Laughable: This ridiculous St James’ Park or new stadium question – Reality check….

That event was attended by Newcastle United CEO Darren Eales, along with the other senior business-side figures employed by the Newcastle United owners.

The club themselves decided which questions were answered, with these questions having had to be ‘sent in’ before the event.

It has surely become obvious to pretty much everybody, that whilst other issues and areas of the club were discussed, this event was clearly arranged, solely to push on the St James’ Park or new stadium debate.

All of the NUFC journalists were invited and if you have any doubts about my claims of why the event was put on, just look at all the media articles today. I haven’t seen a single one that isn’t concentrating almost exclusively on the ‘St James’ Park or new stadium?’ part of what was said.

Which then brings me to this particularly ridiculous ‘St James’ Park or new stadium’ question.

You know the one, both journalists asking it, as well as fans posing the question to other fans, ‘What would you prefer, sticking with St James’ Park, or a brand new stadium?’

It is such a daft and pointless question.

How can you give an answer when you don’t know what either option is???

What would an added-to St James’ Park look like – how many more seats would it have, by how much would the capacity be cut whilst the work was going on, and for how long (one year, two years), if staying at SJP would it mean even more normal seating areas changed to corporate/hospitality in order to bring in the extra riches that could have been delivered by a much bigger state of the art brand new stadium?

The most ridiculous thing of all with the whole question, is that people are asking and answering it without any knowledge/information of where this brand new stadium would be situated.

It is a bit like somebody asking you if you would like to move from where you currently live, how can you answer that if they don’t tell you where exactly you will be living and in what kind of property?

So you might be living with your family in a two-bedroom flat in a canny area of Tyneside, but when asked if you want to make the move to another property, it could turn out to be anything from moving into a ten-bedroom mansion just across the street, right through to living in a cardboard box on Wearside.

What about the brand new stadium was actually exactly where St James’ Park is now?

Or say moved 50/100 yards so it is still covering much of the same area but completely rebuilt and shifted a little bit?

Or what about moving 200/300 yards or so and a brand new stadium built on Leazes Park/Castle Leazes?

Basically, this is the kind of thing that has happened at Tottenham, a new stadium built in almost the same spot, just moved a little bit. If Spurs hadn’t built their far bigger brand new state-of-the-art stadium, they would have been knackered. They would have had zero chance of competing towards the top end. The same with Arsenal if they had stayed at Highbury, they could never have expanded that to anything close to what they needed, they moved a little bit further than Tottenham but only by hundreds of yards.