East Stand And Training Ground Update

Events at Bloomfield Road at the moment must resemble the planning of a wedding.

In this case, the Premier League is the bride – and what she wants, she gets.

However, with still no clear statement on how the club intend to make this the ‘perfect marriage’, club secretary Matt Williams did at least clear a few things up with the Blackpool Gazette earlier this week.

‘Karl has been looking at moving the training ground ever since I can remember but the Premier League promotion has accelerated the need for it to happen,’ Williams said.

‘Karl has identified a site in Lytham where they have some land.

‘He is going to put a planning application in to convert some of the buildings there into dressing rooms, and the fields to become pitches.

‘Whether or not that is going to be ready in the next few months… I can’t see it. It will probably be ready in the new year.’

Speaking about the East Stand, Williams said:

‘We must have seating in there by the first game because that’s where all the media facilities are going to be.

‘You’ve got to have 50 written press desks with monitors, 18 radio broadcast positions with monitors, 12 positions for overseas broadcasters, a press room the size of the dressing room and a photographer’s room.

‘The meetings about exactly what type of stand we’ll go for are still ongoing.

‘In an ideal world we will get up to 16 or 17,000 capacity, of which 90 per cent will be Blackpool fans and 10 per cent away fans because that is the minimum allocation they have to be given.’