The Lounge

[Wimbledon_rumours]

im hearing that we are interested in Michael smith as a replacement for tyrone Barnett who is on his way out.

[onyadon]

Strong mail that the Dons will be announcing their second signing this week, possibly on Wednesday. Apparently a medical is due to take place.
Elsewhere, Academy-raised winger Toyosi Olusanya has been released (no fee) and has trials lined up with Chelsea and Fulham.
The club is expecting England Under-17 goalkeeper Joe Bursik to leave but waiting for the bargaining between Stoke City, Crystal Palace and Derby County to play out. This has the potential given the interest that Bursik could realise a good fee for the Club.
An interesting (unverified) rumour is that Ardley is interested in right-winger James Henry, who has been released by Wolves in the Championship. Henry has played 300 league games, among them Millwall, where Ardley has strong ties and is looking to fill that position. Henry is 28 this month.

[dan]

Hi Rob,
There’s a couple of whispers it’s Deji Oshilaja being lined up, any ideas?

[Windlesham Don]

A few snippets from the Dons’ Trust SGM held at the club last night. A more detailed summary can be found on the DT Webjam. Apologies if it is a bit disjointed, as it is largely a mass of ‘cut and pastes’ from the Webjam.

A majority of the meeting was devoted to an update on the new stadium…

S106: This is the overarching planning document, to finalise planning permission. There are No ‘showstoppers’ – all that needs to happen is coordination with other documents. This is very close.

Historic England: Application has been made for the existing Greyhound Stadium to be listed. The General Election has delayed this decision. A change in the Minister for Sport will further delay this. We do not believe the stadium merits being listed, and have provided evidence.

Q: Have we a plan for what happens if Historic England are successful with their application?

A: We can still build, but it would involve a complete overhaul of the project. If we are in that position, we will have a huge rethink and that is impossible to plan for currently.

Stadium Programme:
Legal documents: To be completed this month – albeit this will be a challenge.
Site Clearance: July 2017 – March 2018.
Stadium Construction: April 2018 – March 2019.
Stadium Fit-Out: April 2019 – June 2019.
Test Events: July 2019.
League Fixtures: 2019-20 season.

From the club’s tendering process it appears that the potential contractors are comfortable with these timescales, so we are still aiming at starting the 2019-20 season at NPL.

Stadium Funding:
1. Galliard: Significant funding coming from them. Areas in the stadium will have other developments, including a cafe and a crèche, which Galliard will fund.

2. KM Sale: Conditions precedent must be met before the sale completes. If we don’t get planning approval for Plough Lane, we will not sell KM to Chelsea. Galliard will do the site clearance and once that is done and we are on site, we will complete the sale of KM. In the meantime, we remain in complete control of the running of the stadium.

3. Bank Loan: looking at arranging a bank facility to allow us to draw money when we need it. This involves a lot of due diligence. We look very financially respectable, and Erik expects this to go through.

4. Crowdfunding: we don’t believe we need to do this to afford the stadium at this stage, but are investigating later this week – just in case. If it does happen, we could pay for extra things once we have moved into the new stadium.

Miscellaneous:
Footprint: Andrew Williams, the consultant and stadium project manager stated that NPL is the smallest footprint for a stadium that he has worked on in his 30 years in the business. We do not own any land outside of the boundary walls of the stadium, so there will be no opportunity to include statues or external bars etc on the land immediately surrounding the stadium. There will however, be significant internal entertaining space within the stadium itself.

Attendance: expecting in the region of 6,750 – 50% above current which is the general rule for clubs moving to new stadia. However, as many of our matches have sold out then this may be a conservative estimate.

Future: Part of the sale of KM is an agreement by Chelsea to play two pre-season friendlies. However, our first PSF at the new stadium is unlikely to be Chelsea, as we expect to sell out the first PSF at the stadium whoever we play (Erik would prefer Barcelona!)

[onyadon]

Well done Windlesham Don, fine effort and fills in some holes…..

[onyadon]

Dan, while I would welcome Deji Oshilaja back at KM, I would query the budget (new stadium imposed) implications of carrying four first-choice centre backs for a club of AFC Wimbledon’s size. Unless Ardley sees another role for Deji, perhaps right-back? The club have to be very frugal in who we bring in this summer and we are most fortunate to have someone of the financial nous of Erik in our corner.

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