Here's my issue Dave. If owning your own stadium is the cash cow it's supposed to be why do so many club's keep finding themselves with in so much financial trouble while still not competing in their league?
It is undeniably the trend that clubs that don't 'own' (I use that loosely, i.e. 'control fully what happens') their own stadium tend to be the ones that struggle.
Now to a degree there's a little bit of cause and effect - the ground is the obvious cash asset to flog and put off the impending crisis for another day that fans won't get so up in arms about as flogging a star striker, so poorly run clubs tend to sell their grounds off. You can also see with the likes of Portsmouth and Crystal Palace, owners tend to like to transfer the ground as security as it always has a value, and they like to keep *that* against their loans rather than the club.
The evidence is pretty clear that, overall, 'ownership' (scare quotes again) points to a club that has the foundations in place for success (cause and effect again, however).
Now, obviously, a poorly run club can't hope to be in a position to re-buy its ground. However, usually the option is there, and usually local authorities are amenable to such things because they recognise the brand value and brand identity a football club brings to a place, so it's worth encouraging them to be as successful as possible. Plymouth are a fine example of a city where the local authority seem to spend every other year stepping in to support, then letting the ground go back to the club!
The issue *we* had quite frankly, was that the move to the Ricoh suited local politics of regeneration, and this was played on by the majority shareholder at the time to enable a quick bale out. There was an unseemly haste to enable Highfield Road to be built on, so the precautions in place to protect it were got around. We were encouraged to lose our ground and... we encouraged it, whereas once Arena 2000 was no more, this was the effect of a poorly run club (note, not the cause). That does, however, mean it's always one hand tied behind the back to become a well-run club.
Do I think SISU run us well? Obviously not, never have. The problem is, our options to re-buy ourcurrent home are now tied into whether Wasps end up well-run or not. It's n longer just within *our* control, of how *we* perform as a club, but we depend on outside influences.
So that ultimately means that even if we do sort ourselves out, we reach our own glass ceiling that could then require drastic action to resolve (i.e. building a ground elsewhere, and out the city if the council's local plan ends up offering up barriers).
SISU might speak in rhetoric, SISU may not run us well enough to do things, and they might also miss the boat on the emotional element of football that's beyond the cold hard cash. The general logic is worth considering however, away from SISU, because it's the logic clubs from Swindon to Ipswich to Oxford to Plymouth to WImbledon all use. It's not an exclusively SISUesque rhetoric.
