Fulham fans are planning to protest against their permanent exile from Craven Cottage during Sunday’s televised Premier League fixture against Middlesbrough.
The Back to the Cottage campaign will distribute postcards to supporters before the game at Loftus Road showcasing support for a return to Fulham’s historic home by the club’s finest ever player and ex-England captain Johnny Haynes.
Fulham chairman Mohamed Al Fayed denied there was an agreement to sell the ground to a development company in club statement. The Harrods owner admitted “we have set up a structure which would make it possible for us to sell Craven Cottage if as a last resort we are forced to do so” and turned his fire on “so-called supporters” who have denounced his secret scheme.
The Guardian have uncovered land registry records detailing an agreement to sell Craven Cottage to a shadowy company called Fulham River Projects Ltd, set up in September. The newspaper cites ‘sources close to the club’ as suggesting that Fulham River Projects, who had paid £15m for the site on the banks of the Thames, was not owned by Al-Fayed.
The Fulham chairman highlighted financial issues, saying:
“It is still my ambition for Fulham Football Club to have a stadium that everyone . . . would be proud of. We are still exploring a number of options including looking at the possibility of redeveloping Craven Cottage in a simpler, more affordable way which would not threaten our financial survival.”
Back to the Cottage spokesmen Tom Greatrex of Back to the Cottage said: “The statement Fulham put out hasn’t answered a lot of the questions,” he said. “Judging by what people are saying in emails and so on, there’s still a lot of anger. Why do you need a separate company to build a stadium? It doesn’t add up. It’s a classic example of what they’ve been doing to try to divide the fans, saying people who are complaining about the ground are not true Fulham supporters.”
Hammersmith and Fulham Council leader Andy Slaughter confirmed that the local authority wanted Fulham to remain at Craven Cottage
“We wish to see football preserved at Craven Cottage. If it were demonstrated to us that that was commercially or logistically impossible, and Fulham were seeking development of Craven Cottage to finance another ground in the borough, then we would certainly look at that.
“But that’s very much a second-best option and in any case they would have all the problems associated with an alternative development at Craven Cottage. They would have to put in a planning application which took into account numerous factors and it’s a difficult site to develop profitably for housing. There would be a minimum stipulation for the proportion of affordable housing we would want there. We would look for something like two- thirds of the housing to be affordable, which obviously attacks their profit margins.”
The Council revealed that have never been notified of the deal with Fulham River Projects Ltd. Fulham have looked at alternative sites in the borough on which to build a new stadium but lost out in the bidding for the one obvious site, the former White City stadium. Fulham could try to buy that from the developers and owners but it seems the club consider the price too high.
