as a bit smug now. Will read even worse when West Ham are in League 2 in 2014. And Karen, THE PITCH WILL HAVE A GREAT BIG RUNNING TRACK AROUND IT! Please don't pretend it won't by showing images form funny angles.

Ahh_Bisto reveals his vision of West Ham

Karren, see the dotted red line? Is that the "race track" missing from your "picture"?

That running track seems to be a big issue doesn't it?
West Ham are going to be playing at the Olympic Stadium!!!
Running track, running schmack!

Two of my local non-league grounds have a running track, and ramshackle Ilford is probably, now Leyton have kicked the bucket, my favourite ground.

The bigger picture (and stadium) and I say this NOT as a West Ham fan is that, overnight, West Ham have become the second biggest team in London.
That headed A4 notepaper with the five rings next to the West Ham badge that will be winging its way to big businesses throughout the world makes them bigger than Tottenham and Chelsea and on the coat-heels of Arsenal.

Apparently 100% of Spurs fans were against the move.
Never the sharpest knives in the drawer, those fans will have a long time to get used to being the fourth biggest club in London.

Stated that the furthest seat would be 205 metres from the pitch.

Overnight West Ham have increased their capacity by 25,000 paying customers.

But far too much has been made of just getting a new ground is this matter.

The reason why Daniel Levy right now is crying into his no doubt very nice Burgundy is that a local rival business has increased its paying audience by a figure just 10,000 less than Spurs' capacity.
New ground, new schmound.
Think on that.
Like having a Sainsbury's arrive next to your local convenience store.

West Ham have also garnered (and will continue so to do in the next two years including the Olympics themselves.....what a great advertising prospect!) huge publicity and the kind of international recognition that any business would pay millions, even billions, for.

The way Spurs' fans are talking you'd think the ground is in Stratford-upon-Avon.....it's ten minutes on the North Circular!!!!

I don't much care for Levy, Sugar, Brady, Sullivan or Gold but this is a HUGE deal and whilst it could have dire ramifications for Leyton Orient, I'd argue that the club that should be equally concerned is Tottenham.

You ask Daniel Levy, he'll tell you.
Won't you Hammers' fans enjoy being bigger than Chelsea?

from the pitch, the better

got it right. Football and athletics tracks just don't mix. It's taken a lot of places in Europe a while to realise, but gradually most of the teams with athletics tracks are moving out (Juve, Espanyol - there's an Olympic legacy for you, most of the German clubs).

West Ham are really going against the grain with this one. For Brady, Gold & Co. they can just see the £ signs. It's not a footballing decision and it may well backfire on them.

When SuGo took over at West Ham, a Birmingham fan wrote the following on a fansite....

"It doesn't matter how much you love your club, within 2 years they will make you hate it"

They were right, the only difference for me is it's taken just over 1 year.

so bias declared but trying to take a step back I still think our bid is the better one. The elephant in the room on this is the running track. Originally the Olympic stadium legacy was to tear it down and build instead a 25K capacity athletics stadium.

The Spurs bid is simple: use £420M worth of the £500M invested in the OS to keep the legacy and invest in the Crystal Palace Athletics Stadium to make it 25K capacity (with the ability to make it 40K for things like the World Championships). The OPLC wanted a legacy, so there it is: a 25K capacity race track at Crystal Palace and a physical legacy on site of keeping as much of the original investment in the OS in situ.

Athletics and football don't mix and to keep a running track in a football stadium to make a "legacy" is farcical in my view. You need only read the excitement of ranger's posts that West Ham will have a new stadium for football as proof of that statement. He doesn't give two hoots if men or women spend time running up and down the edge of the pitch. Unlike Andy Gray and Rickard Keys).

But certainly enjoyed the "experience" of beating the Spuds (one of our few victories).

Thanks for reminding me. That was when we had a creative midfield lead by Yossi.

....who thinks the funniest part of the whole article is the bit about England winning the 2014 World Cup*?

Keef

*(Not that Scotland are even likely to be there...)

to have retractable seats that could be pulled out or something to cover the track for football games?
Could that be part of the Hammers master plan?

too expensive

"The First Lady of Football" write her own articles or are they ghost-written?

