How are Tottenham reacting to their new stadium and what happens next?

By Tony Attwood

The impact of a new stadium on a club has been one of my favourite themes across the years of Untold, not least because I think it is one of those little analyses that we came up with first – and which of course everyone else has ignored ever since.

But we did create a chart of what happened to clubs after moving to a new ground, and thinking about the forthcoming game with Tottenham – and of course their move to the new ground – it did remind me of the figures we put together in the early days of Untold.  (And I would stress I do know where the game is being played – on this occasion I am not getting totally confused).

Here is the chart of ground moves that we created

Stadium	Club	Built	Promotion/Releg
Riverside Stadium	Middlesbrough	1995	Relegated 1997
Britannia Stadium	Stoke City	1997	Relegated 1998
Reebok Stadium	Bolton Wanderers	1997	Relegated 1998
Pride Park Stadium	Derby County	1997	Relegated 2002
Stadium of Light	Sunderland	1997	Relegated 1997
Madejski Stadium	Reading	1998	Relegated 1998
JJB Stadium	Wigan Athletic	1999	Won D3 2003
St Mary’s Stadium	Southampton	2001	Relegated 2005
KC Stadium	Hull City	2002	Prom from D3 2005
Walkers Stadium	Leicester City	2002	Relegated 2004
Etihad Stadium	Manchester City	2003	Won League 2012
Liberty Stadium	Swansea City	2005	Prom from D4 2005
Emirates Stadium	Arsenal	2006	Top 4 to 2016
Cardiff City Stadium	Cardiff City	2009	Won D2 2012
“London” Stadium	WHU	2016	11th, 13th, 10th in PL
Tottenham Hot Stadium	Tottenham Hotspur	2019

New stadia are clearly not always associated with an improvement in fortune – although it can happen on occasion.  Arsenal did maintain the long run in the Champions League – a run only beaten by Real Madrid, for not even Barcelona managed a consecutive run as long as Arsenal’s.  But of course the three league trophies under Mr Wenger all came during the Highbury years.  Since moving to the new stadium we have won the FA Cup three times but no league titles.

And now we can add Tottenham and we can take a look at what it has meant to their form…

In 2016/17 ahead of the move, Tottenham were the most successful club at home, producing the form that last season we would now associate with Manchester City and Liverpool.  That was the season the ground was partially shut and Totteham’s average crowd went down to 31,639.  Here are the league tables showing the changes…

2016/17 – home games only

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Tottenham Hotspur	19	17	2	0	47	9	38	53
2	Chelsea	19	17	0	2	55	17	38	51
3	Arsenal	19	14	3	2	39	16	23	45
4	Everton	19	13	4	2	42	16	26	43
5	Liverpool	19	12	5	2	45	18	27	41
6	Manchester City	19	11	7	1	37	17	20	40

Then came the “temporary” move to Wembley and suddenly the home form fell apart…

2017/18 – home games only

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Manchester City	19	16	2	1	61	14	47	50
2	Arsenal	19	15	2	2	54	20	34	47
3	Manchester United	19	15	2	2	38	9	29	47
4	Liverpool	19	12	7	0	45	10	35	43
5	Tottenham Hotspur	19	13	4	2	40	16	24	43
6	Chelsea	19	11	4	4	30	16	14	37

Unfortunately for Tottenham, although the ground was due to be ready pretty soon after the start of the 2018/19 season, it wasn’t.  It was something to do with mice eating the cables, or people having alcohol on the site – I forget the exact details.  Anyway, by continuing at Wembley, so the “home” results continued.

2018/19 – home games only

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Manchester City	19	18	0	1	57	12	45	54
2	Liverpool	19	17	2	0	55	10	45	53
3	Arsenal	19	14	3	2	42	16	26	45
4	Chelsea	19	12	6	1	39	12	27	42
5	Tottenham Hotspur	19	12	2	5	34	16	18	38
6	Manchester United	19	10	6	3	33	25	8	36

It is interesting to see how the Tottenham fan based related to this move to Wembley.  Although the crowd shot up in 2017/18, the numbers declined again in 2018/19 – quite possibly because the date of the opening of the new stadium was put back several times.  The “Crowd pos” column shows the position in a league table of crowds.

Season	Average crowd	League Pos	Crowd Pos	High	Low
2014/15	35,728	5th	9	36,130	34,008
2015/16	35,776	3rd	9	36,084	34,882
2016/17	31,639	2nd	12	31,962	31,211
2017/18	67,953	3rd	2	83,222	50,034
2018/19	54,216	4th	4	81,332	29,164

During this period of coming and going Tottenham’s league position has slipped a little, although not as much as the attendances at Wembley during last season.

As the top table shows, success in a new stadium can come along but there is no direct link between the stadium and success.  And I suspect that the impact of a new stadium does depend primarily on how the cost of the stadium impacts on the ability to buy new players.   If the stadium itself generates lots of extra revenue, that is obviously helpful.  If it has been paid for by borrowed money and that has to be repaid, then that is far from helpful.

Arsenal of course had both these issues – lots of new money from the larger ground, but it mostly went into paying for the stadium.  It appears that Tottenham have the same issue and I suspect this might impact somewhat on their performances.  (Obviously as an Arsenal supporter I hope so, but that’s not my point here).

For overall it is the impact on home form that fascinates me.  From being the most powerful team at home, Tottenham has slipped considerably.  Now if that was simply because of the nomadic existence and an unsettling of everyone due to the long delays and (what seemed to me from the other side of the fence) not very good communications between the club and the fans, then all should now be ok.  I haven’t been inside the stadium (rather obviously) but it looks great from without – although I wonder about the lack of a stadium sponsor.  (Still I hear the station has been renamed).

But the defeat to Newcastle suggests the old curse of the new ground revealed in the top table might hit again.  But we need a few more home games for Tottenham to see if that is true.