Pompey’s latest attempts to move more in line with training facilities fitting to a top 5-10 club have been announced on the Pompey Site, with the plans for a state of the art training complex in Gosport fully revealed.
The 35 acres in the Alver Valley in Lee-on-Solent will ‘house 10 full size pitches, two mini soccer pitches, a three-quarter size pitch and a dedicated goalkeeping area’ with Richard Marshall, the architect for Arsenal’s training complex being the man that has designed the proposed main building that we are looking at here.
Other details revealed stated ‘the 18,0000 sq ft building will house changing rooms, medical and rehabilitation facilities, a gymnasium, administration offices, a media and presentation area and a refectory’.
All sounds very exciting, for full details on the proposal and plans visit the Pompey Site by clicking here.
Peter Storrie had this to say to the Pompey Site: ‘we are very excited about the new site which fits all the criteria for us to build a training facility any Premier League club would be proud of.
‘I’d like to pay tribute to Gosport Borough Council, who have been extremely supportive of our need to build such a facility and helping us find the site. The next stage is public consultation and we hope the community are as enthusiastic about the scheme as we are. The club feels we can make a real contribution to the Borough and we are looking forward to working with Gosport in the future.
‘Plans will be submitted within the next couple of weeks and if it meets with approval we could begin work by the late summer and complete the scheme before the start of the 2009/10 season’.
With Harry Redknapp adding: ‘this is fantastic news. The club desperately needs its own training ground if we are to continue the progress we have made on the pitch over the last couple of seasons.
‘The plans for the pitches and the overall facilities look very impressive and it will make a great deal of difference to the players and our ability to keep attracting the very best to the club’.
Fareham Borough Council rejected our last proposals for a new training complex, all we can do now is hope and pray that Gosport Borough Council will be more supportive? And the earlier signs seem good with Shaun Cully, Leader of Gosport Borough Council saying: ‘we are delighted that Portsmouth Football Club have chosen to build their new training ground in Gosport.
‘Their decision to do so is great because in selecting Gosport they have in effect secured the future of the Alver Valley Country Park; an area we have been working on opening to the public for some time. The club’s involvement will ensure the country park is completed and opened to the public far sooner than we ever dared imagine.
‘We thank and welcome Pompey to Gosport and hope they’ll be happy here. We also thank them for their generous offer of making some of their new facilities available to our schools to help train our footballers of the future’.
We desperately need plans for a new training complex to come off as our facilities are as poor as they get and are not fitting for a club with our ambition, and our hopes of fulfilling these will keep being held back as long as we cannot do this.
Should we manage to succeed with these proposals the impact that this should have on the club could be phenomenal as facilities like these will help produce some of the countries best young talent and convince those already established to sign for Portsmouth Football Club, even more so than they already do!
I know the stadium talk will keep rumbling on for a long, long time but my thinking is that if we cannot redevelop Fratton Park or move to a new ground then a state of the art training facility will be the next best thing and will be a giant step in the right direction.
PLAY UP POMPEY!
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