is just cherry on the icing on the cake of FC fans' scepticism.