Originally posted by moomba
What windyhill and Dipper said re "Bell End".
Dipper, sorry mate, it was too good an opportunity to refuse. 
I heard on the radio the other day that some (insert nationality here) businessman had offered to buy Arsenal a new stadium in return for shares in the club, but was knocked back. I still don't understand how this is supposed to cost so much, from memory the CoMS cost £100 million, I know being in London, and the extra capacity is going to add a few dollars onto the price, but £400 million seems outrageous.
Perhaps you could build a new stadium at MK, I think there is a club there looking for a ground share. 
Moomba
Yeah he's another one of those Russian Oligarchs, he's even richer than Roman Abramovich,
apparently he's an Arsenal supporter.It's all a bit confusing, he was meant to have offered £120m to the new stadium costs but I bet it wasn't no strings attatched, I doubt the present Arsenal board would have hm aboard, they seem to guard their position ferociously but are the kind of board that never put in money from their own pockets unlike those much maligned types such as Doug Ellis who actually do.
Really I don't know how come the stadium costs so much, you just have to look at Wembley to see how much it costs to build a stadium in London.
Obviously the land is dearer & there's a number of compulsory purchase cases to settle & labour must cost a bit more but when you consider that Liverpool's 60k stadium will cost £100m it's a bit hard to understand.
One of the things is that Arsenal are building a load of housing as well (much of it what they call affordable) so we'll get money back from that when it's done & there's also the costs that will be incurred developing Highbury as well, so I suppose all that increases the risk from banks' point of view & increases the initial cost but means that we'll get money back in the future, the trouble is that the London property game is a dodgy enough caper to be in even when you're experts, with a projected fall in property prices it does seem to carry a few risks especially for a football club.