Either way could she not have thought of a better verb to describe winning the World Cup:

England manager Harry Redknapp will be my guest after an amazing summer saw us get World Cup glory again.

Also can someone tell me what "good old East End values" are?

missing is an overdub of Vera Lyn.....reg&ron/jellied eels/leave yer front door open/family values/football’s coming home/kidsforaquid....

flight path of spitfire’s in a ‘w h u’

solly in his purple jacket saluting

and yes they are from her own fair hand...

the bubbles song creating the same hair-standing atmosphere without the compact nature of upton park. crap team but great song.

has waded in

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/olympic_games/9393611.stm

Interesting if only because of his past at Spurs and the current involvement of Brady on The Apprentice.

My football-going days were in the late '70s and 80s. It was, looking back on it, the heyday of hooliganism but only If you were interested in that sort of thing. And if you weren't it rarely impinged. I was "attacked" once, on the Seven Sisters Road on the way to White Hart Fucking Lane. And i was once hit by a brick at Upton Park; away supporters were made to stay behind after the game to ease congestion: attractive sitting duck for "Hammers" fans who lobbed bricks over the wall into the away pen.
I will be in a state of agitated restlessness until it's determined which of these franchises will get to occupy the Olympic stadium.

Boris can still overturn the decision! Having said that it will be nice to see the Spammers in their shiny new stadium whilst toiling in the championship.

Sincere congratulations to West Ham. Good result all round I would say.

the missing track has already been commented on but...why are there Champions League ad hoardings and why are there 8 West Ham players attacking with 3 clearly in an offside position?

All very odd.

playing in the Champion's league will be determined by revenue potential rather than league position. It will be part of the "honesty" campaign that Fifa will run in 2013, when they will explain that "honestly" they only care about the money.

As a Liverpool fan who is newly relieved that we are not going to be in a relegation dogfight, I can't help thinking that people are writing West Ham off prematurely. One win takes them out of the relegation places, which is hardly being detached from the pack. I think everyone up to and including Fulham in 12th (and maybe Newcastle in 10th) should be a little nervous about relegation. Blackpool fans in particular are beginning to panic - bottom of the form guide below Bolton and WBA. WHU are 14th between Everton and Wolves.

Personally I wanted Spurs to take the stadium, but only because I have links to Gateshead stadium which will now drop down the athletics pecking order.

....I (still) think you're all wrong.

The 90% of Spurs' fans who wanted Sugar out in favour of Venables all those years ago were 100% wrong.
And now the 100% of Spurs' fans who don't want to move out of grubby little Tottenham High Street are 100% wrong.
I can only imagine what Levy and Sugar call the Tottenham support when their office door is closed.
Probably the same things I call them.

Sugar's tirade (understandable but misplaced) about the ground being a white elephant within four years just doesn't stack up.

Rugby League will be played there (Yes please, I'll be there).

Rugby Union (ditto).

Athletics will be hosted there (I'll go).

Cricket will be played there (I'll go.....and HOORAH! After the demise of the Ilford and Leyton cricket festivals, Essex CCC return to East London the day after Trevor Bailey dies. How fitting. And I'll be able to walk there!).

Premiership football will be played there.

The West Ham fans worried about poor views will be the first to order their seats anyway and so it will be the floating supporter who will be further away from the pitch.

And, instead of having a facility which isn't used outside football match times (i.e. grounds in treacherous areas like Tottenham and Tower Hamlets; ever been to either other than for a home game?.....me neither, I value my life), West Ham will now be playing next to one of the world's biggest shopping centres, next to a huge railway terminus and in an Olympic Park complex which will presumably be open 24/7.

This is an absolute no brainer.
The bods in the suits are right.
The bods in the hoodies are wrong.

Also really looking forward to the pitch being churned up by rugby league and union. Let's have Monster Trucks and American Football too while we're at it.

Apparently these have just been made to be sold in the West Ham Shop.

http://twitpic.com/3yevsq

How come QPR didn't get 60,000 gates when they moved to White City? Because it was an awful stadium for football, with a mid table Third Division team playing football in it.

Good luck West Ham.

But what choice does the club have? To surrender the tenancy of the OS to another team would consign West Ham to Orient-like oblivion (with apologies to Orient fans). As a business the owners have to take this gamble and they are willing to compromise on facilities for fans in order to do so (as the running track is clearly wrong for a football stadium). Sadly, I'm not convinced by the "build it and they will come" argument to filling a 60,000 capacity stadium. The only way today to (significantly) grow a fan base is to be on TV as often as possible and keep winning things. Neither of which have West Ham ever done nor are likely to be do.

is an anagram of "The New Stadium".

(Not all my own work, but it's disappeared from my Twitter timeline now so I don't know who figured that out.)

The real reason I started this blog was to try to persuade more of the Massive to sponsor my cycle ride from London to Paris at the end of May in aid of the National Autistic Society.

And to see if I could get it into the Top 10 Hot Topics.

If anyone does want to sponsor me, please contact me via this site and I will give you all the justgiving details.

And thanks for the lively debate. I'm still angry as I think the new stadium will be horrific but I will take the anger out on my training run round Epping Forest tomorrow.

Ms Legacy has banged out an email already .

"We simply cannot wait to show you around this impressive and intimate stadium so you can truly experience the awe and excitement that all who visit are compelled to feel.

The club is run by supporters and today is another great day in our proud history. This will be your stadium and an atmospheric home for generations to come."

ah those supporters that as of yet you haven't consulted once, that's a lie Mr Sullivan. And yes she did say intimate.

Scott Duxbury. He gave an interesting insight to the the WH business paln. For around half the games a season , WH could sell well beyond their current capacity. He didn't say how far, but it sounded like up to around 45k.

He also acknowledged that they had made almost no attempt to exploit the brand either internationally - where recognition isn't bad, better than many in the Prem League - or in nearby Canary Wharf. Both were seen as good income streams, the latter particulalry in terms of seat sales.

Although Duxbury is no more, the plan doesn't seem to have changed much, other than SuGo have spotted that they could get hold of a flagship stadium at a cut price, and have some of the means to start generating the extra income.

Edit : found the article
http://www.kumb.com/qa.php?id=17

Relegation would put something of a dent in that, as would the current season ticket holders not renewing because of their dislike of the stadium. So it's a risk for sure. But if it pays off, it could yield a big dividend.

From a personal perspective, I've gone from being an occasional visitor to season ticket holder and then back again. I went for the first time in a year or so last Sunday. The travel there and back was diabolical, the game dull, the result painful, and the atmosphere tepid. I can't see anything about the new stadium that would make the better for me. But then I prefered the old Boleyn Ground when the seats pressed up against the touchline.

My train passes the stadium each day on my way into Liverpool Street. I've seen it grow up from a hole in the ground on a daily basis and I'm really looking forward to the Olympic games. I'd have been gutted if the bulldozers started up as soon as the games were over.

Vested interest declaration as my football support wavers between West Ham & Dagenham but I rarely get to Upton Park. I'm much more likely to attend a game or two per year at the Olympic Stadium.

I'm almost certain to watch cricket there, plus some of the other events suggested, and geographically it will be my local gig venue. (Steve Harris from Iron Maiden was part of West Ham's bid so we will certainly be seeing Eddie and co there)

I'm genuinely pleased. Be happy for me!

good on yer martin. Still 'still' doing the business at Daggers?

http://www.london2012.com/webcams/olympic-stadium-camera-2.php

as other fans discuss new grounds]

Being a modern man, I am often reluctant to criticise Ms Brady as it normally gets seen as "you would not think that if she was a man". (this has happened on here many a time)

However, in reality I would be more likely to be vitriolic if she was a man.

This is a woman that peddles a titilation column, on a weekly basis, that focuses more on "nudge nudge" references to the goings on of other senior management at rival football columns.

This is a woman that is happy to be percieved as Alan Sugar's, (a former chairman of one of our biggest rivals), puppet on a reality show.

This is a woman who you would not trust if you asked her for the time.

This is a woman that is the public face of a cynical move to a stadium where few, if any, of us have had ANY say over.

This is a woman that stated, or implied depending on how gullable someone is, that West Ham fans threw bananas at Clyde Best, and that her regime has changed "a hotbed of racism".